finit/TODO.md

TODO

Unsorted TODO list of features and points of investigation that could be useful for improving finit. But what is an improvement to finit? Well, similiar to launchd, the goal of finit is to be a FAST replacement for:

• init
• inetd
• crond
• watchdogd

The main goal is to be FAST. Secondary goals are to be: small, simple and with a very low dependency on external packages.

Inetd

Simple way of running Internet services on demand, like the old inetd:

inetd SVC [RUNLVL] /path/to/daemon args -- description

Example:

# Inetd services, launched on demand
inetd ssh [2345] /usr/sbin/sshd -i -- SSH Daemon

In keeping with the finit tradition, an optional callback can be setup to each inetd service. When a client connects the finit will call the callback with a struct in_pktinfo argument which the callback then can allowed or deny.

Priority

The intent of finit is to monitor not just processes, but also to be able to supervise the entire system and the behavior of certain processes that declare themselves to be finit compliant.

• Integrate the ingenious libev to handle all events: signals, polling fd's, etc. Because "Event driven software improves concurrency" -- Dave Zarzycki, Apple.

  See the launchd video for more info!

• Add support for a /dev/watchdog plugin to replace watchdogd

• Integrate watchdog plugin with process/system supervisor to optionally reboot the system when a process stops responding, or when a respawn limit has been reached, as well as when system load gets too high.

Configuration

• Add support for init <q | reload-configuration> and SIGHUP to have finit reload its finit.conf, but also

• Add support for inotify to automatically reload finit.conf

Runlevels

• Implement initctl stop|start|restart|reload|status <SVC> and service <SVC> stop|start|restart|reload|status on top

• Add PRE and POST hooks for when switching between runlevels

Miscellaneous

• Add support for init -v,--version | version
• Cleanup move sources from top-level directory to src/ and include/
• Make sure to install queue.h to $(PREFIX)/include/finit/queue.h
• Move finit.conf "check" command to plugin which checks /etc/fstab instead. This is the de-facto practice. But keep the check command for really low-end systems w/o /etc/fstab.

Documentation

• Write man pages for finit and finit.conf, steal from the excellent pimd man pages ...
• Update Debian finit.conf example with runlevels, tty/console and dependency handling

Investigation

• FHS changes affecting runtime status, plugins, etc.