Files
finit/doc
Joachim Wiberg c584795202 doc: fix back-references and stale claims left by the conversion
Reference sections kept pointing at the line-based format they no longer
document.  `sysv` and `task` sent the reader to Services for "<COND>",
the cgroups chapter opened by listing three legacy directives and then
explained further down that only two of them exist here, and the logging
chapter still gave "log:prio:facility.level,tag:ident" as the full
syntax.

Some claims were wrong independent of the format:

  - a sysv is a supervised daemon, grouped with service in
    SVC_TYPE_DAEMON, not a variation on task
  - restart-max has no upper bound of 255, or any other
  - the built-in rescue fallback runs in 12345789, not 12345
  - conditional loading quotes system/10-hotplug.conf, not
    system/hotplug.conf
  - the key spells conflicts, not conflict
  - the built-in getty no longer wants TERM last, it is a key

`if` takes either a service name or, in angle brackets, a condition,
decided in svc_ifthen().  Only the examples showed this, so it is now
said.

Terminology follows the split index.md already draws: a block is the new
format, a stanza the line-based one.

src/rescue.conf was still line-based, missed because it sits in src/
rather than system/ or contrib/.

Signed-off-by: Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com>
2026-07-30 15:23:35 +02:00
..
2025-07-10 16:45:48 +02:00
2025-08-29 12:54:06 +02:00

Introduction

Alpine screenshot{ align=right width=40% }

Reverse engineered from the EeePC fastinit
"gaps filled with frog DNA …"
— Claudio Matsuoka

Finit is a process starter and supervisor designed to run as PID 1 on Linux systems. It consists of a set of plugins and can be set up using configuration files. Plugins start at hook points and can run various set up tasks and/or install event handlers that later provide runtime services, e.g., PID file monitoring, or conditions.

Features

For a more thorough overview, see the Features section.

Tip

See SysV Init Compatibility for help to quickly get going with an existing SysV or BusyBox init setup.

Origin

This project is based on the original finit by Claudio Matsuoka which was reverse engineered from syscalls of the EeePC fastinit.

Finit is developed and maintained by Joachim Wiberg at GitHub. Please file bug reports, clone it, or send pull requests for bug fixes and proposed extensions.