The migration guide covered a stanza at a time, which is the wrong
shape for the two idioms that repeated a whole stanza. One of them,
several candidate binaries for one service, is now a command list.
The other, one service gated differently per platform, has no block
equivalent: those blocks share an identity because they share the
barrier condition downstream services wait for, so they cannot be
given separate titles. For that one the guide says to split the
variants across files, or leave that file in the line-based format,
which Finit still reads.
The udevd example in services.md taught the merge-broken form, and
system/10-hotplug.conf.in pointed readers at it for their syslogd.
Also lists libConfuse among the build dependencies. It has been
mandatory since the new .conf format landed, and build.md still said
two libraries. And corrects the note on variable expansion: it is
${VAR} that libconfuse expands when the file is read, with
${VAR:-default} supported. A plain $VAR reaches the service, which is
what makes `command = "syslogd -F $SYSLOGD_ARGS"` work with envfile.
Signed-off-by: Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com>
Introduction
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
- Runlevels, defined per service
- One-shot tasks, services (daemons), or SysV init start/stop scripts
- Runparts and
/etc/rc.localsupport - Process supervision similar to systemd
- Fine-grained privilege control:
- Linux capabilities for minimal required privileges
- Supplementary groups for multi-group resource access
- Sourcing environment files
- Conditions for network/process/custom dependencies
- Readiness notification; PID files (native) for synchronizing system startup, support for systemd sd_notify(), or s6 style too
- Limited support for tmpfiles.d(5) (no aging, attributes, or subvolumes)
- Pre/Post script actions
- Rudimentary templating support
- Tooling to enable/disable services
- Automatic reload of modified configuration files (optional)
- Built-in getty
- Built-in watchdog, with support for hand-over to watchdogd
- Built-in support for Debian/BusyBox
/etc/network/interfaces - Cgroups v2, both configuration and monitoring in
initctl top - Plugin support for customization
- Proper rescue mode with bundled
suloginfor protected maintenance shell - Switch root support for initramfs-to-real-root transitions
- Integration with watchdogd for full system supervision
- Logging to kernel ring buffer before
syslogdhas started, see the recommended sysklogd project for complete logging integration and how to log to the kernel ring buffer from scripts usinglogger
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.
