Files
finit/doc
Joachim Wiberg 4299ce8839 doc: document command candidates and the duplicate title rule
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>
2026-08-05 17:57:56 +02:00
..
2025-07-10 16:45:48 +02:00
2025-08-29 12:54:06 +02:00
2026-08-01 11:25:39 +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.