Replacing init with Upstart
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 4th Oct 2006 21:02 UTC
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu "For years, most Linux distributions have been using an init daemon based on the one found in Unix System V. The init daemon is spawned by the kernel itself, and tasked with booting the rest of the system, starting all other processes, and taking care of them when they need to be stopped or when they die. While the System V init setup has worked well for Linux in the past, it hasn't aged well - which is why we're replacing the aging init system with Upstart in Ubuntu 6.10, codenamed Edgy Eft."
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RE: I really like this
by sbergman27 on Wed 4th Oct 2006 22:48 UTC in reply to "I really like this"
sbergman27
Member since:
2005-07-24

"""The days of creating a static setup before you ever turn on the PC are over. The hardware manufacturers are dumping DB25 and DB9 ports for wonderful, hotpluggable USB and other similar interfaces, and its about time Linux did too."""


Linux already works like this.

You obviously do not run Linux. But try this. Plug in a ps2 mouse and keyboard and boot an Ubuntu Live CD. It does not have to be all that recent a version.

After it is up, plug in a usb mouse and a usb keyboard and start typing. You can unplug the old keyboard and mouse and toss them in the trash if you like.

If you have a usb stick, plug it in. Click the icon that pops up on your desktop and save or read a few files from it.

I'm fairly unimpressed by the dynamic device thing. We already do that.

The lack of parallelism in our boot process... is embarassing. I'm excited about that part.

However, it should be noted that knot3 did not have upstart, and I did look over a benchmark of boot times of knot3 with and without upstart.

The improvement over Dapper was dramatic in both cases. But there was only a 5 second difference between sys5init and upstart.

But that is to be expected, since upstart is still running the sys5 initscripts.

It will be in the next release that we really begin to see the potential of the upstart boot process.

Edited 2006-10-04 22:50

Reply Parent Score: 4

RE[2]: I really like this
by philip.may on Wed 4th Oct 2006 23:15 in reply to "RE: I really like this"
philip.may Member since:
2005-10-19

After it is up, plug in a usb mouse and a usb keyboard and start typing. You can unplug the old keyboard and mouse and toss them in the trash if you like.

I think you misinterpreted what the previous poster was saying, it's not a case of hot plugging usb devices which we all know linux does very well these days but a case of the modules being dynamically loaded when those devices are plugged in, I may be wrong but my understanding is that those modules are currently loaded at boot regardless of whether or not the related devices are connected or even going to be connected.

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[3]: I really like this
by bhearsum on Thu 5th Oct 2006 02:39 in reply to "RE[2]: I really like this"
bhearsum Member since:
2006-02-07

That's actually not the case. Hotplug can load and unload device drivers as well as do other things.

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[3]: I really like this
by RenatoRam on Thu 5th Oct 2006 07:45 in reply to "RE[2]: I really like this"
RenatoRam Member since:
2005-11-14

try to watch /var/log/messages when you plug some hardware in

The modules are loaded on demand, and this has been the case... well, forever.

I remember that the ppa module for my ancient PARALLEL iomega Zip was loaded on the fly in the 2.2 series kernel. That's... 8 years ago?

Reply Parent Score: 2