"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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Member since:2006-02-02
*IF* I understand it correctly, the goal of Upstart is to effectively combine init + udev, and throw in a dependency system for good measure.
On the plus side, this would mean that services load at the right time, (ie, in the correct order) and only if the device that requires that service is present.
So, for example, ntp, sshd, nfs, smb services wouldn't load until a network device was active-- and of course, as soon as the device goes active, those services would start, regardless of what else might be running/starting at the time. It's a definite improvement of the current "hurry up and wait" syndrome that can occur in a non-tuned environment.
From what I've seen on Edgy, the biggest time consumer during bootup on my system(s) is the reiser disk check (long time SuSE user, my /home is almost invariably reiserfs).
My guess? Evolution, not revolution. There's quite a bit of work in progress by various OS/distros to improve the init system. Eventually, they'll coalesce into a Better Solution.
Member since:2006-01-07
Member since:
2005-07-13
Is this any different from some of the "transparent" things that are going on with HAL / DBUS etc.? I'm thinking as an example, networkmanager. NM is made "aware" of network events, the availability of an interface, the availability of prefered wireless networks, etc. and make automated configuration changes on the fly based on the available information. Is Upstart a collection of existing technologies to build a common framework, or is it something that's supposed to replace the existing combination of services?
From a booting process, does Upstart do anything that different than an experienced user would do with tweaking their setup/startup services? It seems to me that no matter how you try and adjust the bootup process, parallel processes etc., the bottleneck is an always will be the hdd transfer rate. Shaving a few seconds is nice and all, but can there really be an impact without somehow multiplying disk throughput that you couldn't otherwise achieve by judiciously selecting your startup services?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Upstart, I don't really know enough about it to have an opinion one way or the other, and even if it only simplifies things for users without resorting to manual tweaking etc. I would see that as a "good" thing. I'm just trying to figure out how it meshes with current state of your average mainstream distro framework.
The article helped, certainly more info than I've come across before. Prior to that I thought it was just an attempt at another initNG. Looks intriguing, but I'm just wondering if it's evolution or revolution?