"For a long time, Linux has been blamed to boot slowly, compared to other modern operating systems. In this article, we are going to focus on a new init system we developed for our Pardus Linux distribution, Mudur, together with other initiatives that are worth mentioning. Mudur is written from scratch in Python with simplicity, speed and maintainability in mind. It isn't a replacement for the /sbin/init command like some other alternatives, nor just a parallel script executor. Mudur greatly simplified our boot process, making it faster and more flexible. Authors look forward for future boot process research for further improvement and optimizations."
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Member since:2005-07-24
"""Well, they did get boot time down to 17 seconds, which is comparable to what systems like InitNG often get."""
Well, none of ther other 15 sys5init replacements has ever taken off and gotten used to any great degree.
The solution is obvious: Bake up another one.
We do need *something* better than sys5init.
But unless they have something really compelling, like this is not, it's just another voice in the cacophony.
Canonical's "solution", Upstart, is just too pie in the sky for my tastes. So much of what they are trying to do would be a "solution in search of a problem"... except that their solution to the elusive problem doesn't exist yet and won't for a good while.
initng always seemed like a good solution to the real problem to me. We need a parallelized boot process. It's not like SCO Openserver has not had parallelized boot for *10 years now*! If SCO can do it...
There's no need to finish that last sentence, I hope.
Member since:2005-10-13
Canonical's "solution", Upstart, is just too pie in the sky for my tastes.
I didn't think much of it either, at first, but the more I hear about it the more I think it might actually have a shot at being widely adopted. It's the first one being backed by a major distro, and more importantly it is backwards compatible.
I rather like Pardus, although it is nothing new or revolutionary. It will never be widely used, though.
Member since:2005-12-31
Wrong init replacement?
The problem isn't that we do not have plentyful of really, really good solutions as how to solve paralel boot process. We can run them in paralel, we can satisfy dependencies, we can go event-driven, all this has been thought of and done.
What is the real issue then?
The real problem is the huge momentum sysv init scripts system has. You have thousands and thousands of applications basically conforming to one standard approach; a dumb shellscript taking parameters in argv and starting stuff accordingly.
What's wrong with this?
Firstly, shell sucks, performance-wise. We all know it. Of course, this part belongs to the Utopia land, but it'd be really nifty if it was rewritten to some saner language, preferably nothing like perl or python (which are just too impractical if they need 1MiB+ to work).
Second, linear startup sucks, too; we all know it and that's why we want paralel startup, obviously. However, paralel startup won't - ever - work with the current setup. Therefore, no matter what init system wins the general popularity contest in the wild, the init scripts will have to be adjusted. All of them, or at least all that are generally used. Can you imagine the ammount of manhours necessary?
Now imagine a whole distribution migrating... I am not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's a huge pain in the ass and you've got to get a lot of people pulling together in one direction, which is something you do not see often in the world of opensource in general and Linux in particular.
Member since:
2005-10-13
Well, they did get boot time down to 17 seconds, which is comparable to what systems like InitNG often get.