finite

finite is an init implementation that strives to be robust, correct and simple.
Currently it implements a somewhat sysvinit-compatible init (src/sysvinit) and a simpler respawning init (src/simple).

Installation

Simply run make install-sysvinit to compile and install the sysvinit implementation to your system. This installs /sbin/sysvinit-init, /sbin/sysvinit-halt (and its reboot and poweroff symlinks), /sbin/sysvinit-killall5 and their respective manpages.

For the simple init implementation, run make install-simple. This installs /sbin/simple-init and its manpage.

To symlink any implementation to the classic non-prefixed binaries, run make symlink-<implementation>, for instance make symlink-sysvinit. To remove these symlinks again, run make uninstall-symlinks.

To uninstall an implementation, simply run make uninstall-<implementation>, for instance make uninstall-sysvinit.

Restrictions

finite-sysvinit only supports runlevels 0, 1, 3 and 6, mapping to shutdown, single-user, multi-user and reboot respectively. More runlevels should not be needed.

It does not support the ctrlaltdel, kbrequest or power* runlevel actions. Those are better left to other specialized software, not to the init system.

It does not support system halting, although this could be added moderately trivially.

It does not currently create or write to utmp or wtmp files. Support for this is under consideration.

The only /dev/initctl command supported is the one that changes the current runlevel (command 0x1). This makes it incompatible with debian-sysvinit's shutdown and halt implementations, as they require more for reasons unknown.