Martin Steigerwald said on Tue, 20 Jul 2021 22:33:29 +0200

>Hi!
>
>Look at
>
>https://skarnet.com/projects/service-manager.html
>
>Sounds quite interesting, if you ask me.

Me too. Let me tell you why...

s6 is a process supervisor as good, or possibly more good, than runit's
process supervisor. s6 and runit are close cousins, with differences
probably unimportant to most of you. Today, s6 supervisor can be run
from sysvinit, OpenRC, or systemd. Also, s6 can be its own init system,
without the need for s6-rc, although it's difficult and relies on a lot
of manual work from the user. I suspect, but haven't the time to prove,
that runit's /etc/runit/1 script could be directly plugged in to s6 to
fill that gap.

The addition of s6-rc, which is the subject of the URL Martin gave us,
does all the startup and scaffolding necessary, such as /dev, /proc,
loading drivers, and the like. This makes it much easier to use s6 as a
full fledged init system.

Long term, I think s6 should be supported by Debian for the following
reasons:

* Both s6 and runit are, IMHO superior to sysvinit, systemd, and OpenRC.
* s6 is still maintained.
* s6 has some technical advantages in edge case crashes.
* I'm pretty sure that conversion from runit run scripts to s6 could be
accomplished by an easy to write Python program.
* Runit and s6, close cousins, each fill a niche, with runit being the
ultimate in simplicity, and s6 offering increased robustness and
features for those who need them.


SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques