Charles via Dng said on Sun, 26 May 2024 14:45:04 +0000


>Thanks for the link to a very informative page
>(http://troubleshooters.com/linux/init/manjaro_experiments.htm)

[snip]

>Q. Can this 'experiment' be replicated on today's linux OS's as
>systemd is imbedded more now than ever?

My official answer is "I don't know."

Here's an educated guess: "Probably you can replicate this experiment
to the same extent as in early 2015". What this means is that distros
actively trying to prevent you from init freedom, in other words redhat
and the constellation it owns, would be so difficult as to be a waste
of your valuable time.

You could do it with Ubuntu, but why? Ubuntu is already so
training-wheels encumbered, with dbus at its very center, replacing
systemd with runit would end up with a system looking more like a
simplified Devuan.

What would be interesting and perhaps valuable is to create an
ultra-simple setup, with only the stuff you need. For instance, you
could take debian, install runit **without those lame runlevels** from
upstream, not from some lame package that keeps getting overwritten and
overwriting your original init system, switch grub so that fires up
runit's PID1. Then you create a 1 shellscript that mounts the
necessaries, creates /tmp, /dev and /proc, fires up the network, gets
udev running, and whatever else you need there, and then a 2 script
that runs the supervisor. Also write a 3 script to power down the
computer or reboot it. Run 3 when somebody calls "poweroff" and the
like, or when somebody sends the shutdown interrupt (whichever that is)
to PID1.

Or, if your the kind of person who wants to know **exactly** what's
inside your machine, use Suckless Tools' Suckless Init as your PID1,
run an rc script equivalent to the 1 script you would have run for
runit's PID1, and then run runit's supervision system. I bet you could
have a no-dbus system this way. I'd *love* to see somebody build a
practical system based on Suckless Init as PID1.

By the way, this would be even easier to do on Devuan if you wanted an
ultra-simple Devuan.

I just don't have the time to do this, but I think it could be done.

SteveT

Steve Litt

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21