It is time to replace the aged SysV init system with someting better
At the time when SysV init (pronounced “System five”) appeared, hardware configurations have been quite static, no hot plug and similar fancy stuff.
SysV init is started after the kernel is loaded. The init process reads /etc/inittab and walks trough the runcontrol script and runlevels. This sequential walk-trough takes most of the time when booting a modern Unix system.
Upstart follows another approach: Starting daemons and services in parallel and event driven. This will speed up the boot process beyond expectations.
A very nice feature of upstart is: All processes will be started in background, no more blocking of the boot process trough hanging run control scripts!
If a service unexpectedly dies, it will be respawned automatically up to a configurable limit in times per period.
Upstart is event-driven, a event can be e.g. plugging in new hardware which ends up starting the needed service for it. There are also plans to replace cron and atd with upstart since this are basically time-triggered events. The developers also thinking about replacing the inetd, since a network connection can be considered as a event.
Transition
Since most of the software out there do not natively support upstart yet, transition methods are needed for a smooth transition from SysV init to upstart. Traditional SysV run control scrips are fully supported, even distributions slowly switch to the event/job model of upstart. E.g. one of the first distributions switched to upstart was Ubuntu 6.10, and now with Ubuntu 9.10 – three years later – they begin to ship its distribution with the first native upstart scripts.
Splitting Unix systems apart
Years ago there only have been two init systems: SysV init and BSD init, a sysadmin was comfortable to use them on whatever system. Now there are SysV init, Upstart from Ubuntu, lauchd from Apple, SMF (System Management Facility) from Sun Microsystems and possibly others. All of this SysV init replacements are working differently, different commands, different architecture… This makes the job of a sysadmin not easier when managing a heterogeneous system landscape.
Linux distributions stay together
The good news: On the Linux side it looks like Upstart will be the future standard for system initialization, no balkanization of the Linux Landscape so far.
Linux Distribution with upstart
The following distributions are already shipping upstart:
- Ubuntu
- Debian
- Fedora
- Others?
Since Fedora 11 and 12 will be the upstream for the upcomming RHEL6 distribution it is most likely that RHEL6 comes with upstart. At openSUSE there are some discussions (see https://features.opensuse.org/305690 for details). Maybe there is a chance for openSUSE 11.3 and later on SLES12.
Further readings:
Upstart web site: http://upstart.ubuntu.com
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart
Have fun!