System Manager's Manual

NAME¶

init - Upstart process management daemon

SYNOPSIS¶

init [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION¶

init is the parent of all processes on the system, it is executed by the kernel and is responsible for starting all other processes; it is the parent of all processes whose natural parents have died and it is responsible for reaping those when they die.

Processes managed by init are known as jobs and are defined by files in the /etc/init directory. See init(5) for more details on configuring Upstart.

Events¶

init(8) is an event-based init daemon. This means that jobs will be automatically started and stopped by changes that occur to the system state, including as a result of jobs starting and stopping.

This is different to dependency-based init daemons which start a specified set of goal jobs, and resolve the order in which they should be started and other jobs required by iterating their dependencies.

For more information on starting and stopping jobs, as well as emitting events that will automatically start and stop jobs, see the manual page for the initctl(8) tool.

The primary event is the startup(7) event, emitted when the daemon has finished loading its configuration. Other useful events are the starting(7), started(7), stopping(7) and stopped(7) events emitted as jobs change state.

System V compatibility¶

The Upstart init(8) daemon does not keep track of runlevels itself, instead they are implemented entirely by its userspace tools. The event emitted to signify a change of runlevel is the runlevel(7) event. For more information see its manual page.

OPTIONS¶

Options are passed to init(8) by placing them on the kernel command-line.

--verbose: Outputs verbose messages about job state changes and event emissions to the system console or log, useful for debugging boot.

NOTES¶

init is not normally executed by a user process, and expects to have a process id of 1. If this is not the case, it will actually execute telinit(8) and pass all arguments to that. See that manual page for further details.

FILES¶

/etc/init.conf

/etc/init/*.conf

AUTHOR¶

Written by Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>

REPORTING BUGS¶

Report bugs at <https://launchpad.net/upstart/+bugs>