The plumbing layer as the new kernel

Posted May 3, 2012 15:36 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
Parent article: The plumbing layer as the new kernel

Gentoo's "init system" mentioned is really a layer above "init"; it replaces /etc/rc.*, start-stop-daemon, ifup/ifdown, and that sort of stuff. It also seems to me like it would allow Gentoo to adopt upstart or systemd more easily than a lot of other distros, in that the information that packages contribute to /etc/init.d, plus the commands that administrators run if they want to run services provided by those packages, should be sufficient to configure either upstart or systemd.

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The plumbing layer as the new kernel

Posted May 3, 2012 16:49 UTC (Thu) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link] (1 responses)

"would allow"? Gentoo already supports systemd.

The plumbing layer as the new kernel

Posted May 3, 2012 17:26 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

According to that link, certain packages include systemd unit files, and systemd is able to deal with traditional init scripts. However, Gentoo's init system should be capable of generating systemd unit files which include functionality that systemd can't extract from traditional init scripts.

My point is that Gentoo should be able to offer packages additional init functionality in the case that they are being run under systemd (or anything sufficiently capable) without needing anything in the package particular to systemd. This would reduce the burden of having multiple enhanced init implementations on maintainers of packages which provide services.