Linux without init (was Re: [TriLUG] RH 8.0 and kernel 2.4.20)

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 10:49, Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 09:59, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> 
> > Red Hat Linux 8.0, like most sane Linux distributions, uses rc.* scripts
> > to start the system after init is kicked off. The rc.sysinit script
> > assumes that all the USB devices are modular, and loads them manually
> > (since they don't get put into the initrd).
> 
> That begs an interesting question.  Are there any linux distributions
> out there that do *not* use rc.* scripts to start the system after
> init is kicked off.  If there are, why did they make the choice they
> did?

I can't name any off hand, but theres no reason that they'd have to use
SYSV style init scripts, besides LSB compliance. The kernel runs "init"
when its done loading, for the Red Hat installer, init is a symlink to
anaconda, so init could be anything. You can even specify init to be
anything at the command line (init=/bin/bash is a common example).

~spot
---
Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> (SAIR LCA, RHCE)
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Red Hat Field Sales Engineer :: http://www.redhat.com
Aurora SPARC Linux Project Leader :: http://www.auroralinux.org

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