Init-related ideas BoF submitted for Debcamp
Ok, so it just seems like a hot topic - I just submitted a BoF for Debcamp to talk about the init-related ideas we’ve been discussing. As Debconf’s Pentabarf conference management system does not like disclosing talk details before the talks are accepted, I’ll reproduce here my short blurb:
This BoF comes out from several ideas posted in Planet Debian by Erich Schubert, Sven Müller, Joachim Breitner, Mike Homey and myself (so far). It's not to be "chaired" by any of us particularly, but I expect an interesting brainstorming session.
There are several different init systems present in Debian - However, we are only supporting currently one of them, good ol' sysv-rc - We have close to a thousand packages providing init scripts suitable for it, and close to none for all of the other systems.
In current systems, full of hot-pluggable devices, changing network configurations and so on, however, I think this situation is quite prone to change - sysv-rc and its runlevels are better suited for stable server-like systems, and is hard to adapt for future needs.
We will talk about the potential difficulties Debian will face in order to better support more init schemes, and discuss some ideas to solve them.
This should be a brainstorming session, not much material will be prepared (maybe some sketches by each of us, but nothing formal). If you plan on attending, take a look at the messages linked to in the 'links' section.
Note that, following Nomeata’s suggestion, I’m presenting this for Debcamp - If you are not attending Debcamp and are interested, we will try to set this up via some sort of videoconferencing (or at least the usual video feed + IRC feedback), and I do hope we can have something showable (at least a broken concept) after Debconf.
In not-so-closely-related topics, I just learnt there is a shadow of doubt regarding my presence in Edinburgh - I will do my best to dispell the threat. I just don’t want to miss a Debconf!
Comments
Joe User 2007-04-17 18:40:41
Re: Init-related ideas BoF submitted for Debcamp
Perhaps you could take a look at replacing cron at the same time? Vixie cron has been dead for 15 years and Debian uses some serious voodoo to animate the corpse. Integrating the init system and scheduler seems to make a lot a sense.
Sven Müller 2007-04-18 05:50:39
Re: Init-related ideas BoF submitted for Debcamp
Hi Gunnar.
Unfortunately, I won’t be in Edinburg unless some miracle happens. Some sort of online conferencing or a video feed and IRC feedback would be welcomed though.
Regards, Sven
PS: I will probably take the two init-script bearing packages I (co-)maintain and try to create a working prototype for the generation of sysv-init scripts and perhaps someone would like to joing me and do the runit (or other dependency or event based init) part. But I fear this won’t happen in the very near future.