-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In short, /sbin/init is "The Mother of all Processes". You will note that on all Unix and Linux systems, init is process number 1. Whether on a true BCD system using /etc/ttys or on a System V-like sytem using /etc/inittab, it is always init that starts all the other processes. When one of its immediate child processes die, init then closes all open files and then respawns the process. Some of its other duties are to create entries in the utmp (Linux: /var/run/utmp) and wtmp (Linux: /var/log/wtmp) files. These are the primary system accounting files. Note that when ps displays processes, those processes on square brackets are kernel daemons (eg [kswapd]). - -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAO06j+wA+1cUGHqkRAnTkAJ4tE/wKA/gUPoIVAf+n90M8Aulq0ACcCvm/ kXZv7grMTZey4uBVMBSXTcA= =8tIe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----