Feature changed by: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) Feature #305690, revision 44 Title: Replace System-V init with upstart init openSUSE-11.2: Rejected by Stephan Kulow (coolo) reject date: 2009-08-12 11:32:51 reject reason: too late for 11.2 and still not seeing the benefit. Priority Requester: Important openSUSE-11.3: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Neutral Info Provider: Vitaliy Tomin (highwaystar) Requested by: Vitaliy Tomin (highwaystar) Description: Upstart - an event-based init daemon. It can provide more flexible init system for more faster and effective boot and communication with the init daemon over D-Bus. upstart home page http://upstart.ubuntu.com/ Discussion: #1: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-02-09 15:33:47) why do you think it would be faster or more efficient? where do you see the gain? #2: Dmitry Mittov (michael_knight) (2009-02-20 17:45:56) It is not much faster. But it is not slower. And it is easy-to-use. As I know init scripts has no requirements. It can start some daemons in parallel mode if they have the same prefix S##. Imagine that daemon A requires daemon B. Daemon B have the same prefix as C and they start parallel. If daemon B starts fast & daemon C starts slow then daemon A will wait daemon C though it doesn't require it. In my opinion the main advantage of upstart is it's functional syntax copmaring to classic init. #3: Georg Müller (georgmueller) (2009-04-27 12:11:44) One interesting feature is that it is event-based. So it is possible to start or stop services on certain (dbus,hal,...) events. #4: T. J. Brumfield (enderandrew) (2009-06-13 20:45:45) Fedora and Ubuntu are both boasting really fast boot times due to Upstart these days. #10: Georg Müller (georgmueller) (2009-09-06 18:18:03) (reply to #4) debian is switching, too. http://lwn.net/Articles/351013/ #11: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-09-07 10:23:28) (reply to #10) oh, we will switch too (not all of debian's reasons apply to us, but some important ones). But not in 11.2 timeframe. #12: Georg Müller (georgmueller) (2009-09-07 13:52:45) (reply to #11) No question that it is too late for 11.2. I just wanted to mention this here, because the article includes some of their reasons. #5: Georg Müller (georgmueller) (2009-08-05 03:08:21) Hm, looks a bit late for 11.2 to change, though there is a compat mode for sysvinit. #6: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2009-08-05 14:00:55) For getting a faster boot there are two different ways to consider: 1. get rid of waitings/loops 2. get rid of unnecessary services, start them later only if they are needed Upstart is an additional layer and therefore adds to point 1. Upstart will be fine with point 2 if the necassary features are implemented (yet?). #7: Georg Müller (georgmueller) (2009-08-05 14:39:44) (reply to #6) Well, init runs anyway. upstart init might be a bit larger, but not much current init VSZ/RSS is 1772/772 upstart init VSZ/RSS is 5244/576 (checked on an ubuntu 9.04) I see a future benefit with no drawback for the moment. If the big distros (or most of them) will switch to upstart, package maintainers might provide event configs (for /etc/event.d) in addition to the traditional init scripts. Then, the benefit of upstart can be used. To sum it up, even if it brings no benefit at the moment, it will help to bring benefits in the future without drawbacks for the moment. #8: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-08-12 11:33:47) still looking for a volunteer to prove that it changes anything #9: Ralph Ulrich (ulenrich) (2009-08-12 13:13:19) (reply to #8) Why now a volunteer (feature is rejected for 11.2) ? And no, it shouldn't change anything as it should be fully compatible with sysv. But you would be able to provide extra features (similar to inetd and more) in future... #13: (kamikazow) (2009-10-11 12:18:31) (reply to #8) Upstart in "compatibility mode" (ie. justg using the old scripts) probably doesn't change much, but if you want proof for old-style init vs. an event-based one, get a PPC Mac and boot Mac OS X 10.3 and then 10.4. Don't know about Upstart, but at least OSX's launchd helped a lot. If upstart doesn't help, launchd can be adapted as well (it's Apache-licensed). #14: (ulenrich) (2009-10-11 14:13:50) Nico Schottelius wrote (Debian mailing list): --- I think seperating the bootup phase ("startup reliable and fast") from the normal running phase ("events are triggered") is important: An event system (like udev/hal) has to be very smart and provide good interfaces to other systems (like UIs, logging, etc.). An init system on the other hand should imho be as dumb as possible (providing a fast and reliable startup) and provide simple APIs to change the status of a service. --- + #15: (ulenrich) (2009-10-11 14:19:13) (reply to #14) + For the booting stage openSUSE uses an extra /etc/init.d/boot.d + This indicates the booting stage is easy delimitable. + Using two different tools for two different purposes would widen + general acceptance in use. + And probably this would unclutter upstart from all special booting + cases. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305690