-----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