On Dec 20, 2010, at 6:20 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> 
> The gist of it, as I recall, is that the SysV approach is sequential and
> only has the granularity of runlevels (which, except for a few, were
> mostly unused).

Actually, most are used: 0 = reboot, 1 or S = single user, 3 or 4 = multi-user 
with networking, 4 or 5 = multi-user with networking and X server, and 6 = 
reboot.  But as you say, the init method, be it System V or BSD, is sequential 
both startup and shutdown.

FWIW, OS X uses launchd instead of init, cron and several other tools.  It 
provides parallel service start, time-based service start, and what I find very 
useful is even-based start.  The last is something that Linux does not have 
that I'm aware of.  This part of launchd can be set to monitor a file or device 
for changes and start or stop a service when the change happens.  So, for 
example, I could have a launch agent set to watch for a device mount, and 
automatically kick off a backup when that device is connected.  Or, for 
example, I could have it watch for changes to /etc/resolv.conf and run a 
configuration script that sets the default printer, mounts local network 
shares, etc.  It's *very* useful.

--Rich P.



_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

Reply via email to