From: "Miquel van Smoorenburg" <miquels@caution.cistron.nl.mugnet.org>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: [ANNOUNCEMENT] New SysVinit 2.4 available
Date: 25 May 1993 18:31:22 +0300
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Keywords: init, sysvinit

	Propaganda for version 1.4 of SysVinit & utilities
	==================================================

After some time of debugging and improving my SysVinit for Linux, I
decided that it's now time to get this thing out of the door. Most people
using SysVinit will probably be SLS users. SLS uses (as far as I know)
still version 1.2, so upgrading will be a very good idea.
The last version of SysVinit was 1.3, but there was quite some confusion
on where (and under what name) it could be found.

Improvements made:

- Init has real support for SIGPWR. That means you can connect the sense
  line of an UPS to the serial port, run a daemon watching this line
  and at the loss of power the system will shut down. A 'powerd' 
  (power daemon watchdog program) is included, and some hints on how to
  connect the UPS sense line to a serial port. It also supports a 'power
  good' signal, so that the system can be brought back up if the power
  restores in time (before the batteries of the UPS are exhausted).
  NOTE: earlier SysVinits used the 'powerfail' and 'powerwait' type of
  actions to catch the CTRL-ALT-DEL event. The name of that field has
  consequently changed to 'ctrlaltdel'.

- took the time to investigate all sorts of utmp and wtmp logging that
  exist. There basically are two types, BSD and SysV and alas, they
  don't quite mix. The new init tries to be compatible with both standards
  (and it does a pretty good job at it). The included "last" utility
  can read both BSD and SysV (and mixed) style wtmp files, even if they
  are a bit messed up. (Even getty_ps2.07b is broken in this respect..)

- Init now wait()'s for a child as soon as it sees that one has died.
  This means no more zombies if you start xdm as a 'wait' process, or
  during other asynchronous operations.

- There is a 'real' single user mode, where you are all alone. All other
  processes get killed, without kludgy scripts etc. to do this.

- The default runlevel can be specified on the LILO command line.

- the wall (write all user) function has been fixed in the 'wall' and
  'shutdown' commands to time out on hung terminals (you know, the
  "hanging telnet" problems. Should be solved when NET-2 is out of beta,
  but just to be sure...)

- Shutdown has been extended. You can now cancel already running shutdowns,
  and it will notice when you are trying to start shutdown more than once.

- Sample scripts are included to setup a SysV style /etc/rc.d script directory.

- The shutdown and telinit (and init) utilities can take a '-t secs'
  argument, specifying the time in seconds to wait between sending
  processes the warning (TERM) and kill (KILL) signal, so to do a real
  fast shutdown you can just use:
  root # shutdown -t2 -rf now
  or when switching runlevels you can do this very quick with
  root # telinit -t2 2

The SysVinit package includes

* a SysV compatible /etc/init program
* a telinit program (er, just a link to /etc/init) to change runlevels
* a featureful shutdown
* halt and last to assist shutdown
* a very forgiving last utility
* the wall & mesg programs
* powerd, an UPS watchdog.
* simple installation procedure
* manpages for everything
* sample scripts to set up an /etc/rc.d directory with scripts per runlevel.

The new SysV init can be found on:

sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/SysVinit-2.4.tar.z

I have asked the maintainers to remove the old version and place
the new version in the "/pub/Linux/Daemons" directory. It will probably
show up there very soon.

Mike. (miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org)

"What we have here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."
      -- Intro "Civil War", Guns 'n Roses. (From the movie "Cool hand Luke".)
