About

This directory contains the source code for a tiny service supervision framework devised for the Pygos system, consisting of an init daemon, a small syslog daemon and various command line utilities.

The individual parts of the framework are designed to be independent of each other (for instance, the tiny syslogd is intended to work with any init system and other components of the framework don't depend on the presence of this specific syslog implementation) and everything that is not strictly part of the init system (such as the syslog daemon) can be disabled through the configure script.

The programs of this package are developed first and foremost for GNU/Linux systems, so there are some GNU and some Linux extensions used and some of the code may unintentionally rely on Linux specific behavior.

Nevertheless, if sufficient interest exists, it should be possible to make it run on BSDs or other Unix-like systems, but some effort may be required.

The init system tries to mimic the concept of unit files from systemd as those were considered to be a good design choice.

In a typical setup, the parameterizeable service description files are stored in /usr/share/init by default. Services are enabled by creating a symlink in /etc/init.d. This can be done more conveniently using the service command line tool.

A default setup is provided, as needed for the Pygos system, including helper scripts for setting up mount points and for network configuration. If you want to use the init daemon for another system, you may have to toss out or adapt some of the default configuration and make your own.

Right now, the system is in a "basically works" proof of concept stage and needs some more work to become usable.

There are plans for maybe eventually adding more fancy features like support for Linux name spaces, seccomp filters and cgroups or network back ends for the syslog daemon, but right now, features are added only when the need arises.

See docs/init.md for more information on the design, implementation and caveats of the init daemon.

See docs/cmdline.md for an explanation on the available command line tools.

See docs/services.md for more information on service description files.

See docs/network.md for information on how the network configuration works.

See docs/defconfig.md for an explanation on the default services and configuration provided with this package.

See docs/usyslogd.md for details on the tiny syslog implementation.

Why

There are already a bunch of similar projects out there that have been considered for use in the Pygos system. The reason for starting a new one was mainly dissatisfaction with the existing ones. Other Projects that have been considered include:

• systemd

  Contains a lot of good ideas, but it is HUGE. It has tons of dependencies. It implements tons of things that it simply shouldn't. It has a horrid, "modern", python based, hipster build system. It's simply too damn large and complex.

• SystemV init

  A bad combination of unnecessary complexity where it isn't needed and a complete lack of abstraction where it would be needed. Shell script copy and paste madness. There are reasons people started developing alternatives (other than "hurr-durr-parallel-boots").

• upstart

  Seems nice overall, but needlessly big and complex for the intended use case in Pygos. Would have needlessly added D-Bus to the system.

• OpenRC

  Was already integrated into Pygos. Things turned out to be broken. Upstream developers did not accept fixes (after ignoring them for weeks and preferring typo fixes instead). Complaints from other people who tried to contribute fixes were observed on GitHub. Complaints from package maintainers about deteriorating code quality were observed on the official IRC channel. Documentation is non-existent.

• daemon tools and similar (runnit, s6, minit, ...)

  The sixties are over. And even code from that era is more readable. The source code for those projects should better be tossed out the window and rewritten from scratch. If you are a first semester CS student and you hand something like this in as a homework, the best you might get is a well deserved slap on the back of your head.

• busybox init

  Nice and simple. Probably the best fit if the rest of your user space is busybox as well.