Plan to make the boot more event based

Petter Reinholdtsen pere at hungry.com
Sun Jul 26 17:43:24 UTC 2009


Here are my notes from the boot bof here at debconf today.

The future of the boot system in debian

 - the kernel is more and more event based, non-sequencial

 - the boot system need to adjust

   - rewrite to become event based or move to something event based

   - can keep the existing init.d scripts in most cases

 - Migration plan 

   - enable dependency based boot sequencing
      - for correctness and speed improvements for those that want it
      - http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot

   - rewrite upstart to understand /etc/inittab, to allow us to switch
     back and forth between sysvinit and upstart.

   - replace /sbin/init with upstart, adjust default installation
      - how to replace?  Let base-files depend on upstart?

   - rewrite insserv to make dependency based boot sequencing
     understand upstart jobs, allowing packages to provide either
     init.d scripts or upstart rules.

   - migrate key parts of the boot system to event triggered jobs
     (at least file system handling and network handling)

Consequenses:

 - dbus and udev become required in Debian on Linux
 - non-linux systems like kfreebsd and hurd are left behind with the
   old sysvinit system
 - we get a framework where it is possible for the early boot to
   always find disks and network devices and avoid other race issues.


The bof session went well, and there were no protests.  Because of
this, we move forward with the plan.  I plan to move to dependency
based boot sequencing in unstable tomorrow, and we continue with the
rest as soon as upstart and insserv are ready.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen



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