README for init-ng


RATIONALE
---------

init-ng is meant to be a drop-in replacement for Sys V init. It leverages the
mighty power of OpenRC to do only what's needed, and nothing more! Currently,
it can reliably bring the system up, bring it down three different ways, and
respawn agettys if they die.

init-ng can also be extended fairly easily as well; for those who want service
supervision or socket activation, these can be fairly easily added. There is
already some supervision capability built-in, as init-ng monitors the agettys
that it spawns; this can be extended to other services as well.


HOW TO INSTALL/USE IT
---------------------

First, run 'make' to create the init-ng binary. Then, there are two main ways
to install it. First way:

 • Move your current init binary out of the way (mv /sbin/init /sbin/init.sysv)
 • Copy the init-ng binary to /sbin (cp ./init-ng /sbin/init)
 • Reboot

Second way:

 • Copy the init-ng binary to /sbin (cp ./init-ng /sbin/)
 • Add a kernel parameter with 'init=/sbin/init-ng' (without the quotes) to
   your current kernel boot command line
 • Reboot

Once you have rebooted successfully and logged in as root, typing 'init' (or
'init-ng', if you installed the second way) on the command line will display
the commands that init-ng understands.


CREDITS
-------

init-ng was initially written by James Hammons, who took his inspiration from
Felipe Contreras's blog post entitled "Demystifying the init system (PID 1)"
(https://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/init/). Felipe deserves most of the
credit for this, as without his article and code we wouldn't have known where
to begin. :-)