README for SysV init

SysV init is a classic initialization program (PID 1) for GNU/Linux and other UNIX/POSIX systems. It is designed to be small, simple and to stay out of the way.

Init is the parent (or grandparent) of all other processes on the system. It kicks off the starting of other system services and can act as a parent process to services which no longer have an active parent process.

SysV init uses the concept of runlevels. A runlevel is a configuration of the system which allows only a selected group of processes to exist. The processes spawned by init for each of these runlevels are defined in the /etc/inittab file. Init can be in one of eight runlevels. The runlevel is changed by the administrator running the telinit command which selects which runlevel we want to use.

More information on init, runlevels and switching between them can be found in the init manual page. (See “man init”.)

contrib Unofficial stuff, add-on programs doc Documentation man Manual pages src Source code

For instructions on building and installing SysV init, please see the “doc/Install” file.

SysV init releases are signed with one of two keys, depending on the build machine. These keys are public keys A573ED5E687A40F89D30E6BE2A72EB41906F8E49 and 5A2DC686CDC5D6087D88C198351F75FA45D53656. Both of these keys can be fetched from the Savannah mirror at:

https://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/sysvinit/

The keys are also available on the public key server https://keys.openpgp.org/