Wait, the Hurd doesn't use sysvinit at all ? Nope, no sysvinit in sight. I do get regular bugreports saying "this needs to be fixed for the hurd" and "hurd needs a hurd-specific inittab" and so on. Where does that come from, then ? *confused* (see e.g. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=246743) Dunno, ask Robert (even though he should know that Debian GNU/Hurd doesn't have or use inittab, nor does it run (or can infact) run sysvinit).