Re: runsystem

[Roland McGrath <frob@debian.org>]

> What's the difference between runsystem and runsystem.gnu?  Are both
> necessary?

/libexec/runsystem is what gets run by /hurd/init at boot time.  It is the
first thing run in a normal POSIX environment, and is never expected to
exit.  It can do whatever it likes.  The hurd package has a
/libexec/runsystem shell script that uses /libexec/rc and /libexec/runttys
to approximate a BSD-style init.  Marcus's sysvinit package has a
/libexec/runsystem that uses /sbin/init to give an init just like Linux has
(the same program, in fact).  These two debian packages use the debian
"update-alternatives" method of installing/choosing these, in which
/libexec/runsystem.gnu and /libexec/runsystem.sysvinit(?) are the actual
things installed and /libexec/runsystem is a symlink to one or the other
that is maintained by dpkg magic.