Re: sysvinit and hurd

[Robert Millan <zeratul2@wanadoo.es>]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 03:14:45PM -0400, Roland McGrath wrote:
> > The two main problem now are the runtime errors that will come
> > from needing a Linux like /proc, this could be solved "easily"
> > porting libps from the Hurd and adding to it kFreeBSD and Linux
> > kernel support, so it can be used at large on all Debian packages
> > needing to access this kind of info.
> 
> libps is a Hurd-specific interface.  But I imagine the things sysvinit
> would care about are fairly generic notions.  Can you enumerate them?

It would be wise to make it generic enough so that other userland components
that handle processes can be made to use it. I'm thinking on things like
start-stop-daemon, ps, etc. This way a set of psutils that doesn't depend on
an unportable feature such as /proc or libkvm can be easily implemented.

> > The other problem is that on the Hurd there is already /hurd/init
> > that uses pid 1
> 
> This should not be a problem.  Any signals sent to init get passed down to
> its child.  Why else do you care who has PID 1?

sysvinit checks its own PID to determine wether it's being run as init or
as userland utility. FWIW, there's also a -i option that overrides this.

-- 
Robert Millan

"[..] but the delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making, and in the
thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he
gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."

 -- J.R.R.T., Ainulindale (Silmarillion)