The Design and Implementation of the NetBSD RC.d System [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Design and Implementation of the NetBSD RC.d System [pdf]

mewburn.net

54 pointstodsacerdoti7 comments

  The changes were contentious and generated some of the liveliest discussions about any feature change ever made in NetBSD. Parts of those discussions will be covered to provide insight into some of the design and implementation decisions.

If you want a peaceful life, don't involve yourself with any upheaval of Unix init systems.

Very wise advice, unless you enjoy some of that init-drama :)

I always thought rcorder(8) was a nice utility.1 Did FreeBSD, OpenBSD or GNU/Linux have anything like it. I do not use the rc system much anymore but in the earlier days when I used it I found NetBSD's was simple relative to other OS and hence easier to comprehend.

https://man.netbsd.org/rcorder.8

FreeBSD uses the same mechanism.

Nice piece of history. Needs [2001] in the title

Given modern usage patterns, wouldn't a single startup script be sufficient? E.g. does anyone just use an autoexec.bash?

This is how Arch Linux originally worked. It technically used SYSV-init but the scripts themselves were organized more like BSD-style rc scripts. Everything could be configured in a single "/etc/rc.config" file. All of this was ditched in favor of systemd which turned out to be a major regression.

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