[CALUG] Difference between telinit and init

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

Interesting arguments. I disagree with your conclusions, but at least 
you argued logically. Comments inline.

Chris Edillon wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 22:43 -0400, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
> 
>>Gregory Haase wrote:
>>
>>>I don't understand why your second answer is "better yet" - It looks
>>>like a CLI hack for solving a problem that already has a viable solution.
>>
>>Funny, I was going to say the same thing, only in reverse. We're already 
>>in CLI mode. And sleep is Ancient, occurring as early as UNIX V5. That's 
>>pre-1976. Telinit, and the new init, come from System III or System V, 
>>which is a good 10 years later.
> 
> 
>   when did job control...

irrelevant

> ...and the use of the ampersand for running
> background processes appear?  or the use of parentheses for
> spawning a subshell?

As I said, as early as UNIX V5.

> on ancient systems, the subshell and 
> additional process would most likely have been considered more
> wastful than running a single process to perform the intended
> function.

Good point. But hacking in -t to every program would be even more 
wasteful, bloating every untility unnecessarily for a feature that is 
rarely used.

>>As for it being a hack, remember the Unix Philosophy: There is One Tool 
>>for every job. 
> 
>   emacs?

Funny. One tool for every *separate* job. Don't write yor own sort, use 
the system one.

>>The sleep command is the way to delay. You don't go 
>>around hacking "-t delay" into every command. It's Just Stupid!
>>
> 
>   no more so than running a program to fork a second and
> then exec a third when running one process will suffice.
> depends on your perspective.

Remember, the most precious resource is Human Brain Power. Computers 
exist to fork and run separate processes. And the Idle Process needs a rest.

In other words, don't bend over backwards to the god of Efficiency. If 
there is a Bottleneck, do it, but otherwise, Keep It Simple.

>>The original init process does indeed have a PID of 1, but people don't 
>>generally use "telinit". They use "init" to change run states.
>>
> 
>   unless they use shutdown, reboot, halt, poweroff, ....
> or on the old BSD systems, 'kill -1 1'.

I have always used halt and reboot. Poweroff is new and cool too. I have 
always disliked shutdown.

BTW, when I said "changing states", I meant within [2-5], not rebooting 
or halting. Sorry I wasn't clear.

> chris

JIM