The dinit init system
Most home desktop users are happy with whatever init system their favourite Linux distro comes with by default. In many cases this will be systemd. In my view systemd is over-complicated for a home system. There are many alternative init systems ( sysVinit, runit, OpenRC, BSD-RC, S6, 66, Busybox, dinit). Of those, I would have recommended OpenRC for a simple home-usr init system , but the more recent dinit init system is challenging strongly.
Features of dinit
The main attributes of dinit are
Dinitallows the user to start and stop daemons ( ie services) with simple commands similar to those used by OpenRC.Dinithandles system startup and shutdown.Dinitprovides a process No 1 called/usr/bin/dinitwhich forks all other processesDinitprovides parallel startup of services and dependency managementDinitprovides service supervision, ie it automatically restarts failed daemonsDinitallows users to setup services
How to get dinit
The only Linux distros that come with dinit as the default init system are Artix and Chimera. By far the easiest of those to install is Artix, so we will use Artix here.
I started with a download of artix-xfce-dinit-20240823-x86_64.iso from
Note, Artix has downloads with various default init systems. You need to choose the dinit version.
The install is simple… Artix uses the Calamares installer for all but its base iso’s.
It boots to a typical Xfce screen
That is my favorite Xfce background. The default background is a double helix
and I have added some things to the bottom panel there.
You may wonder what all those disk partition icons are? Xfce seems to do that in some distros… it is obvious that my machine has a large number of partitions.
So how do I know that it is using dinit?
ls -F /etc/dinit.d
acpid cryptsetup-early lightdm metalog statd
avahi-daemon cupsd lightdm-pre mount.d/ tty1
bluetoothd dbus logind nfs-server tty2
boot.d/ dbus-pre lvm2 ntpd tty3
config/ dhcpcd lvm-monitor rpcbind tty4
connmand dmeventd lvmpolld rsync tty5
cronie elogind lvmpolld-pre sshd tty6
cryptsetup haveged mdadm ssh-keygen wpa_supplicant
There is its configuration directory. Also
$ ps ax | grep dinit
1 ? S 0:00 /usr/bin/dinit
There is process number 1… it is dinit.
Artix is Arch based. You use the pacman package system for updates and installs.
It is possible to install dinit from source into any distro. That is not an easy option.
Compare dinit to runit, s6 and sysVinit
There is an init system comparison table here
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Comparison_of_init_systems
and some more points here
-
The first thing one notices when using
dinitis that there only one process ( /usr/bin/dinit) that acts as an init process, accepts service management commands, and does service supervision. Contrast that withrunit,s6and other daemontools based init systems, where there is an init process plus separate supervisor processes for each and every service, plus if there is logging a separate log process for every service… -
The next thing one notices is there is just one directory (/etc/dinit.d) where
all of the service information is kept
The files are service files . We can see the content of the sshd service file. It is a simple list of parameters, there is no script as in sysVinit or run file as in runit.
Both sysVinit and runit use a link farm… a directory full of soft links that point to the startup files of the daemons to be started. Dinit just has a service file.
The daemons required at boot time are in the boot.d subdirectory.
To create a service file in Artix/dinit, one simply installs the dinit package corresponding to the service package. For example
trinity:[nevj]:~$ pacman -Ss vsftpd
world/vsftpd 3.0.5-1
Very Secure FTP daemon
world/vsftpd-dinit 20211103-4 (dinit-world)
dinit service scripts for vsftpd
So to get vsftpd just install the above 2 packages. In Artix there are also packages for openrc, runit and s6, to go with every service package.
3.The most likely thing a home user may want to do is to start or stop a daemon. The dinit commands for this are
dinitctl start service_name
dinitctl stop service_name
One can also list services
dinitctl list
and one can make a service autostart at boot
dinitctl enable service_name
Dinit, in common with s6 and systemd, allows users as well as root, to manage services That can not be done in runit or OpenRC or sysVinit.
- An important feature of dinit is that it automatically manages dependencies between services, so that it starts daemons in a suitable order. S6 can do that too, and so can systemd. Runit and OpenRc and SysVinit do not manage dependencies. What proper dependency management means is that daemons can be started in parallel if they are independent. That makes booting fast. Dinit boot time is indeed fast… Chimera Linux (in a VM) boots in 4 seconds, Artix/dinit ( hard install) in about 10 seconds , Artix/s6 (hard install) takes 17 seconds. Dinit is faster than s6.
Conclusion
Dinit is a suitable init system for home use. It boots fast, has simple commands, and in general leaves the user alone and does not intrude on other parts of the system.
If you want to read more about dinit look here
https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Main/Dinit
https://davmac.org/projects/dinit/
and an interesting account from the developer of dinit here
Dinit is a different design to other init systems… it is a monolithic C++ program. All other init systems break up into a series of utilities, the worst being systemd, with s6 not far behind. OpenRC is a script… so it is slow but has been around a while and is reliable. I would say OpenRC is the next most suitable for home use, after dinit.
I am sure dinit will start to become available in other distros. Keep an eye on it, and have a try with Artix if you are interested.