Using the `runit` init system

Tutorials & Resources
21

Hi Brian,
Thank you for kind words.

Yes , you are right, I mean Debian.
I should go back and use a strikeout to correct that slip.
( I cant edit it, the reply is too old )… (the moderator fixed it for me, thanks Sourav)

If you are interested in alternative init systems, you may be interested to try the init diversity spin that was released by Antix developers a few months ago

https://antixlinux.com/unofficial-antix-23-init-divesity-spin/

I did a topic on it. You can find it on this forum by searching for ‘init diversity’

Regards
Neville

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22

Just to throw in another confuser, one of the distros I’m using is Peppermint/Devuan. During the install, a choice is offered: runit, SysVinit, and openRC. No mention of systemd. Can’t remember which one I chose, but the distro runs quite nicely with any of them. It meets all my qualifications for a daily driver.

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23

If you do Peppermint Devuan or plain Devuan again, choose SysVinit. They will all work, as you say, but Devuan is better configured for sysVinit. It only matters when you are installing some package that needs to start a daemon.

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24

Probably good advice, for the next time I install it. Not much chance of switching, is there?

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25

Yes, you can change the installed init system. I did it in Devuan… I removed the runit packages and installed the sysvinit packages. It worked. Then I installed OpenRC on top of sysvinit… that works too.
I have not tried it in Peppermint/Devuan, but no reason why it would not work.

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26

Sounds like threading a sewing machine while it’s in motion. It would be easier to flush and reinstall, since I don’t customize much. Or maybe I’m using SysVinit–how would I tell?

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27

You could use dpkg to see what packages are installed
eg dpkg -l | grep runit
or
look in /etc

  • is there an init.d directory… it is sysvinit or OpenRC or both
  • is there an sv directory … it is runit

or use ps
ps ax | grep run … if it finds lots of runsv processes it is runit

Have fun looking.

Here is another method

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28

Hi Neville, :wave:

this may be a bit off-topic, but I´d like to mention it anyway:

Right.
Plus: there´s the command dglob as well, which is pretty simple and effective to use:

e.g.:

dglob hardinfo
hardinfo:amd64

It´s part of the Debian Goodies Utility Package, so it may be of use for Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives only.

See:

There are quite a number of nifty little helper commands included in the package.
dglob is just one of them:

dglob – Produce a list of package names that match a pattern

Cheers from Rosika :slightly_frowning_face:

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