Expert Shell Scripting

CHAPTER 33Processes Running from inittab

In several chapters of this book,¹ I discuss system monitors and some methods of running them on your machine at all times. By automatically starting a process at the system level you can accomplish this task in multiple ways without user interaction. There is cron, the system scheduler, as well as at, another scheduling utility. You also can start a process with an rc (run control) startup script, traditionally located in the /etc/rc directory, which is processed automatically at boot time.

Here I want to discuss the init process. The init man page states that it is "the parent of all processes." Init runs the scripts that, in turn, run the startup scripts living in the /etc/rc directories.² It also ...