Practical Linux

Editing and Creating Run Levels

init reads its configuration from the file /etc/inittab, which contains a number of pieces of information for init. It outlines what processes init should keep running (and restart if necessary) at each run level. Your login prompts (called getty processes) are started and restarted by init. init reads the names of scripts to run when the system changes run level. This is probably the most confusing point about init and how the system starts: The scripts can (and usually do) also start processes. These are very different from the processes directly controlled by init, because they are not absolutely vital to the operation of the system (vital being defined here as being necessary to prevent the system from being ...