spark - init system

[pidsley]

Once you get sinit working, you can use the same rc script for spark. I like this one; its developer says

A simple init. This is what you get from telling me that I can't use an init written in bash.

The init itself is dumb as bricks.

Outline, as for sinit (please don't try this before you get that one working):

1. Get the spark script from here: https://github.com/fbt/spark/blob/master/bin/spark-init
2. Put it in sbin, and modify the first few lines to use your sinitrc script:

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cfg_init_cmd='/sbin/sinitrc init'
cfg_reboot_cmd='/sbin/sinitrc reboot'
cfg_poweroff_cmd='/sbin/sinitrc poweroff'

3. Make sure the script is executable.
4. Modify the GRUB kernel boot line to include "init=/sbin/spark" or symlink /sbin/spark to /sbin/init.
5. Reboot, sacrifice a goat and pray.

I have this working, but not well. tty1 does not work (but tty2 does) -- I think it has something to do with the respawn script and possibly permissions, but I just haven't figured it out yet. In any event it is an interesting experiment in just how minimal an init can be. If you try this, please post your results.

[pidsley]

pidsley wrote an init. It's called "ember" because it's a dull spark. All it does is run the minirc script and then wait until you reboot or shutdown.

[wuxmedia]

Wow, neat work.

[rhowaldt]

hey, cool, you're really getting into this shit pidsley, i like it :)

[pidsley]

ember and mdev on the Celeron box; sub 17M

[GekkoP]

^ dear me, superb! :)

[machinebacon]

Dear Jesus.

Pidsley, if you'd be my son I'd be proud of you. But like it is now, I can just say you are a freaking genius :D

[anticapitalista]

Pidsley is not my son either, but he is a freaking genius.

I wish I had more time to play with it all on antiX.

[dkeg]

Excellent! That is a great accomplishment Pids. Great work!

[pidsley]

Thanks guys. I really just study and learn from what other people have already done. There is still so very much I don't know or understand. That's what makes this hobby so much fun (at least for me) -- once I learn one thing, it opens up a bunch of new things I don't know about.

[Alad]

Very curious how far you'll be able to slim down on memory use (especially since I have an old m68k with 8 MB RAM that wants to run *nix one day).

r_c mentioned TinyX the other day - have you tried that, or are you using it already?

[pidsley]

I have not (yet) tried TinyX -- have you tried TinyCore Linux? They use busybox, and I assume they are using TinyX. They claim they can run in 46M memory, but no less. http://www.tinycorelinux.net/faq.html#req

8 Mb might be a bit of a stretch (understatement) if you want to do anything useful -- these tests are all just experiments, and show memory used at startup without anything but a single terminal running. Any way you can add more memory to that box? Sorry to say that running Linux on it might be impossible, and doing anything useful on it will almost certainly be a large challenge. But please do post if you get something working.

There are many older boxes with P4 processors and 1 or 2 G memory available, some of them just for the taking from people who think they are useless. Additional DDR memory for these older boxes is also cheap.

There is also this: http://www.linux-m68k.org/ but I have not investigated further. I did learn 6809 assembler at one point in the distant past. ;)

[Alad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Quadra_660AV

Apparently you can extend it to 68M (if the parts are still available); I'll look at TinyCore and linux/m68k, thanks. NetBSD/m68k might also be interesting.

It's true, cheap 2nd-hand builds are aplenty.. but I'm nostalgic - it's hard to believe current Macs are (literally) glued together when the early models had maintenance comparable to a server. And extra beard points, of course. :)

[GekkoP]

Couldn't resist, I tried this one too.



tty1 isn't working well, but I switched to tty2 and startx went fine. Waiting for ember, now :)

[GekkoP]

Here we go with ember.
(I know my scrots all look the same, but I'm too happy about the init systems to tweak the wallpaper and the colors)

Thank you Pidsley for creating this little thing. You say it is dull, I say I love its simplicity. :)

[pidsley]

Thanks for testing, GekkoP! If you can make this work, you can do anything.

[GekkoP]

^ It really is great going this deep into the configuration of my system. Learning what services I need, what it takes to activate them. Of course tinkering with the RAM usage is fun, but the real treat here is understanding more and more about what is running on my PC.
So again, thanks for the project ;)

[fbt]

fbt here (spark author).

Dropping by to say that even I don't use spark anymore. It was a fun little project, but sinit is better if just for being C instead of BASH.

[rhowaldt]

^ hahaha :D
well, you will find there are people here who simply enjoy trying it out, not using it per se. at least i suppose that was pidsley intent.

[Alad]

I have this working, but not well. tty1 does not work (but tty2 does) -- I think it has something to do with the respawn script and possibly permissions, but I just haven't figured it out yet.

If you check rc.conf you see this:

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cfg_services+=( agetty-tty{2..6} ) # Comment this if your init starts something on the ttys itself

You could change to agetty-tty{1..6}, but haven't tried that yet. :)