Idea
#35: Start taking advantage of Upstart
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This idea was marked as being in development the 2 June 08.
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3856
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Written by Ubuwu the 28 Feb 08 at 15:12.
Category: System.
Related to:
Nothing/Others.
Status: In development
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Description
Replace initscripts with upstart events. Our boot sequence is currently slow, full of race conditions and poor interactions, especially with competition between the series of tasks run by sysv-rc, udev and sometimes just with the kernel. We developed upstart so that we could have a truly event driven boot sequence that would be fast, reliable and flexible; we should take advantage of it.
Tags:
(none)
Developer comments
The primary reason that we're not taking full advantage of Upstart yet is that it still requires some development to have sufficient features to actually be better than sysvinit. You can follow Upstart development at its homepage.
Attachments
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Comments
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Veejay wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 15:14
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I wanted to post a proposition like this one, but you put it nicely. Go upstart!!!!
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vintik wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 15:19
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I thought this had already happened in Feisty? (Or was it Edgy?)
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Veejay wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 15:26
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I think the init scripts haven't been ported yet, even though the technology (upstart) exists.
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Ubuwu wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 15:27
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No, upstart is indeed included, but it still uses the old initscripts.
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vintik wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 15:55
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OK, then it has my vote :)
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rainforest12 wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 15:58
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yay. fedora is going to use it for fedora 9 or 10. so it makes sense to work together on it. suse also seems to be interested...
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solrac.arevir wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 18:41
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You have my vote, Upstart is a great addition to Ubuntu, but why would you implement upstart if still using init scripts???
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Ubuwu wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 18:43
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Because it is a big step to replace the complete init system and because of backwards compatibility.
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phatsphere wrote on the 28 Feb 08 at 23:54
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personally, i think the time has come to replace the entire boot sequence. X11 should load pretty much as the first task and then in the background other services.
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Gigglesworth wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 00:43
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How does Upstart compare to Daemontools ( http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html ), which has some of the same functionality (Starts a service, monitors a service, restarts when down).
Does upstart support signaling? (Can I 'kill -HUP' a service?)
I'm looking to replace some Daemontools services with something more friendly.
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clickwir wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 01:24
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@phatsphere
Technically, you can do that now. You have to manually add the X starting scripts higher up in the list of started services. But it can be done.
Now in practice... I've done it and it sucks. X starts to load sooner, but since the rest of the system is still booting, it's very sluggish and I thought it made the overall booting (from off to usable desktop) take longer.
All it did was have me looking at an X screen longer than the progress bar for a few seconds more.
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jdeisenberg wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 01:42
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I'm teaching Linux classes at a local community college, and the fact that the init scripts in Ubuntu are a mess was one factor in my switching to a different distribution. A consistent init script system (like upstart) would quite possibly bring me back to Ubuntu.
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mikemaccana wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 02:58
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Gigglesworth: if daemontools is licensed the same way QMail or other DJB software it is, its source code is distributed under a proprietary license, and it is not acceptable for inclusion in Ubuntu.
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smenjas wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 04:48
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phatsphere and clickwir: This article talks about what's in store for the future of X.Org and specifically mentions flicker-free boots.
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kseistrup wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 09:11
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Hm…, don't know what happened to the link above. Try “DJB license” on Google, please.
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Ubuwu wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 10:38
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Daemontools is public domain now and has recently been added in debian. It will be available in the repositories in hardy+1.
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qrwe wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 15:16
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Is it simple to add programs at boot in Upstart?
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eean wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 15:32
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I was told when I started using Kubuntu a year ago to not worry about the antiquated boot system (inability to check status of services, just very basic bash scripts) to not worry, Upstart was coming.
Well Upstart is here and not a single daemon is using it. And I haven't even heard of plans to fix this.
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Lee wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 19:57
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People, daemontools is NOTHING like upstart. Upstart is a way of sending events around the system, telling it to start things or stop things based on dynamically changing situations, such as starting a firewall when you connect to the net, or starting your mouse when X starts. It's WAY more advanced than just starting or stopping programs. Also, it's potentially way faster.
I agree... ubuntu should take FULL advantage of this, working for every ounce of performance, and every ounce of dynamicism.
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dormitor wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 20:41
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The init scripts need cleanup. Some solutions are descendants of UNIX pre-history and in case of many desktops there is no need to run certain scripts (or check some conditions).
It would be best if during a system install advanced users were given the opportunity to answer a set of questions and on the basis of these questions (and possibly a set of hardware probing test) custom init scripts would be composed - as simple as can be without all those ifs which make the scripts universal. I don't want universal scripts I want them tailor-made for my system and hardware.
There is also a need to give users the ability to customize the startup procedure that goes beyond creating symbolic links for scripts at given runlevels.
Also something could be done to prevent software upgrades form changing the startup procedure set by the user. For example I have samba installed on my system, but I don't want it to run at all times, just occasionally. I remove the symbolic links with update-rc.d tool but samba upgrade inserts them back...
Startup may not be as important for systems which are hardly ever shut down but for normal desktops this counts and order needs to be introduced.
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TomChiverton wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 11:32
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I'd rather see sysV made better than role your own stuff because you think it's better than everyone elses.
You're going to have to support sysV style init scripts basically forever anyway.
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Boost wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 14:40
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Upstart seems nice. Has anyone looked at launchd by Apple? Last time I checked it was open sourced but relied hevily on their AppKit or whatever. launchd seems to be very much like upstart.
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christopher_lees wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 02:06
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Launchd was considered, but it was easier and more flexible to write Upstart than to shoehorn Launchd into a Linux system.
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Ralf.Nieuwenhuijsen wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 19:02
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Did anyone hear even read the upstart.ubuntu.com page?
I share the concern why upstart was even marketed to us, since it has never been used yet.
Why? God knows. They might have good reason. They might be waiting for debian to use upstart.
Funny thing though: now Fedora/Red Hat is going to use Upstart. Ubuntu created it, but they are going to actually put it in production first.
Secondly changing all the init's scripts is not a scary thing. But it does mean there is going to be some bug-hunting to do.
If there was ever a time, they really need to do this for hardy+1.
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SteFaNweI wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 14:48
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http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Upstart
You should read carefully ;)
Just as ubuntu, fedora is trying to "[...] begin a smooth transition toward this model."
As "Upstart is also very capable of emulating a SysV style init system" it "can be placed into Fedora right now without any changes to the init scripts."
So this is what is already in ubuntu right now as far as I know. They use upstart with the old init-scripts - as mentioned in the wiki, fedora will do so too.
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Eldmannen wrote on the 7 Mar 08 at 00:11
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Yes, and make it parallel too, so its fast!
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deepclutch wrote on the 15 Mar 08 at 04:01
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I thought upstart will be fully utilized in hardy :( heck it is NOT! :x
My humble suggestion,even if hardy came without a upgraded upstart,please provide another ISO of hardy or packages of upstart that completely removed sysVinit and upstart-compatibility for sysVinit thing.
this much eagerly waiting for upstart!and what about upstart+HAL?some problems?are they sorted out?
waiting for developer's comments.
Thank You All!
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Breakable wrote on the 15 Apr 08 at 07:34
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I would expect you to start utilizing it even if upstart does not have any advantages over sysvinit, so maybe the system might be a little slower now, but after the scripts are converted to events, it can be made faster during upstart development and debugged really easy.
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Blueprint replacement-initscripts:
