cinit is a fast, small and simple init with support for profiles

## Why should I use cinit?

 * To significant speedup the startup process
 * To use highest level of parallelisation at startup
 * To benefit from real dependencies (so called ***needs*** and ***wants***)
 * To easily create profiles that can be chosen at startup (even **before** init is started!)

## How does cinit work?

Cinit creates a dependency tree at startup and executes the services.
A service can have two type of dependencies:

 * ***wants*** describe soft dependencies (i.e. it's not fatal if the wanted service fails to start)
 * ***needs*** describe hard dependencies (if the needed service fails, the depending won't be started)

Let's have a look at an example:

    
                    A
                 (wants)
                /       \
     |------> B \        C
     |       /   \      /  \
     ^  (needs)   (needs)   (wants)
     |    D          E        F
     |                        |
     |------<------(needs)----|
    

Or in words:

 * B and C do not have dependencies
  * They will be started at the beginning
 * A wants B and C
   * A waits until B and C are executed and started afterwards,
     independently of the success of B and C
   * A will also be started, if B and C fail to start.
 * D needs B
  * D will only be started, if B is successfully started
 * E needs B and C
  * E will only be started, if both B and C are successfully started
 * F wants C and needs B
  * F will only be started, if B is successfully started
  * F waits until C is started and is started afterwards

## Old homepage

This will be the new homepage of cinit, as soon as the
[old cinit homepage](http://unix.schottelius.org/cinit) is completly
migrated into this one.

## Getting cinit

### Development versions
You can get the latest (development) version via git:

    git clone git://git.schottelius.org/cLinux/cinit.git

Additionally, the following other git ressources are available:

 * [Gitweb](http://git.schottelius.org/?p=cLinux/cinit.git;a=summary).
 * [Mirror at github](http://github.com/telmich/cinit)

## Support
 * There is a general
 [cinit mailing list](http://l.schottelius.org/mailman/listinfo/cinit)
 available.
 * You can join the development ***IRC channel***
   [#cLinux on irc.freenode.org](irc://irc.freenode.org/#cLinux).

## Related websites

 * BSD init systems (same codebase):
  * <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sbin/init/">FreeBSD</a>,
  * <a href="http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sbin/init/">NetBSD</a>,
  * <a href="http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sbin/init/">OpenBSD</a>
 * <a href="http://www.initng.org/">initng</a>
 * <a href="http://www.fefe.de/minit/">minit</a>
 * <a href="http://smarden.org/runit/">runit</a>
 * <a href="ftp://ftp.cistron.nl/pub/people/miquels/sysvinit/">sysvinit</a>

[[!tag unix]]