cinit - Profiles

Revision History
Revision 0.1for cinit 0.3, Initial Version from 2005-06-04NS

Table of Contents

What are profiles?
How to use profiles?
How to pass argumenents to cinit?
Linux
How to configure profiles?
Some examples

cinit profiles described.

What are profiles?

Profiles are different configurations for different scenarios. This means you can use the home profile to setup things differently than at work, where you would use either no profile (standard configuration) or the work profile.

How to use profiles?

Simply pass cprofile:PROFILENAME (like cprofile:home) to cinit.

How to pass argumenents to cinit?

How to pass arguments to your init system depends on your operating system and on your bootloader.

Linux

Under Linux the init-system gets the kernel arguments (see linux.kernel.eats.arguments) as arguments. So you can use

kernel /usr/src/linux/vmlinuz cprofile:work (grub1,grub2)
append="cprofile:work" (LILO,yaboot)

Other Unices should work like Linux, please consult your local documentation.

How to configure profiles?

It's very simple: Normally cinit would call /etc/cinit/svc/init as the first service (with all its dependencies). If you pass cprofile=wireless to it, cinit will start from /etc/cinit/svc/wireless instead.

So the only thing you have to do is to create a service directory below /etc/cinit/svc with the name of the profile you want to use.

You can simply copy the init-dir and use it as a template:

ei # cd /etc/cinit/svc; rsync -a init yourprofile
Standard cp will copy the linked files, not the links, that's why I use rsync
You could also use tar:
ei # cd /etc/cinit/svc/init; tar c . | (mkdir ../myprof; cd ../myprof; tar x )

That's it!

Some examples

Here are some examples we found in #cLinux:

   profile name            what it does

   musibox                 only start mp3blaster
   terminal                start only minicom, which opens the serial line
   net-terminal            start a respawning shell script, which starts
                           ssh to the selected host
   video                   start X+mplayer, which plays the dvd/cdrom
   wireless                What to start when beeing in an unknown wlan
   home/work               selected services (nfs, ip, ...) for home or work