How it works

For minit, everything is a service, which should either be started once or respawned. Minit expects its configuration in the /etc/minit directory. Minit searches for a file called "`depends"' in the subdirectory default. This file tells minit what services should be started by default (in fact it tells minit that the service default depends on other services, but "`default"' is the directory minit starts to search in). A typical default/depends file looks like that:

scice% cat default/depends 
mount
network
local-tuning
local-services
remote-services
getty

Minit now goes parallel to the directories mount, network, etc. Those directories can either include "`depends"' files again, or if no dependency exists, a "'run"' file. Let us have a look into the directory "'getty"':

scice% ls -l getty/
total 4
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 1
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 2
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 3
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 4
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 5
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 6
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 7
drwxr-x---  2 nico nico 43 Dec  9  2003 8
-rw-r-----  1 nico nico 81 Feb 24  2004 depends
scice% cat getty/depends 
network/hostname
getty/1
getty/2
getty/3
getty/4
getty/5
getty/6
getty/7
getty/8

So getty itself depends on other services (which can depend on other services, too). The directory "`getty/1"' has no dependencies, but the three files "`param"', "`respawn"' and "'run"':

scice% ls -l getty/1
total 4
-rw-r-----  1 nico nico 20 Dec  9  2003 params
-rw-r-----  1 nico nico  0 Dec  9  2003 respawn
lrwxrwxrwx  1 nico nico 12 Aug 25 08:08 run -> /sbin/fgetty
scice% cat getty/1/params 
/dev/vc/1
--noclear

run is the program minit should run, when starting this service. params contains the paramaters passed to the program. One parameter on each line. And the existence of the zero-sized file respawn tells minit to restart the service when it exits.