All processes are spawned by init, or by processes whose ancestor is init. Period!
Great. So how the heck does init know what to do?
When init starts up at boot time it looks in /etc/inittab for instructions. In my /etc/inittab, for example, the first non-comment is
id:2:initdefault: |
But even before the runlevel-specific stuff is executed, the 'system-wide gotta-have' stuff is specified in /etc/inittab via
si::sysinit:/etc/init.d/rcS |
Whenever you boot into single-user mode (also called 'runlevel S') init runs only rcS stuff and doesn't continue any further – enabling you to log in as root and twiddle with your settings, before starting a services-oriented runlevel. (By services-oriented, I mean something like "on runlevel A we've got X and apache and nfs available; on runlevel B we have only sshd with logins restricted to group XYZ only; on runlevel C we have nfs and ftp ...")
For the runlevel-specific stuff (and this is what determines the difference between runlevel 3 and 5 and 2 and ...) further down in /etc/inittab there's
l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2 |
Anyhow, what the /etc/init.d/rc script does is look in
/etc/rc[runlevel-digit].d/* /etc/rc2.d/* |
Even further down in /etc/inittab is the procedure for establishing a live tty connection, which enables you to log in in the first place:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1 2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2 3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3 4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4 5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5 6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6 |
According to this, for runlevels 4 and 5, only tty1 will be active; for 2 and 3 tty[1-6] will all be active. (It's actually more sensible to say that tty1 is gonna be active for runlevels 2-5, and tty[2-6] will be active only for runlevels 2-3.) And when the connection goes down (either you log out in a nice, neighborly fashion, or you get rudely disconnected by a power failure or because your neice chewed through your modem cable), init knows to 'respawn' the process for the next victim. Cool, eh?
How do you find out which runlevel you're in right now? This one's easy. Try this:
$ /etc/runlevel S 2 |
It displays both the previous runlevel (which may be S after a successful system startup, or perhaps N, signifying that there was no previous runlevel) and the current runlevel. (My system is at runlevel 2 after last being at the single-user [S] runlevel.) Nothing to it.
This is not something to do lightly, especially if you have several users on your system. They'll track you down eventually (and have been known to use weapons) and you'll regret your careless act unless you have a good reason...
If it's really a good idea to do so, here's the recommended way to change from whatever runlevel you're using, to another runlevel:
# telinit 4 # telinit S # telinit 2 |
Very simple. Just telinit (as root) which runlevel to switch to, and you're off!
Sorry, I can't answer that... But you can.
Remember the /etc/inittab section that showed what to do on each runlevel?
l0:0:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 0 l1:1:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 1 l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2 l3:3:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 3 l4:4:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 4 l5:5:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 5 l6:6:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 6 |
They all run the same script -- /etc/init.d/rc ! The very only single difference is, which argument is sent to that script.
So we hafta check into that script to see what the argument does.
If you look at the /etc/init.d/rc script, you'll find portions that look something like this:
# Is there an rc directory for this new runlevel? if [ -d /etc/rc$runlevel.d ] ... for i in /etc/rc$runlevel.d/K[0-9][0-9]* ... for i in /etc/rc$runlevel.d/S* |
Can you see what that does? If you enter runlevel 3 (perhaps via telinit 3 ) it'll try running scripts from /etc/rc3.d/*. Mystery solved.
When entering a runlevel, you may need to "turn off" features that might have been turned on by another runlevel. Then, you turn on the features for the new runlevel.
So first, /etc/init.d/rc will run all the "kill" scripts (any script whose name starts with "K") in the new run level with a "stop" argument. For example:
/etc/rc3.d/K20postgresql stop |
After it's all done running available "kill" scripts it then runs the "start" scripts (which have names staring with "S") in much the same way:
/etc/rc3.d/S60sshd start |
So now you should see why YOU can answer the question better than I can: only YOU can determine the difference between your runlevels ... by looking at your /etc/inittab file and by checking out the /etc/rc*.d/* scripts!
And note that the scripts will be run "in sequential order" meaning that S10* would run before S60* and so forth. This is how you can ensure that the load order works properly. For example, you may need to establish a network connection with a fileserver before launching a remote-log daemon.
BUT! There are certain preset runlevels that have important meanings:
telinit 0 = SHUTDOWN!
telinit 1 = Single user (root only) mode
telinit 0 = REBOOTS your system!