• UpstartOnFedora

Note that Upstart is now part of Fedora 9

This page contains information about using Upstart on Fedora

Installing upstart

Currently there are no rpms provided. Get the upstart and the example-jobs archives from the download page.

As described here the configuration can be performed in two ways: here the secure way will be used. In this case Upstart will not totally replace init but will be installed in /opt/ where it has to be called explicitly with a boot kernel parameter. This is sufficient for testing. The configure line is: ./configure --prefix=/opt/upstart --sysconfdir=/etc --enable-compat=sysv The installation is the usual make && make install

Configuring Upstart

First of all the set of example jobs have to be extracted to /etc/event.d/. These examples make sure that upstart can boot your Fedora exactly like the old init does - this is called compat mode. However, the example jobs need some tweaking since they are written for Ubuntu.

• The PATH variable have to be modified so that the new init system calls the right executables:

  • Change PATH variable 
    perl -pi -e 'undef $/; s/script\n/script\n        export PATH=\/opt\/upstart\/sbin:\$PATH\n/' /etc/event.d/rc*

• Fedora has a very important boot rc script which should be executed only once, directly after the start. Therefore, add it to the rcS script:

  • rcS start script modification 
    script
            export PATH=/opt/upstart/sbin:$PATH     # <= This was added in the last step
            exec /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit               # <= ADD THIS LINE
            runlevel --set S >/dev/null || true
            :
    

• The tty* files contain the command /sbin/getty. Fedora uses /sbin/mingetty, change that for all tty* files:

  • Change getty to mingetty 
    perl -pi -e 's/getty 38400/mingetty/' tty*

• The rc* files call the executable /etc/init.d/rc - Fedora, however, has this at /etc/rc.d/rc. Change that for all rc* files.

  • Change rc path 
    perl -pi -e 's/\/etc\/init.d\/rc/\/etc\/rc.d\/rc/' rc*

• There is no runlevel rcS in Fedora - therefore, change /etc/event.d/rcS:

  • Modify call for runlevel S 
    exec /etc/init.d/rcS must be changed to exec /etc/init.d/rc S

• Also, the script /etc/event.d/control-alt-delete has to be modified like this:

  • start on control-alt-delete 
    script
        export PATH=/opt/upstart/sbin:$PATH               # <-- ADD THIS LINE
        exec shutdown -r now "Control-Alt-Delete pressed" # REMOVE /sbin/ FROM THIS LINE
    end script

Boot with Upstart

To boot with upstart you have to create a modified grub entry. Therefore, open /boot/grub/grub.conf and create a copy of your current entry. Afterwards, change the init parameter of the kernel line to: init=/opt/upstart/sbin/init

Benchmarking with bootstart

If there is the need to benchmark the new system with bootchart, the bootchart entry in grub.conf need an additional parameter: bootchart_init=/opt/upstart/sbin/init

State

This howto was successfully tested on a Fedora Core 6 system (without X and disabled SELinux).

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