shutdown on BSD and Linux

[Rahul Siddharthan]

"Justin C. Sherrill" wrote:
>> PS:  By the way, recently someone suggested in a FreeBSD
>> mailing list that start scripts could be run in parallel
>> if they don't depend on each other (which rcorder(8) can
>> easily find out).  It would probably speed up booting.
>> However, I don't know if anyone is actually working on
>> implementing that.
>
>As I recall, Apple's launchd is a replacement for rc (and init and inetd),
>and runs in parallel.  (My Mac does start up very fast indeed, though
>launchd is not the only reason)
>
>http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/launchd

Ubuntu too is starting on a replacement for init, called upstart
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReplacementInit

The developer says he would have started with launchd if it had had a
free licence to begin with, and even now they don't seem happy with
the licence.

I tried upstart on my laptop and got the fastest console login I have
ever seen: within a couple of seconds of the kernel loading, I could
log in to my home directory, even as it continued to probe other
hardware, connect to the network, etc.  The graphical login (kdm in my
case) takes much longer, I think about as long as with old-fashioned
init.

Rahul