
Modern BSDs have a much better init system than I was expecting - vezzy-fnord
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/ModernBSDInitSurprise
======
JdeBP
M. Sibennmann dates NetBSD rc.d to "2001 or so". In fact, M. Mewburn made his
first proposals in December 1999. In his Usenix paper on the subject he dates
the first release of the system to NetBSD 1.5 and December 2000. There are
citations of the paper and some additional hyperlinked stuff at
[http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/system-5-rc-
problems.html) .

M. Sibennmann also states that OpenBSD adopted NetBSD rc.d. In fact whilst
FreeBSD just took the NetBSD system, the OpenBSD subsystem was written from
scratch. This can be seen not only from their respective manuals but also from
the differences in the way that the shell scripts look and work. Compare these
three incarnations of /etc/rc.d/ypbind:

* [http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/rc.d/ypbind?rev=...](http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/rc.d/ypbind?rev=1.8&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup)

* [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/10/etc/rc.d/ypbind?vi...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/10/etc/rc.d/ypbind?view=markup)

* [http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/etc/rc.d/ypbind...](http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/etc/rc.d/ypbind?rev=1.4&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup)

Whilst OpenBSD rc.d was in version 4.9, it was formally "switched on" in
version 5.0.

* [http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade50.html#rc.d](http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade50.html#rc.d)

Some machines running modern BSDs have an even more recent init system than
either rc.d . The system demonstrated at
[http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwa...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh/worked-
example.html) was running FreeBSD 10, for example.

