The release of the classical initialization system sysvinit 3.14 has taken place. This system was widely used in Linux distributions before the introduction of Systemd and Upstart, and continues to be utilized in distributions such as Slackware, Debian GNU/Hurd, and Antix. The code is written in the language of SI and distributed under the GPLv2 license. The versions of Sysvinit used in conjunction with the InSServ and Startpar utilities remain unchanged. The Inserv utility organizes the dependencies between init scripts, while Startpar ensures the parallel launch of multiple scripts during system load.
In the new version of sysvinit, support for the SRC/MakeFile variable DestDir has been resumed, which is necessary for assembly in Arch Linux. The maximum line size in the configuration file /etc/inittab has been increased from 127 to 253 characters.
There have been changes in the logic of processing records in /etc/inittab that exceed the limit of the line size. When encountering such lines, a message is now displayed in the log and the line itself is ignored. Previously, long lines were cut at the border of the permissible size, which could lead to malfunctions. For example, a command like “RM -RF /VAR/1234” could be incomplete if part of the “/1234” part was cut off.