Yes, it is still alive and maintained. SysVinit, the traditional init system widely used previously in Unix-like operating systems, has just released its latest version, 3.10.
However, its use has significantly declined over the years, mainly due to the mass adoption of the more modern systemd init system, which offers several advantages over it, such as faster boot times, dependency-based service control, the ability to track processes using control groups, and so on.
Anyway. This update introduces a new feature, a crucial bug fix, and enhancements to its documentation.
More specifically, SysVinit 3.10 adds support for the “machinectl stop” command. When executed, systemd sends a SIGRTMIN+4 signal to PID 1 within the container, prompting a graceful shutdown (power-off).
SysVinit now recognizes this signal and responds by initiating a shutdown command (shutdown -hP now), thus ensuring smoother and more reliable shutdown processes for containers.
Moreover, the latest version also addresses a critical issue in the bootlogd service, which could previously enter an endless loop and consume excessive CPU resources.
The problem occurred when bootlogd could open a device for writing but could not write to it, causing it to repeatedly close and reopen the device. The new fix allows bootlogd to fail gracefully when it cannot write to an open file or device, preventing the service from looping indefinitely.
Lastly, SysVinit 3.10 also includes improvements to the shutdown.8 manual page. This involves cleaning up whitespace and special characters, making the documentation clearer and more user-friendly.
For more information, refer to the changelog.
