Table of Contents
[hemmerling] Unix 4/12 - Unix Applications, Unix Tools and Unix Drivers
Related pages:
Software Components of Linux
Daemon & Init & Service Management
First Daemon & Init
dinit
Epoch
- Subsentient "The Epoch Init System: A New Beginning" - “Epoch is a single-threaded init system for Linux 2.6+, designed to be useful yet small and unintrusive. It uses a declarative configuration style”.
- GitHub "Subsentient / epoch" - “The Epoch Init System”.
finit
- GitHub.io "finit", GitHub "finit-project / finit" - “Finit is an alternative to SysV init and systemd, focused on small and embedded Linux systems, although fully usable on server and desktop systems”.
launchd ( of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger )
OpenRC ( of Gentoo Linux )
- FreeBSD Wiki "OpenRC" - “OpenRC was originally developed for Gentoo”.
-
- reddit "r/freebsd", Thread "FreeBSD Init Systems" - “In fact, GhostBSD used to use OpenRC. Not very long ago, they switched back to the default rc that FreeBSD ships with”.
rc / rc.d & init ( of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Gentoo... )
- Gentoo Wiki "rc" - “rc is an ancient Plan 9 abbreviation that stands for run commands”.
- EN.Wikipedia "rc (Unix shell)" - “rc (for “run commands”) is the command-line interpreter for Version 10 Unix and Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating systems. It resembles the Bourne shell, but its syntax is somewhat simpler”.
Sun Service Management Facility / SMF ( of OpenSolaris, illumos )
- EN.Wikipedia "Service Management Facility", DE.Wikipedia "Service Management Facility" - “In versions of Solaris prior to Solaris 10, and in UNIX in general, services are configured in text files, with startup files in the /etc/rc.d/ directory trees, and configuration data in files such as /etc/inittab and /etc/inetd.conf. A typical system could have dozens of configuration files, and configuration could involve various methods, including editing shell scripts. With SMF, there is one consistent interface to ease administration”.
SysVinit
- Gentoo Wiki "sysvinit" - “A collection of System V-style init programs originally written by Miquel van Smoorenburg. They include init, which is run by the kernel as process 1, and is the parent of all other processes. On Gentoo, it is a component of one of its two supported init systems, with the OpenRC service manager on top of it to implement the rc subsystem”.
- Linux-Community "SysV-Init und die Runlevel" ( from “LinuxUser 12/2010” ).
- UbuntuUsers Wiki "SysVinit" - “Die letzte Ubuntu-Version, die komplett SysVinit einsetzte, war 6.06 Dapper Drake. Das bis einschließlich Ubuntu 14.04 eingesetzt Upstart setzte die gleichen Befehl wie SysVinit zum Steuern von Diensten ein und SysVinit Skripte wurde von Upstart auch ausgeführt”.
- EN.Wikipedia "init" -“SysV-style”.
systemd
- Expert told me about systemd usage:
- RedHat's first release with systemd was RHEL7, Fedora's first release with systemd was Fedora15.
- Discussion about the error message “Unit systemd.service could not be found.”
. $ sudo systemctl status systemd Unit systemd.service could not be found.
- reddit "r/linuxquestions", Thread "Error message 'Unit systemd.service could not be found'", 2020-10.
- “systemd.service is not a service, systemd runs services, and there are parts of it that do run as a service, such as 'systemd-journald.service' or 'systemd-timedated.service', but the daemon itself isn't a service, if you just do
systemctl status
it will give you an overview of the general status of the services.
-
systemctl daemon-reload systemctl daemon-reexec
“is the closest to your intent. systemctl manages systemd”.
- “And just being able to use systemctl proves you have systemd”.
- “Red Hat has used systemd since it was introduced in RHEL7, and Fedora introduced systemd in Fedora 15. Previously both used Upstart”.
- Some other problems with systemd.
- GitHub "gophernicus / gophernicus", issue "Access Denied after Install #83".
$ systemctl status systemd Unit systemd.service could not be found.
-
- 0pointer Blog "Pid Eins", Article "Rethinking PID 1", 2010-04-30.
- “Boycottsystemd.org”.
- Archive.org "Boycottsystemd.org" ( - 2014-04-28 ).
-
- Gentoo Forums "Gnome 3.8 without systemd", 2013 - “Unfortunately, systemd seems to be getting a hard dependency of GNOME as of 3.8”.
- Archive.org "monolight 'The systemd fallacy'" ( - 2019-12-09 ).
-
- “systemd.io” & “freedesktop.org”.
-
- “This page has been obsoleted and replaced. All the new contents are on the new website systemd.io”.
- “Yes, it is written systemd, not system D or System D, or even SystemD. And it isn't system d either”.
- System-V-Init, BSD-Init, Upstart, Systemd.
- Linux-Community "Systemd und SysVinit in der Praxis" ( from “LinuxUser 10/2015” ).
- Archive.org "The Geek Diary 'CentOS / RHEL 7 : How to set default target (default runlevel)'" ( - 2025-02-28 ) - “Within Oracle Linux 7 introduction of systemd (systemd uses ‘targets’)”, “Comparision of SysV Run Levels and Target Units”.
- Zwillingssterns Weltenwald, Arne Babenhauserheide ( draketo.de ) "Top 5 systemd troubles - a strategic view for distros", 2013 - “systemd is a new way to start a Linux-system with the expressed goal of rethinking all of init. These are my top 5 gripes with it”.
Upstart
- Expert told me about Upstart usage:
- RedHat's latest release with Upstart was RHEL6, Fedora's latestest release with Upstart was Fedora14.
- UbuntuUsers Wiki "Upstart" - “Upstart war ein Ubuntu-Projekt, welches den Systemstart von Ubuntu bzw. allgemein Linux beschleunigt. Es war geplant, dass Upstart mittel- bis langfristig auch noch weitere Aufgaben bei Linux-Systemen übernehmen sollte. Nach hitzigen Debatten bei Debian und einer Entscheidung für die Alternative systemd gab Mark Shuttleworth Anfang 2014 bekannt, dass auch Ubuntu ab 14.10 nach und nach umgestellt werde”.
uselessd
- BitBucket "uselessd" - “uselessd (the useless daemon, or the daemon that uses less... depending on your viewpoint) is a project to reduce systemd to a base initd and process supervisor, while minimizing intrusiveness and isolationism. Basically, it’s systemd with the superfluous stuff cut out, a (relatively) coherent idea of what it wants to be, support for non-glibc/non-Linux platforms, an approach that aims to minimize complicated design and various cleanups”.
- Archive.org "uselessd :: information system" ( - 2017-09-19 ).
-
- GitHub "abandonware/uselessd", issue #2 - “As the original author puts out, I took over maintainership during January 2015, but serious development didn't happen since. I do not have the motivation nor the time nor resources to maintain it, so please add it”.
Some other Daemons
Desktop Bus ( D-Bus ) & it's Implementations
- EN.Wikipedia "D-Bus", DE.Wikipedia "D-Bus" - Implementations: “libdbus, GDBus (GNOME), QtDBus (Qt/KDE), dbus-java and sd-bus ( part of systemd )”.
Device Manager
devfsd ( - Linux Kernel 2.4 )
- LWN "The return of devfs", 2009.
- EN.Wikipedia "Devfsd" - “Since version 2.5 of the Linux kernel, devfs has been succeeded by udev and devtmpfs”.
udev ( Linux Kernel 2.5 - )
System Services Management & Process Supervision
Daemontools ( legacy )
- Gentoo Wiki "Daemontools" - “Daniel J. Bernstein's daemontools package, described by him as “a collection of tools for managing UNIX services”, is the pioneer of what some people call today process supervision suites, i.e. packages that provide tools for performing process supervision. There are no further releases of daemontools after 0.76 (released in 2001), but other software packages have been inspired by its design principles, notably runit, s6, perp, nosh, and an enhanced succesor, daemontools-encore”.
Daemontools-encore
- Gentoo Wiki "Daemontools-encore" - “A backwards compatible, enhanced version of Daniel J. Bernstein's daemontools package”.
runit
- Gentoo Wiki "runit" - “runit is lightweight process supervision suite, originally inspired by daemontools-inspired that offers fast and reliable service management. It can be used as alternative to sysvinit or systemd, either by itself or alongside OpenRC. Additionally, ```runit``` can be employed as a PID 1 init system or as a supervision layer, managing services defined by OpenRC”.
- EN.Wikipedia "runit", DE.Wikipedia "runit (Init-System)" - “runit ist ein Init-System für POSIX-Systeme, das als Ersatz für SysVinit konzipiert wurde. Es ist das bzw. ein Standard-Init-System von Void Linux, Dragora, Artix Linux[1] (arch-basiert) sowie antiX (ab Version 19, debian-basiert), Project Trident (ab Version 20.02)”.
S6, S6-rc
- Gentoo Wiki "S6" - “A package that provides a daemontools-inspired process supervision suite, a notification framework, a UNIX domain super-server, and tools for file descriptor holding and suidless privilege gain. It can be used as an init system component, and also as a helper for supervising OpenRC services”.
- Gentoo Wiki "S6-rc" - “A service manager for s6-based systems, i.e. a suite of programs that can start and stop services, both long-running daemons and one-time initialization scripts, in the proper order according to a dependency tree. It can be used as an init system component, with a role similar to that of OpenRC for sysvinit + OpenRC systems”.
Suite66 ( 66 )
-
- “66 Sixty-six (66) is a service manager designed around the s6 supervision suite to simplify the implementation and management of service files on your machine”.
- “66-tools. A set of helper tools designed to simplify and automate various repetitive tasks commonly encountered in service script administration”.
- Archive.org "EN.Wikipedia 's6 (software)'" ( - 2022-05-16 ) - “66 ( suite66 )”.
systemctl, supervising systemd
- “systemctl” on Ubuntu Linux, running as cloud service by the smartphone app Google Play, Interactive Learning Platform "Interactive Shell".
$ systemctl System has not been booted with systemd as init system ( PDD 1 ). Can't operate. Failed to connect to bus: Host is down
- RedHat.
Special Programs
chroot
hotplug
Resources
-
- openrc-init, runit, s6 + s6-rc, sys-apps/s6, sys-apps/s6-rc, sysvinit, systemd”.
-
- “Init system comparison table”.
- sysvinit, OpenRC, systemd, SMF, launchd, Epoch, finit, runit, s6 + s6-rc, s6 + 66, BSD rc.d, dinit”.
- “OpenRC compared to systemd”.
-
- “Research Unix-style/BSD-style”.
- “SysV-style”.
- “Other implementations” - List of other init systems #.
Dynamic Kernel Module Support
File Systems
- Microsoft SQL Server vNext of 2017-09 supports:
- ZFS.
FreeIPA - Identity Management System
- Experts claimed that FreeIPA on Linux might take the role for ActiveDirectory on Windows ( making use of LDAP, Kerberos, OTP ).
Graphics Drivers for Linux
NVIDIA Graphics Cards @ Debian, Ubuntu
- Google AI:
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install nvidia-detect firmware-misc-nonfree $ sudo nvidia-detect $ sudo apt install nvidia-driver
NVIDIA Graphics Cards @ AlmaLinux on legacy Hardware
NVIDIA Downloads
-
- NVIDIA Download "XFree86/Linux-x86_64" - ”.run” installers.
Resources
- Google AI: How to Use It (General Steps):
- Download: Get the file from the NVIDIA website.
- Prepare: Exit your graphical desktop (X server) and stop OpenGL applications.
- Make Executable: chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.30.run.
- Run as Root: Open a terminal and run sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.30.run or sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.30.run as root.
- Follow Prompts: Accept license, configure X server, install kernel module (often using DKMS).
- LinuxConfig.org "NVIDIA GeForce Driver Installation on CentOS 7 Linux 64-bit", 2025-09 - “Download a current NVidia driver. eg. NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.30.run”.
- However, NVIDIA Download "XFree86/Linux-x86_64/355.06" is of 2015.
NVIDIA Graphics Cards @ AlmaLinux on state-of-the-art Hardware
- AlmaLinux.
- For AlmaLinux10:
- AlmaLinux Blog "AlmaLinux OS 9 and 10 - Now with Native Support for NVIDIA" ( no “www.” ), 2025-08.
- “Error: Unable to find a match: almalinux-release-nvidia-driver” for AlmaLinux x86_64_v2
$ sudo dnf install almalinux-release-nvidia-driver $ sudo dnf install nvidia-open-kmod nvidia-driver $ sudo reboot $ sudo modprobe nvidia_drm $ sudo dnf install nvidia-driver-cuda $ sudo nvidia-smi
-
- “NVIDIA drivers are only available for x86_64 (excluding x86_64_v2 variants of 10*) and aarch64 architectures. *We expect to ship x86_64_v2 support in the near future”.
- GitHub "NVIDIA / open-gpu-kernel-modules" - There is no support for legacy NVIDIA graphics chips like “GeForce GT740M”
.
- For AlmaLinux9:
-
-
- There are “powertools” for AlmaLinux9, but not for AlmaLinux10 .
$ sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools $ sudo dnf makecache $ sudo dnf -y install epel-release $ sudo dnf upgrade
- Add NVIDIA Repository. Install the latest NVIDIA driver.
- “WARNING: modularity is deprecated, and functionality will be removed in a future release of DNF5”.
- “Problem 1: cannot install the best candidate for the job” ⇒ Solution: Set the parameter ”–nobest”
$ sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/rhel9/x86_64/cuda-rhel9.repo $ sudo dnf makecache $ sudo dnf module install nvidia-driver:latest --nobest
- Install third-party libraries for CUDA.
- “No match for argument: freeimage-devel”
- “No match for argument: libglfw3-devel”
$ sudo dnf install freeglut-devel libX11-devel libXi-devel libXmu-devel make mesa-libGLU-devel
-
-
- Installation of “nvidia-smi” failed.
- Google AI: “To check if the NVIDIA driver is installed on AlmaLinux, use nvidia-smi in the terminal to see driver/GPU info”.
- “Failed to install packages: package kmod-nvidia-open-dkms-XXX.el9.noarch cannot be verified”.
- “Certificate XXX invalid: policy violation
- because: No binding signature at time 2025-12-08TXXX
- because: Policy rejected non-revocation signature (PositiveCertification) requiring second pre-image resistance
- because: SHA1 is not considered secure
$ sudo dnf install nvidia-smi
-
NVIDIA, AMD, Intel Graphics Cards
-
- GitHub "ilya-zlobintsev/LACT/releases" - Download of ”.deb”, ”.rpm” and ”.zst” packages.
- Linux-Magazin "LACT 0.7.4 steuert Grafikkartenlüfter über Kurve", 2025-05 - “Das grafische Werkzeug LACT steuert Nvidia-, AMD- und Intel-Grafikkarten”.
Printing on Linux
- Nowadays, as of 2013-11, Linux systems load a hardware-specific kernel module, to enable general printing support. You need a special kernel module for each different printer( e.g. one module for PCL5, one for EPSON, one for PostScript,..) The printing is then configured by the help of CUPS.
Unix Subsystems for Windows, Windows Subsystems for Linux & Cooperative Co-Existence of Windows & Linux
Wubi ( Ubuntu Installer )
-
- 2014-06: “At this time, Wubi does not work with Windows 8 default boot-loader. Thus at this point Wubi would not work on a new Windows 8 machine”.
Cooperative Linux
- Cooperative Linux - “The first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively”.
The POSIX and Unix environment Subsystem for Windows
- The Windows NTFS File System required for the installation drive.
- W2k, WinXP Pro, Win2003:
- Microsoft Interoperabilitäts- und Migrations-TechCenter "Windows Services for UNIX" - Windows Services for UNIX ( SFU ) 3.5 is available for free download.
- Win2003, Win2008, Win7, Win 8, Win2012:
- In Windows Server 2008 and high-end versions of Vista, Win7 ( Enterprise and Ultimate ) and Win8 ( Enterprise ), the recent “Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications” ( SUA ) is included.
-
-
Windows Subsystem for Linux
- Canonical Ubuntu "The full Ubuntu experience, now available on Windows" - “Download Ubuntu on WSL”.
-
- “In Windows 10, WSL can be installed either by joining the Windows Insider program or manually via Microsoft Store or Winget”.
Tools & Toolsets for Embedded Linux
- BusyBox: The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux - “BusyBox combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system”.
Special Drivers and Hardware Configuration Tools for Linux
Joystick
PPPoE - Point-to-Point Protocol
- PPPoE = Internet connection over Ethernet, i.e. DSL connection without router.
- Archive.org "Roaring Penguin 'RP-PPPoE'" ( -2022-01-19 ) - “free PPPoE client for Linux”.
-
Appropriate OpenDirectory Directory Pages
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