Linux uses a special booting facility named SysVinit that is based on a concept of run-levels. It can be quite different from one system to another, so it cannot be assumed that because things worked in one particular Linux distribution, they should work the same in LFS too. LFS has its own way of doing things, but it respects generally accepted standards.
SysVinit (which will be referred to as “init” from
now on) works using a run-levels scheme. There are seven (numbered
0 to 6) run-levels (actually, there are more run-levels, but they
are for special cases and are generally not used. See init(8)
for more details), and each one of those
corresponds to the actions the computer is supposed to perform when
it starts up. The default run-level is 3. Here are the descriptions
of the different run-levels as they are implemented:
0: halt the computer
1: single-user mode
2: multi-user mode without networking
3: multi-user mode with networking
4: reserved for customization, otherwise does the same as 3
5: same as 4, it is usually used for GUI login (like X's xdm or KDE's kdm)
6: reboot the computer
During the kernel initialization, the first program that is run is
either specified on the command line or, by default init. This program reads the
initialization file /etc/inittab
.
Create this file with:
cat > /etc/inittab << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/inittab
id:3:initdefault:
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc S
l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 0
l1:S1:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc 6
ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now
su:S016:once:/sbin/sulogin
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty --noclear tty1 9600
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty2 9600
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty3 9600
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty4 9600
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty5 9600
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty6 9600
# End /etc/inittab
EOF
An explanation of this initialization file is in the man page for
inittab. For LFS, the key
command that is run is rc. The initialization file above
will instruct rc to
run all the scripts starting with an S in the /etc/rc.d/rcS.d
directory followed by all the
scripts starting with an S in the /etc/rc.d/rc?.d
directory where the question mark
is specified by the initdefault value.
As a convenience, the rc script reads a library of
functions in /lib/lsb/init-functions
.
This library also reads an optional configuration file,
/etc/sysconfig/rc.site
. Any of the
system configuration file parameters described in subsequent
sections can be alternatively placed in this file allowing
consolidation of all system parameters in this one file.
As a debugging convenience, the functions script also logs all
output to /run/var/bootlog
. Since the
/run
directory is a tmpfs, this file
is not persistent across boots, however it is appended to the more
permanent file /var/log/boot.log
at
the end of the boot process.
Changing run-levels is done with init <runlevel>
,
where <runlevel>
is the target run-level. For example, to reboot the computer, a
user could issue the init
6 command, which is an alias for the reboot command. Likewise,
init 0 is an alias
for the halt
command.
There are a number of directories under /etc/rc.d
that look like rc?.d
(where ? is the number of the run-level)
and rcsysinit.d
, all containing a
number of symbolic links. Some begin with a K, the others begin with an
S, and all of them have
two numbers following the initial letter. The K means to stop
(kill) a service and the S means to start a service. The numbers
determine the order in which the scripts are run, from 00 to
99—the lower the number the earlier it gets executed. When
init switches to
another run-level, the appropriate services are either started or
stopped, depending on the runlevel chosen.
The real scripts are in /etc/rc.d/init.d
. They do the actual work, and
the symlinks all point to them. K links and S links point to the
same script in /etc/rc.d/init.d
.
This is because the scripts can be called with different
parameters like start
,
stop
, restart
, reload
, and status
. When a K link is
encountered, the appropriate script is run with the stop
argument. When an S link is
encountered, the appropriate script is run with the start
argument.
There is one exception to this explanation. Links that start with
an S in the rc0.d
and rc6.d
directories will not cause anything to be started. They will be
called with the parameter stop
to stop something. The logic
behind this is that when a user is going to reboot or halt the
system, nothing needs to be started. The system only needs to be
stopped.
These are descriptions of what the arguments make the scripts do:
start
The service is started.
stop
The service is stopped.
restart
The service is stopped and then started again.
reload
The configuration of the service is updated. This is used after the configuration file of a service was modified, when the service does not need to be restarted.
status
Tells if the service is running and with which PIDs.
Feel free to modify the way the boot process works (after all, it is your own LFS system). The files given here are an example of how it can be done.
The /etc/rc.d/init.d/udev
initscript
starts udevd,
triggers any "coldplug" devices that have already been created by
the kernel and waits for any rules to complete. The script also
unsets the uevent handler from the default of /sbin/hotplug
. This is done because the kernel
no longer needs to call out to an external binary. Instead
udevd will listen on
a netlink socket for uevents that the kernel raises.
The /etc/rc.d/init.d/udev_retry
initscript takes care of re-triggering events for subsystems whose
rules may rely on filesystems that are not mounted until the
mountfs script is run
(in particular, /usr
and /var
may cause this). This script runs after the
mountfs script, so
those rules (if re-triggered) should succeed the second time
around. It is configured from the /etc/sysconfig/udev_retry
file; any words in this
file other than comments are considered subsystem names to trigger
at retry time. To find the subsystem of a device, use udevadm info --attribute-walk
<device> where <device> is an absolute
path in /dev or /sys such as /dev/sr0 or /sys/class/rtc.
For information on kernel module loading and udev, see Section 9.3.2.3, “Module Loading”.
The setclock script
reads the time from the hardware clock, also known as the BIOS or
the Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) clock. If the
hardware clock is set to UTC, this script will convert the hardware
clock's time to the local time using the /etc/localtime
file (which tells the hwclock program which timezone to
use). There is no way to detect whether or not the hardware clock
is set to UTC, so this needs to be configured manually.
The setclock program is run via udev when the kernel detects the hardware capability upon boot. It can also be run manually with the stop parameter to store the system time to the CMOS clock.
If you cannot remember whether or not the hardware clock is set to
UTC, find out by running the hwclock --localtime --show
command. This will display what the current time is according to
the hardware clock. If this time matches whatever your watch says,
then the hardware clock is set to local time. If the output from
hwclock is not local
time, chances are it is set to UTC time. Verify this by adding or
subtracting the proper amount of hours for the timezone to the time
shown by hwclock. For
example, if you are currently in the MST timezone, which is also
known as GMT -0700, add seven hours to the local time.
Change the value of the UTC
variable
below to a value of 0
(zero) if the hardware clock is NOT set to UTC time.
Create a new file /etc/sysconfig/clock
by running the following:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/clock << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/clock
UTC=1
# Set this to any options you might need to give to hwclock,
# such as machine hardware clock type for Alphas.
CLOCKPARAMS=
# End /etc/sysconfig/clock
EOF
A good hint explaining how to deal with time on LFS is available at
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/time.txt.
It explains issues such as time zones, UTC, and the TZ
environment variable.
The CLOCKPARAMS and UTC paramaters may also be set in the
/etc/sysconfig/rc.site
file.
This section discusses how to configure the console bootscript that sets up
the keyboard map, console font, and console kernel log level. If
non-ASCII characters (e.g., the copyright sign, the British pound
sign and Euro symbol) will not be used and the keyboard is a U.S.
one, much of this section can be skipped. Without the configuration
file, (or equivalent settings in rc.site
), the console bootscript will do
nothing.
The console script
reads the /etc/sysconfig/console
file
for configuration information. Decide which keymap and screen font
will be used. Various language-specific HOWTOs can also help with
this, see http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/other-lang.html.
If still in doubt, look in the /usr/share/keymaps
and /usr/share/consolefonts
directories for valid
keymaps and screen fonts. Read loadkeys(1)
and setfont(8)
manual pages to determine the correct
arguments for these programs.
The /etc/sysconfig/console
file
should contain lines of the form: VARIABLE="value". The following
variables are recognized:
This variable specifies the log level for kernel messages sent to the console as set by dmesg -n. Valid levels are from "1" (no messages) to "8". The default level is "7".
This variable specifies the arguments for the loadkeys program, typically, the name of keymap to load, e.g., “it”. If this variable is not set, the bootscript will not run the loadkeys program, and the default kernel keymap will be used. Note that a few keymaps have multiple versions with the same name (cz and its variants in qwerty/ and qwertz/, es in olpc/ and qwerty/, and trf in fgGIod/ and qwerty/). In these cases the parent directory should also be specified (e.g. qwerty/es) to ensure the proper keymap is loaded.
This (rarely used) variable specifies the arguments for the second call to the loadkeys program. This is useful if the stock keymap is not completely satisfactory and a small adjustment has to be made. E.g., to include the Euro sign into a keymap that normally doesn't have it, set this variable to “euro2”.
This variable specifies the arguments for the setfont program. Typically, this includes the font name, “-m”, and the name of the application character map to load. E.g., in order to load the “lat1-16” font together with the “8859-1” application character map (as it is appropriate in the USA), set this variable to “lat1-16 -m 8859-1”. In UTF-8 mode, the kernel uses the application character map for conversion of composed 8-bit key codes in the keymap to UTF-8, and thus the argument of the "-m" parameter should be set to the encoding of the composed key codes in the keymap.
Set this variable to “1”, “yes” or “true” in order to put the console into UTF-8 mode. This is useful in UTF-8 based locales and harmful otherwise.
For many keyboard layouts, there is no stock Unicode keymap in the Kbd package. The console bootscript will convert an available keymap to UTF-8 on the fly if this variable is set to the encoding of the available non-UTF-8 keymap.
Some examples:
For a non-Unicode setup, only the KEYMAP and FONT variables are generally needed. E.g., for a Polish setup, one would use:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console
KEYMAP="pl2"
FONT="lat2a-16 -m 8859-2"
# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF
As mentioned above, it is sometimes necessary to adjust a stock keymap slightly. The following example adds the Euro symbol to the German keymap:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console
KEYMAP="de-latin1"
KEYMAP_CORRECTIONS="euro2"
FONT="lat0-16 -m 8859-15"
UNICODE="1"
# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF
The following is a Unicode-enabled example for Bulgarian, where a stock UTF-8 keymap exists:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console
UNICODE="1"
KEYMAP="bg_bds-utf8"
FONT="LatArCyrHeb-16"
# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF
Due to the use of a 512-glyph LatArCyrHeb-16 font in the previous example, bright colors are no longer available on the Linux console unless a framebuffer is used. If one wants to have bright colors without a framebuffer and can live without characters not belonging to his language, it is still possible to use a language-specific 256-glyph font, as illustrated below:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console
UNICODE="1"
KEYMAP="bg_bds-utf8"
FONT="cyr-sun16"
# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF
The following example illustrates keymap autoconversion from ISO-8859-15 to UTF-8 and enabling dead keys in Unicode mode:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/console << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/sysconfig/console
UNICODE="1"
KEYMAP="de-latin1"
KEYMAP_CORRECTIONS="euro2"
LEGACY_CHARSET="iso-8859-15"
FONT="LatArCyrHeb-16 -m 8859-15"
# End /etc/sysconfig/console
EOF
Some keymaps have dead keys (i.e., keys that don't produce a character by themselves, but put an accent on the character produced by the next key) or define composition rules (such as: “press Ctrl+. A E to get Æ” in the default keymap). Linux-5.13.12 interprets dead keys and composition rules in the keymap correctly only when the source characters to be composed together are not multibyte. This deficiency doesn't affect keymaps for European languages, because there accents are added to unaccented ASCII characters, or two ASCII characters are composed together. However, in UTF-8 mode it is a problem; e.g., for the Greek language, where one sometimes needs to put an accent on the letter “alpha”. The solution is either to avoid the use of UTF-8, or to install the X window system that doesn't have this limitation in its input handling.
For Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and some other languages, the Linux console cannot be configured to display the needed characters. Users who need such languages should install the X Window System, fonts that cover the necessary character ranges, and the proper input method (e.g., SCIM, supports a wide variety of languages).
The /etc/sysconfig/console
file
only controls the Linux text console localization. It has nothing
to do with setting the proper keyboard layout and terminal fonts
in the X Window System, with ssh sessions, or with a serial
console. In such situations, limitations mentioned in the last
two list items above do not apply.
At times, it is desirable to create files at boot time. For
instance, the /tmp/.ICE-unix
directory is often needed. This can be done by creating an entry in
the /etc/sysconfig/createfiles
configuration script. The format of this file is embedded in the
comments of the default configuration file.
The sysklogd
script invokes the
syslogd program as a
part of System V initialization. The -m
0
option turns off the periodic timestamp mark that
syslogd writes to the
log files every 20 minutes by default. If you want to turn on this
periodic timestamp mark, edit /etc/sysconfig/rc.site
and define the variable
SYSKLOGD_PARMS to the desired value. For instance, to remove all
parameters, set the variable to a null value:
SYSKLOGD_PARMS=
See man syslogd
for
more options.
The optional /etc/sysconfig/rc.site
file contains settings that are automatically set for each SystemV
boot script. It can alternatively set the values specified in the
hostname
, console
, and clock
files in the /etc/sysconfig/
directory. If the associated variables are present in both these
separate files and rc.site
, the
values in the script specific files have precedence.
rc.site
also contains parameters that
can customize other aspects of the boot process. Setting the
IPROMPT variable will enable selective running of bootscripts.
Other options are described in the file comments. The default
version of the file is as follows:
# rc.site # Optional parameters for boot scripts. # Distro Information # These values, if specified here, override the defaults #DISTRO="Linux From Scratch" # The distro name #DISTRO_CONTACT="lfs-dev@linuxfromscratch.org" # Bug report address #DISTRO_MINI="LFS" # Short name used in filenames for distro config # Define custom colors used in messages printed to the screen # Please consult `man console_codes` for more information # under the "ECMA-48 Set Graphics Rendition" section # # Warning: when switching from a 8bit to a 9bit font, # the linux console will reinterpret the bold (1;) to # the top 256 glyphs of the 9bit font. This does # not affect framebuffer consoles # These values, if specified here, override the defaults #BRACKET="\\033[1;34m" # Blue #FAILURE="\\033[1;31m" # Red #INFO="\\033[1;36m" # Cyan #NORMAL="\\033[0;39m" # Grey #SUCCESS="\\033[1;32m" # Green #WARNING="\\033[1;33m" # Yellow # Use a colored prefix # These values, if specified here, override the defaults #BMPREFIX=" " #SUCCESS_PREFIX="${SUCCESS} * ${NORMAL} " #FAILURE_PREFIX="${FAILURE}*****${NORMAL} " #WARNING_PREFIX="${WARNING} *** ${NORMAL} " # Manually seet the right edge of message output (characters) # Useful when resetting console font during boot to override # automatic screen width detection #COLUMNS=120 # Interactive startup #IPROMPT="yes" # Whether to display the interactive boot prompt #itime="3" # The amount of time (in seconds) to display the prompt # The total length of the distro welcome string, without escape codes #wlen=$(echo "Welcome to ${DISTRO}" | wc -c ) #welcome_message="Welcome to ${INFO}${DISTRO}${NORMAL}" # The total length of the interactive string, without escape codes #ilen=$(echo "Press 'I' to enter interactive startup" | wc -c ) #i_message="Press '${FAILURE}I${NORMAL}' to enter interactive startup" # Set scripts to skip the file system check on reboot #FASTBOOT=yes # Skip reading from the console #HEADLESS=yes # Write out fsck progress if yes #VERBOSE_FSCK=no # Speed up boot without waiting for settle in udev #OMIT_UDEV_SETTLE=y # Speed up boot without waiting for settle in udev_retry #OMIT_UDEV_RETRY_SETTLE=yes # Skip cleaning /tmp if yes #SKIPTMPCLEAN=no # For setclock #UTC=1 #CLOCKPARAMS= # For consolelog (Note that the default, 7=debug, is noisy) #LOGLEVEL=7 # For network #HOSTNAME=mylfs # Delay between TERM and KILL signals at shutdown #KILLDELAY=3 # Optional sysklogd parameters #SYSKLOGD_PARMS="-m 0" # Console parameters #UNICODE=1 #KEYMAP="de-latin1" #KEYMAP_CORRECTIONS="euro2" #FONT="lat0-16 -m 8859-15" #LEGACY_CHARSET=
The LFS boot scripts boot and shut down a system in a fairly
efficient manner, but there are a few tweaks that you can make in
the rc.site file to improve speed even more and to adjust
messages according to your preferences. To do this, adjust the
settings in the /etc/sysconfig/rc.site
file above.
During the boot script udev
,
there is a call to udev
settle that requires some time to complete.
This time may or may not be required depending on devices
present in the system. If you only have simple partitions
and a single ethernet card, the boot process will probably
not need to wait for this command. To skip it, set the
variable OMIT_UDEV_SETTLE=y.
The boot script udev_retry
also runs udev
settle by default. This command is only
needed by default if the /var
directory is separately mounted. This is because the clock
needs the file /var/lib/hwclock/adjtime
. Other
customizations may also need to wait for udev to complete,
but in many installations it is not needed. Skip the
command by setting the variable OMIT_UDEV_RETRY_SETTLE=y.
By default, the file system checks are silent. This can appear to be a delay during the bootup process. To turn on the fsck output, set the variable VERBOSE_FSCK=y.
When rebooting, you may want to skip the filesystem check,
fsck,
completely. To do this, either create the file /fastboot
or reboot the system with the
command /sbin/shutdown -f -r
now. On the other hand, you can force all
file systems to be checked by creating /forcefsck
or running shutdown with the
-F
parameter
instead of -f
.
Setting the variable FASTBOOT=y will disable fsck during the boot process until it is removed. This is not recommended on a permanent basis.
Normally, all files in the /tmp
directory are deleted at boot time.
Depending on the number of files or directories present,
this can cause a noticeable delay in the boot process. To
skip removing these files set the variable SKIPTMPCLEAN=y.
During shutdown, the init program sends a TERM signal to each program it has started (e.g. agetty), waits for a set time (default 3 seconds), and sends each process a KILL signal and waits again. This process is repeated in the sendsignals script for any processes that are not shut down by their own scripts. The delay for init can be set by passing a parameter. For example to remove the delay in init, pass the -t0 parameter when shutting down or rebooting (e.g. /sbin/shutdown -t0 -r now). The delay for the sendsignals script can be skipped by setting the parameter KILLDELAY=0.