Debian package

[mobin-2008]

Hi! I created Dinit package for debian. It's available at mentors.debian.net and I looking for a sponsor for pushing it to Debian unstable repo. Feel free to send comments and reviews in mentors.

Regrads

[davmac314]

One obvious thing: could it be upgraded to 0.16.1? That has a few bugs fixed compared to 0.16.0

[mobin-2008]

I'll fix this thing. (Working with Debian interfaces is need more time)

[mobin-2008]

Dinit 0.16.1 is now available in Debian mentors.

[mobin-2008]

Seems like no one interest in moving dinit to debian official repos. I will try again when stable version of Dinit released (or at least beta release).

[ProwlerGr]

It is becoming a popular option in antiX:
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/antix-23-2-init-diversity-2025-remaster-edition/

I maintain an independent repo here
https://gitlab.com/init-diversity/dinit

[ProwlerGr]

Maybe give it a spin & post your impressions in the antiX forum.
I will also opt to create multi-init spins for MX Devuan & Debian.

[mobin-2008]

Sure but I don't have a Devuan/AntiX system to actually test your work right now. I will post my feedback when I tested it.

[davmac314]

From that thread, I find this troubling:

After troubleshooting commands seem to need to be:
reboot: /usr/lib/dinit/shutdown -r --system

You should not be running shutdown with the "--system" argument; that's going to bypass service shutdown.

If dinit really core dumps when a normal shutdown is attempted, I'd love to know why. Did you build with SBINDIR=/usr/lib/dinit as would be required if dinit's shutdown is in that location?

[ProwlerGr]

Hi Davin,
Yes I worked out what the problem was (It was an issue with my wrapper multi-init script - nothing wrong with dinit's native function).

A link to the scripts I use here https://gitlab.com/init-diversity/general/init-diversity-tools/-/tree/debian/init-diversity-tools?ref_type=heads.
You are also very welcome to post in the antiX forum, we would love to see you engaging with the there.
Keep up the good work!

[ProwlerGr]

Did you build with SBINDIR=/usr/lib/dinit as would be required if dinit's shutdown is in that location?

Something like that, we have diverted all dinit binaries to a folder under /lib/dinit & added some symlinks from /usr/lib/dinit back to /usr/sbin. As we have multiple inits in a single installation the shutdown - poweroff - reboot have been replaced with a wrapper as per the above post.

Maybe try the spin in a spare partition or a VM, I'm sure that you will find it quite interesting as an init developer...

[ProwlerGr]

@mobin-2008 @davmac314 , just a heads up, there is an official beta of antiX-25 which has dinit included
Link to thread:
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/antix-25-full-beta1available-for-public-testing

Your testing and feedback would be highly appreciated.

[ProwlerGr]

@mobin-2008 @davmac314 I had to make some changes to our connmand service (to address an issue related to a broken resolv.conf), but I thought to share this as a good example of a daemon service requiring preparatory actions before launching
https://gitlab.com/init-diversity/dinit/dinit-service-connmand/-/blob/debian/services/connmand?ref_type=heads

type = scripted
command = sh -c "rm -rf /etc/resolv.conf && exec /usr/sbin/connmand -n --nobacktrace --nodnsproxy"
logfile = /tmp/connmand.log
depends-on = dbus

As you can see this now includes the "exec" command but it is in a shell wrapper. Is this the recommended approach?

[davmac314]

Is this the recommended approach?

As I said above, my recommended approach is to separate the preparatory work into a separate (scripted) service that the main service depends on. In this example you would have the secondary service (connmand-prep or whatever you like to call it) perform the rm -rf ... action (since it's only one command, no need for a script) and the main service executes the connmand command.

The only drawback to that approach is that it won't do the prep work if the service is restarted. If you really need to do that, then either execute both commands in the one service via a sh -c command as in your example, or use an actual shell script on the filesystem and have it exec the daemon as its final action.

[davmac314]

(I'd like to add: it's a bit sad if connmand needs /etc/resolv.conf removed but can't do that itself!).

[ProwlerGr]

Thanks Davin,
Just FYI, connman itself can remove & create resolv.conf (it creates it in its /run directory & symlinks it to /etc/resolv.conf) The problem occurs when something abnormal happens & connman does not exit properly it leaves a broken symlink at /etc/resolv.conf. It does not recognise the broken symlink & does not replace it with a healthy file (resulting in no dns resolution - no internet for users). This workaround works like a charm ;)

[ProwlerGr]

Just a heads up, we succesfully built dinit tag version 0.20.0 & it is already in the antix Trixie repo's
https://repo.antixlinux.com/trixie/pool/main/d/dinit/
There will be a new beta2 release soonish that is intended to have this latest version included

[yosh781]

Thank you for your work. I set up Dinit to work on Devuan KDE with Turnstile, thanks to your work in AntiX.
https://i.postimg.cc/DyCZ37YM/Snimok-ekrana-20260419-194809.png

[ProwlerGr]

Thanks, I'll give it a test drive when I find some time...