Welcome to the KDE System V Init Editor, commonly known (and hereafter referenced) as ksysv. This section introduces a few concepts and explains what you can do with ksysv.

The following explanation is ‘borrowed’ from tksysv (an inspiration for ksysv):

System V init is fast becoming the standard in the Linux® world to control the startup of software at boot time. This is because it is arguably easier to use and more powerful and flexible than the traditional BSD init.

I won't go into the history here (mainly because I don't know it :-).

The init binary is located in /sbin and not /etc. This is important as one might try and upgrade a machine to System V init without re-installing and reformatting. The Linux® kernel looks in /etc for its init first, so you must make sure and delete your old init from there if any.

SysV init also differs from BSD init in that the config files are in a subdirectory of /etc instead of residing directly in /etc. This directory is called rc.d. In there you will find rc.sysinit and the following directories:

init.d contains a bunch of scripts. Basically, you need one script for each service you may need to start at boot time or when entering another runlevel. Services include things like networking, NFS, sendmail®, httpd,etc. Services do not include things like setserial that must only be run once and then exited. Things like that should go in the file rc.local.

rc.local should be in /etc/rc.d if you want one. Most systems include one even though it doesn't do much. You can also include an rc.serial in /etc/rc.d if you need to do serial port specific things at boot time.

The chain of events is as follows:

The default runlevel is decided in /etc/inittab. You should have a line close to the top like:

id:3:initdefault:

From this, you'd look in the second column and see that the default runlevel is 3, as should be the case for most systems. If you want to change it, you can edit /etc/inittab by hand and change the 3. Be very careful when you are messing with the inittab. If you do mess up, you can get in to fix it by rebooting and doing:

LILO boot: linux single

This should allow you to boot into single user mode so you can fix it.

Now, how does it run all the right scripts? If you do an ls -l on rc3.d, you might see something like:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 13:11 S10network -> ../init.d/network 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 13:11 S30syslog -> ../init.d/syslog 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 13:32 S40cron -> ../init.d/cron
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 13:11 S50inet -> ../init.d/inet
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 13:11 S60nfs -> ../init.d/nfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 13:11 S70nfsfs -> ../init.d/nfsfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 13:11 S75keytable -> ../init.d/keytable
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 13:11 S80sendmail -> ../init.d/sendmail.init
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 13:11 S90lpd -> ../init.d/lpd.init
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 13:11 S99local -> ../rc.local

What you'll notice is that there are no real files in the directory. Everything there is a link to one of the scripts in the init.d directory.

The links also have an S and a number at the beginning. The S means to start this particular script and a K would mean to stop it. The number is just there for ordering purposes. Init will start all the services based on the order they appear. You can duplicate numbers, but it will only confuse you somewhat. You just need to use a two digit number only, along with an upper case S or K to start or stop the services you need to.

How does it start and stop services? Simple. Each of the scripts is written to accept an argument which can be start and stop. You can execute those scripts by hand in fact with a command like:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd.init stop

To stop the httpd server. Init just reads the name and if it has a K, it calls the script with the stop argument. If it has an S it calls the script with a start argument.

Here you learn how to use ksysv, which shouldn't be hard since it was designed to be as user-friendly as possible.

Keyboard

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Onscreen Fundamentals

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Keyboard

You can use the Tab key to switch focus between different panels (Available Services, Runlevel 1 Start, Runlevel 1 Stop, etc.) and the cursor keys to move the selection up and down.

To move an entry to a different runlevel, Cut it to the clipboard (using Ctrl+X and Paste it in the target runlevel (with Ctrl+V).

To manually change an entries sorting number or name, press Enter to open the properties dialog. Use the Tab key to switch between different fields. Close the dialog by pressing Enter to accept the modifications, or press Esc to cancel any changes.

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The Menu Entries

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The Menu Entries

A one by one description of ksysv's menu.

The File menu

Because of the danger of data loss, all menu entries under File ask for confirmation before doing their work.

File->Revert Configuration...

Forget any changes you have made, and revert to the last saved configuration.

File->Open... (Ctrl+O)

Open a previously saved configuration.

File->Save Configuration (Ctrl+S)

Make your changes permanent. Saving does not generate any backup files, so use with care.

File->Save As...

Save a copy of your new configuration.

File->Save Log... (Ctrl+L)

Save a log

File->Print Log... (Ctrl+P)

Print a copy of the log.

File->Quit (Ctrl+Q)

Quit ksysv.

The Edit menu

Edit->Undo (Ctrl+Z)

Undo the last unsaved change made.

Edit->Redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z)

Redo the last item undone.

Edit->Cut (Ctrl+X)

Cut the currently selected service to the clipboard.

Edit->Copy (Ctrl+C)

Copy the selected entry to the clipboard, without removing it from it's original position.

Edit->Paste (Ctrl+V)

Paste the content of the clipboard at the current cursor position.

Edit->Properties

Open the properties dialog for the selected item.

The Tools menu

Tools->Start Service...

Start the selected service

Tools->Stop Service...

Stop the selected service

Tools->Restart Service...

Restart the selected service.

Tools->Edit Service...

Edit the selected service

The Settings menu

Settings->Show Toolbar

Toggle on and off display of the toolbar.

Settings->Show Statusbar

Toggle on and off display of the statusbar.

Settings->Show Log

Toggle on and off the display of the log window

Settings->Save Settings

Save your current settings.

Settings->Configure Key bindings...

Customize the default keybindings.

Settings->Configure Toolbars...

Customize the toolbar.

Settings->Configure SysV-Init Editor...

Customize the behavior of ksysv

The Help menu

Help->Contents... (F1)

Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the ksysv help pages. (this document).

Help->What's This? (Shift+F1)

Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within ksysv will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.

Help->Report Bug...

Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a “wishlist” feature.

Help->About ksysv

This will display version and author information.

Help->About KDE

This displays the KDE version and other basic information.

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All options are saved in $KDEHOME/share/config/ksysvrc. Defaults are taken from the global file ($KDEDIR/share/config/ksysvrc), if available, or else generated within ksysv. Changes to the defaults are stored in your local ksysvrc.

These vary by distribution, so this is an incomplete list of the most common Linux® distributions. If you have additional distributions, please email the author and have the information added to this manual.

ksysv Copyright (c) 1997-1998 Peter Putzer

Documentation:

This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.