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Distro Recommendations

By default Finit uses the following directories for configuration files:

    /etc/
      |-- finit.d/              -- Regular (enabled) services
      |    |-- lighttpd.conf
      |     `- *.conf
      |-- finit.conf            -- Bootstrap tasks and services
      :

To enable a service one simply drops a small configuration file in the /etc/finit.d/ directory. This practice works with systems that keep disabled services elsewhere, or generates them as needed from some other tool.

Distributions, however, may want a clearer separation of enabled and available (installed but not enabled) services. They may even want to customize the directories used, for brand labeling or uniformity.

To that end Finit allows for a sub-directory /etc/finit.d/available/ where installed but disabled services can reside. Adding a symlink to a configuration in this sub-directory enables the service, but it will not be started.

To change the default configuration directory and configuration file names the Finit configure script offers the following two options at build time:

./configure --with-rcsd=/etc/init.d --with-config=/etc/init.d/init.conf

Note: remember --prefix et al as well, the default is likely not what you want. See the build docs for details.

The resulting directory structure is depicted below. Please notice how /etc/finit.conf now resides in the same sub-directory as a non-symlink /etc/init.d/init.conf:

    /etc/
      |-- init.d/
      |    |-- available/      -- Regular (disabled) services
      |    |    |-- httpd.conf
      |    |    |-- ntpd.conf
      |    |    `-- sshd.conf
      |    |-- sshd.conf       -- Symlink to available/sshd.conf
      |     `- init.conf       -- Bootstrap tasks and services
      :

To facilitate the task of managing configurations, be it a service, task, run, or other stanza, the initctl tool has a a few built-in commands:

   list              List all .conf in /etc/finit.d/
   enable   <CONF>   Enable   .conf in /etc/finit.d/available/
   disable  <CONF>   Disable  .conf in /etc/finit.d/[enabled/]
   reload            Reload  *.conf in /etc/finit.d/ (activates changes)

To enable a service like sshd.conf, above, use

initctl enable sshd

The .conf suffix is not needed, initctl adds it implicitly if it is missing. The disable command works in a similar fashion.

Note, however, that initctl only operates on symlinks and it always requires the available/ sub-directory. Any non-symlink in the parent directory, here /etc/init.d/, will be considered a system override by initctl.