OpenRC

OpenRC
Original author(s)	Roy Marples
Developer(s)	Gentoo OpenRC Developers
Initial release	5 April 2007 (2007-Apr-05)
Stable release	0.11.8 / 7 December 2012; 6 months ago (2012-12-07) ^[1]
Written in	C^[2]
Operating system	Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD
Size	~900 kB
Type	Init daemon
License	2-clause BSD license
Website	www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/openrc/

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OpenRC is a dependency-based init system that works with the system provided init program, normally /sbin/init. It is not a replacement for /sbin/init. OpenRC is 100% compatible with Gentoo init scripts, which means you can probably find one for the daemons you want to start in the Gentoo Portage Tree. OpenRC, however, is not exclusively used by Gentoo Linux and can be used on different Linux and BSD systems. Its creator is a NetBSD developer, who started the Gentoo/FreeBSD project.

Features

OpenRC provides the usual features expected from a modern init system such as:

Portable to non-Linux
Parallel service startup (optional, in development)^[3]
Dependency based boot-up
Process segregation through cgroups
Per-service resource limits (ulimit)
Separation of code and configuration (init.d / conf.d)
Easily extensible startup scripts customizable by users
Ability to include an unlimited variety of commands beyond basic "start, stop, and status"
Stateful init scripts (is it started already?)
Complex init scripts to start multiple components (samba -> smbd nmbd, nfs ->)
Automatic dependency calculation and service ordering
Proper integration into container/virtualization (Linux-VServer, OpenVZ, ...)^[4]
Proper modular architecture and separation of optional components (cron, syslog)
Expressive and flexible network handling (including VPN, bridges, ...)
Support for bare-metal bare-dependency servers^[5]^[6]
Verbose debug mode