HowTo use Finit to boot an Void Linux system. It is assumed that the user has already installed make, a compiler, C library header files, and other tools needed to build a GNU configure based project.

To start with you need to first install libuEv and libite. They default to install to /usr/local, but unlike Debian and Ubuntu based distros, Void's pkg-config does not look for libraries and header files there. So the PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR environment variable must be used, or change the install prefix to /usr.

The bundled build.sh script can be used to configure and build finit:

void:~# cd finit
void:~/finit# ./contrib/void/build.sh

Then run the install.sh script to install all necessary files, including the sample finit.conf and finit.d/*.conf files. More on that below.

void:~/finit# ./contrib/void/install.sh

The install script is (supposed to be) non-destructive by default, you have to answer Yes twice to set up Finit as the system default init. Pay close attention to the last question:

*** Install Finit as the system default Init (y/N)?

If you answer No, simply by pressing enter, you can change the symlink yourself later on, to point to finit instead of runit:

void:~/finit# cd /sbin
void:/sbin# rm init
void:/sbin# ln -s finit init

Another option is to change the Grub defaults, in /etc/default/grub:

#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="loglevel=4 slub_debug=P page_poison=1"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="loglevel=4 init=/sbin/finit"

Alternatively, you can simply modify the default Grub entry at boot, or set up an alternative Grub entry to include:

linux /boot/vmlinuz-X.YY.Z ... init=/sbin/finit

If you modify a Grub configuration file, remember to run:

update-grub

Before rebooting, make sure to set up a /etc/finit.conf, and /etc/finit.d/ for your services. Samples are included in this directory. Notice the symlinks in /etc/finit.d/, which can be managed by the operator at runtime using initctl enable SERVICE. You can also use a standard /etc/rc.local for one-shot tasks and initialization like keyboard language etc.