startpar8
Start runlevel scripts in parallel
Usage
startpar [-p
par]
[-i
iorate]
[-e
etcdir]
[-t
timeout]
[-T
global_timeout]
[-a
arg]
prg1
prg2 ...
startpar [-p
par]
[-i
iorate]
[-t
timeout]
[-T
global_timeout]
-M
[{boot | start | stop}]
startpar [-f]
Overview
startpar is used to run multiple run-level scripts in parallel. The degree of parallelism on one CPU can be set with the -p option, the default is full parallelism. An argument to all of the scripts can be provided with the -a option. Processes blocked by pending I/O will cause new process creation to be weighted by the iorate factor 800. To change this factor the option -i can be used to specify another value. The amount weight = (nblocked times iorate) / 1000 will be subtracted from the total number of processes which could be started, where nblocked is the number of processes currently blocked by pending I/O.
The output of each script is buffered and written when the script exits, so output lines of different scripts won't mix. You can modify this behaviour by setting a timeout.
The timeout set with the -t option is used as buffer timeout. If the output buffer of a script is not empty and the last output was timeout seconds ago, startpar will flush the buffer.
The -T option timeout works more globally. If no output is printed for more than global_timeout seconds, startpar will flush the buffer of the script with the oldest output. Afterwards it will only print output of this script until it is finished.
The -M option switches startpar into a make(1) like behaviour. This option takes three different arguments: boot, start, and stop for reading .depend.boot or .depend.start or .depend.stop respectively in the directory /etc/init.d/. By scanning the boot and runlevel directories in /etc/rcX.d/ it then executes the appropriate scripts in parallel.
The -e option allows the user to set the location of the system's etc configuration directory. The default is to use /etc. Using -e we can use alternative locations such as /usr/local/etc.
The -f option causes startpar to copy standard input (stdin) to standard output (stdout) until startpar reaches the end of input or the process is killed. When -f is used no programs are started and other parameters on the command line are ignored. This option is only kept for legacy purposes.
Files
/etc/init.d/.depend.boot
/etc/init.d/.depend.start
/etc/init.d/.depend.stop
Releases
7 releases since Debian 4.0 (Etch); the text changed 4 times.