runit is a suite of tools which provides an init (PID 1) as well as daemontools-compatible process supervision framework, along with utilites which streamline creation and maintenance of services.
Install the runit package.
runit service packages are named package_name-runit and, when installed, will be available in /etc/runit/sv.
Runit has several programs, but usually you will only interact directly with one program only.
sv - used for controlling services, getting status of services, and dependency checking.
chpst - control of a process environment, including memory caps, limits on cores, data segments, environments, user/group privileges, and more.
runsv - supervises a process, and optionally a log service for that process.
svlogd - a simple but powerful logger, includes auto-rotation based on different methods (time, size, etc), post-processing, pattern matching, and socket (remote logging) options. Say goodbye to logrotate and the need to stop your services to rotate logs.
runsvchdir - changes service levels (runlevels, see below)
runsvdir - starts a supervision tree
runit-init - PID 1, does almost nothing besides being the init
There are several files that will be installed by runit.
/etc/runit/1 - stage 1, system’s one-time initialization tasks
/etc/runit/2 - stage 2, Normally runs runsvdir, should not return until the system is going to halt or reboot.
/etc/runit/3 - stage 3, system’s shutdown tasks
/etc/runit/ctrlaltdel - Runit will execute this when receiving a SIGINT signal
/etc/runit/runsvdir/* - Runlevels
/etc/runit/sv/* - directory containing subdirectories of available service files
/run/runit/service - always symlinked to active runlevel, sv will search for running service here
However, since runit itself depends on runit-rc, there will be several extra rc files installed, most contained in /etc/rc and /usr/lib/rc.
Unlike other distros using runit, Artix doesn’t store its service directory in /var/service or /service, but in /run/runit/service instead.
# ln -s /etc/runit/sv/service_name /run/runit/service
# unlink /run/runit/service/service_name
# sv down service_name or # sv stop service_name
# sv up service_name or # sv restart service_name
# sv restart service_name
# sv restart service_name
# sv status service_name
# runsvchdir runlevel
By default, runit has 2 runlevels, default and single. You can make your own runlevels just by creating a new folder in /etc/runit/runsvdir/ and symlinking your desired service to that runlevel.
ln -s /etc/runit/sv/service /etc/runit/runsvdir/runlevel@@
This is a tree of a complete service directory structure (aka /etc/runit/sv/servicedir), in some run scripts, typically only run will be available as usually it's the only file needed.
servicedir ├── run (755) ├── check (755) ├── conf (644) ├── finish (755) └── log (directory) ├── config (644) └── run (755)
A runit (or any daemontools-compatible) run script service directory usually contains only one executable file, run, which runs process in the foreground. Processes that run in the background cannot be supervised by runit.
If a service directory contains another directory named log, the output of the run process in the service directory will be piped to the input of the run process in the log directory. If the log service uses svlogd, it may be configured by using the file config. How svlogd can be configured is explained in the svlogd(1) manpage.
A run script may also contain executables like finish and check. finish will be executed when a service is stopped, and check will be executed (if exists) by sv check or sv status.
A run script may also contain a conf file (which is not executable) that modifies the variables available to the script.
Some services may depend on other services. For example, NetworkManager depends on dbus. To ensure that required dependencies are satisfied, check the service's run file. For example, for NetworkManager:
# /etc/runit/sv/NetworkManager/run sv check dbus >/dev/null || exit 1
This means you have to enable dbus for NetworkManager to start.