Which system/service manager is Ubuntu 14.04 using ?

Elyas

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 - that's my option for the exam.

According to chapter 4: init, SystemV, Upstart, systemd there are those three system management utilities:

- SysVinit (old and superseded, but still present under the hood)

- Upstart (established by Ubuntu and adopted by many)

- systemd (most recent and in process of being adopted by most)

Now I am trying to do some exercises but I cannot figure out which system/service manager my Ubuntu is using:

- the description of SysVinit does not correspond to my system (chkconfig does not exist)

- the description of Upstart does not correspond to my system (there is no prefdm.conf script in my system; /etc/inittab does not exist)

- the description of systemd does not correspond to my system (I don't have systemctl command)

What confuses me more is:

- SysVinit: I have the service command on my system

- Upstart: I have upstart* commands on my system

- systemd: I have sysctl command on my system

I wish that chapter 4 would be more accurate and more appropriate for the student's OS choice, mine being Ubuntu 14.04.

Chapter 4 did not spend much time with Upstart and did not do exercises with it neither. I am sure though that this is an essential in the exam.

Any takers? Enlighteners? Teachers? Helpers?

coop

Please go back and read section 4.2 on the alternative init procedures, and section 4.8 which is all about service and chkconfig on Ubuntu, and explains you can install on 14.04 service but not chkconfig and tells you what to do.

Upstart is dead for the future, it has been abandoned by both Ubuntu and Debian now, and earlier by redhat and suse. So learning upstart is not particularly useful. Especially when Ubuntu releases 16.04 which I believe will be a LTS release.

I verified on a Ubuntu 14.04 machine that /etc/inittab does not exist (it didn't use it anyway) and I'm not sure why the prefdm.conf does not exist, but we don't do anything with it anyway.

As far as the exam goes, I don't know what is on the exams, we have a firewall. I wouldn't see it as a good design to put upstart questions on that can't be done with the native debian commands mentioned in the text (I doubt there are any anyway) so make sure you understand them.

Within a year or so there won't be any major distribution that doesn't use systemd which will make things easier to learn. However, it is not in Ubuntu 14.04, only later ubuntu so there is no systemctl command.