This paper describes the design and implementation of a dependency-based scheme for system boot scripts. This scheme preserves the modularity of SysV-style boot scripts but does not suffer from it's limitations (such as a complicated directory tree populated with symlinks, and the need for global dependency knowledge).

The dependency-based scheme simplifies the creation and integration of boot scripts by requiring only knowledge of direct dependencies (i.e. local rather than global knowledge). Dependency management is performed by simpleinit(8), which may execute boot scripts in parallel, when those scripts have no cross dependencies.

This paper seeks to expose this new scheme to a wide audience, including distribution maintainers, with the hope that more widespread adoption follows.

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