From kragen@dnaco.net Tue Sep 1 18:36:29 1998 Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 18:36:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: opk@worldnet.att.net Subject: Re: Help Wanted : Newbie Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 1622 Status: O X-Status: In reply to "Where is a succinct list of what gets run, from where, and why." -- I fear there is no such list. Many things (/etc/rc2 is a good example in RedHat, I think) run lots and lots of other things. With that in mind, here is a list of things that get run sometimes: /etc/lilo.conf lists what gets run during the boot process. The initrd parameter specifies a rootdisk image your kernel can insert modules from before it finishes booting. /etc/inittab lists what gets run when you boot up, when you shut down, and when you're up. /etc/profile and other similar files (listed near the end of `man bash`) get run in bash when you log in or start a bash. (You can start a bash that is not a login shell.) There are similar files for tcsh. If you use `startx' to run X, it will start your X server and also run an xinitrc, which is a program (usually a shell script) that starts X clients and so forth. When either the X server or the xinitrc dies, xinit kills the other one and exits (which makes startx exit, too.) The xinitrc is usually ~/.xinitrc, but if you don't have one of those, it's probably /usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc. (See near the end of `man startx`.) If you use `xdm' to run X (so you have a graphical login screen), it runs the program `/etc/X11/xdm/Xsession' to run your stuff, which usually runs ~/.xsession. Normally your .xsession or .xinitrc will start a window manager, like fvwm or afterstep. The window manager probably has its own config file which tells it what menus to put up, etc. The trouble with making an exhaustive list is that each of these things runs other things, which run yet other things, etc. /etc/inittab runs /etc/rc2 (if I remember right -- I've got slackware) which runs /etc/init.d/rc2.d/* which runs all sorts of things, including scripts in /etc/netconfig and all over the place. Hope this helps. Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker We are forming cells within a global brain and we are excited that we might start to think collectively. What becomes of us still hangs crucially on how we think individually. -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web