STARTPAR(1)

📦
version 3.14 · 3 versions
, in opensuse-leap 16.0

💅 STARTPAR — the group-chat manual ✨

okay so bestie, listen up: this is startpar, and it's literally the main character of your boot sequence. It's a General Commands Manual page, and we're about to make it make sense, no cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

startpar — starts runlevel scripts in parallel. that's it, that's the vibe. it's giving "i don't do one thing at a time" energy 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

okay so there are like four whole moods you can summon it in, and here they all are, exactly as written:

startpar [-p par] [-i iorate] [-e etcdir] [-n] [-t timeout] [-T
global_timeout] [-a arg] prg1 prg2 ...
startpar [-p par] [-i iorate] [-n] [-t timeout] [-T global_timeout] -M [
boot|start|stop]
startpar [-f]
startpar [-v]

yeah bestie the line breaks are doing their own thing. that's just how it is. 🫶

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

startpar runs multiple run-level scripts in parallel — like, a whole squad, all at once, not one sad little script at a time. obsessed.

the degree of parallelism on one CPU can be set with the -p option. the default? full parallelism. go big or go home, periodt. 🔥

you can hand an argument to all of the scripts with the -a option — one arg to rule them all, iykyk.

here's the spicy part: processes that are blocked by pending I/O will cause new process creation to be weighted by the iorate factor 800. to change that factor you hit up the -i option and specify another value. the math is literally this, keep it exact:

weight=(nblocked×iorate)/1000

and that weight gets subtracted from the total number of processes which could be started, where nblocked is the number of processes currently blocked by pending I/O. so, yeah, the blocked ones are lowkey holding up the whole operation. 😭

🎀 the output situation 🎀

the output of each script is buffered and written when the script exits, so output lines of different scripts won't mix. cute, tidy, no chaos. you can modify this behaviour by setting a timeout, though. 💖

the -t timeout (buffer timeout, besties)

the timeout set with the -t option is used as the 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. slay. ✨

the -T timeout (the global one, main character energy)

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. and then? afterwards it will only print output of this script until it is finished. it made its choice and it's committing to it. 👑

the -n flag (name tags, but for processes)

when the -n flag is used, output from a running job is prefixed with the name of the program or script being run. it's giving name tags at a party, honestly. 🏷️

🌈 the -M option 🌈

the -M option switches startpar into a make(1)-like behaviour. it takes three different arguments:

  • boot — reads .depend.boot
  • start — reads .depend.start
  • stop — reads .depend.stop

...respectively, in the directory /etc/init.d/. by scanning the boot and runlevel scripts in /etc/init.d/, it then executes the appropriate scripts in parallel. make energy, but make it group chat. 💀

🧚 the -e option 🧚

the -e option lets you set the location of the system's etc configuration directory. the default is /etc. with -e we can use alternative locations such as /usr/local/etc. flexibility icon. 💜

💀 the -f option (legacy edition, be nice to it) 💀

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.

⚠️ heads up bestie: when -f is used, no programs are started and other parameters on the command line are ignored. also, this option is only kept for legacy purposes. it's a nostalgia pick, not a new fave. 🙈

⭐ the -v option (the flex) ⭐

the -v option tells startpar to print its name and version number. when the version flag is used, all other command line parameters are ignored — it said what it said. the version number will be printed and startpar then immediately exits. no small talk. 💅

🍓 FILES 🍓

these three iconic little files, all living their best life in /etc/init.d/:

  • /etc/init.d/.depend.boot
  • /etc/init.d/.depend.start
  • /etc/init.d/.depend.stop

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

go read these too, bestie, they're in the same friend group:

  • 2003,2004 SuSE Linux AG, Nuernberg, Germany.
  • 2007 SuSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nuernberg, Germany.
  • 2019 Jesse Smith

🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

the legends themselves:

  • Michael Schroeder <mls@suse.de>
  • Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
  • Werner Fink <werner@suse.de>

and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this all comes from the STARTPAR(1) page, Mar 2019 edition — no cap, go start some scripts in parallel, you've got this ✨💅🌈

📦 where this page comes from