OPENRC(8)

💖 OPENRC 💖

ok bestie, so this is the openrc page from the System Manager's Manual — it's giving main character energy for your whole boot process, and you're literally about to understand it. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

openrc — stops and starts services for the specified runlevel 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

openrc [-n, --no-stop] [-o, --override] [runlevel]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea: openrc first stops any services that are not in the runlevel you specified — unless you passed --no-stop, in which case it simply does not do that, periodt. then it starts any services in the runlevel (plus any stacked runlevels added by rc-update) that aren't currently started. 💅

if you don't specify a runlevel at all, we just use the current runlevel. easy.

there are some special runlevels you should lowkey be aware of, bestie:

• sysinit — brings up any system specific stuff such as /dev, /proc and optionally /sys for Linux based systems. it also mounts /run/openrc as a ramdisk using tmpfs where available, unless / is mounted rw at boot. openrc uses /run/openrc to hold state information about the services it runs. sysinit always runs when the host first starts and should not be run again. 🚫
• boot — generally the only services you should add to the boot runlevel are those which deal with the mounting of filesystems, set the initial state of attached peripherals and logging. hotplugged services are added to the boot runlevel by the system. all services in the boot and sysinit runlevels are automatically included in all other runlevels, except for those listed here.
• single — stops all services except for those in the sysinit runlevel. 💀
• reboot — changes to the shutdown runlevel and then reboots the host.
• shutdown — changes to the shutdown runlevel and then halts the host.

🛑 bestie NO. you should not call any of these runlevels yourself. instead you should use init(8) and shutdown(8) and let them call these special runlevels. they got it, i promise. 🙈

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -n, --no-stop — Do not stop any services. 🛑
• -o, --override — Override the next runlevel to change into when leaving single user or boot runlevels.
• -s, --service — Run the service specified with the rest of the arguments.
• -S, --sys — Output the RC system type, if any. 🔍
• -h, --help — Display usage information and exit.
• -C, --nocolor — Disable color output. (tragic, but okay 🥲)
• -V, --version — Display software version.
• -v, --verbose — Run verbosely. 🗣️
• -q, --quiet — Run quietly (repeat to suppress errors). 🤫

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

openrc-run(8), rc-status(8), rc-update(8), init(8), shutdown(8)

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Roy Marples <roy@marples.name>

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and that's the whole thing bestie, no cap 💖 this page is from OpenRC, dated May 2, 2009, and yeah — it's literally titled OPENRC(8) up top and at the bottom too, iykyk. go forth and slay your runlevels ✨🌸🦋