This is perp, aka "the perpetrator", a persistent process supervisor and service managment framework for un!x. The perp package provides a set of daemons and utilities to reliably start, monitor, log, and control a collection of persistent processes. -Huh? A "persistent process" is defined as any long-running program, normally starting at system boot and intended to continue running until system shutdown. Also known and often described as a "service", a persistent process generally provides some essential, on-demand, system service. Programs that serve email, domain name queries, and http requests are all examples of services that are normally run as persistent processes. -So? perp provides a portable, uniform framework for installing such services on any un!x platform, initializes services reliably within a consistent process environment, and makes sure they continue to run and log untended for as long as necessary. -Is that all? The big news with release 2.0 is that the perpd(8) daemon now runs as a single process, coalescing all the operations formerly provided by multiple perpetrate(8) supervisors into a single executable. By eliminating all the supervisory "middle-man" processes, the context switching overhead of the perp system is substantially simplified over earlier releases. And perpd(8) now sets up a mere 2 file objects on startup -- a lock file and a domain socket -- and otherwise generates no disk activity whatsoever during runtime. -Says you! Sigh... Package Layout: ./CHANGES changlog and release history ./INSTALL how to install/upgrade ./LICENSE copyright/license info ./README this here file right here ./conf.mk build/install configuration file ./examples/* sample service definitions ./lasagna/* libasagna utility library sources ./perp/* perp build sources ./runtools/* runtools build sources Requirements: This package is intended to build, install and run on any contemporary un!x platform without additional requirements. It has been tested on the following platforms: NetBSD 5.0, i386 Linux 2.6+, i686, gcc + gnu libc Linux 2.6+, i686, gcc + dietlibc Linux 2.6+, x86_64, gcc + dietlibc Darwin 10.3.2 (Mac OSX), i386 Installation: See INSTALL for complete instructions on building and installing the software, and upgrading from an earlier release. Documentation: This package includes a set of troff -man pages. To view them prior to installation, see the /man subdirectory within each of the ./perp and ./runtools subdirectories. It is suggested to skim the following pages for an overview of the system: perp_intro.8, perpd.8, perpetrate.5, and perp-setup.8. Process 1 (/sbin/init) Support: This release of perp does not include replacement for /sbin/init. If this is important for you -- and especially if you are interested in developing a complete perp-based un!x distribution -- please let me know. Feedback: This project includes the suggestions and corrections provided by perp users from around the world. Thanks for your feedback! More information: http://b0llix.net/perp/ ### EOF