This has been fixed in Upstart 0.6.0. 0.6.0 2009-07-09 "How appropriate, you fight like a cow" * The licence for Upstart has been changed back to version 2 of the GNU GPL. * D-Bus 1.2.15 is now required, this is the current GIT HEAD pending a 1.2.16 release. * Configuration paths have changed. Global configuration now resides in "/etc/init.conf" while jobs are now configured in "/etc/init" * Job configuration filenames must now end in ".conf" * Default configuration files are now supplied in the "conf" sub-directory of the source, and installed into "/etc/init". These match the Debian/Ubuntu sysvinit configuration so may require some tweaking for other distributions, but provide an excellent base. The old example-jobs tarballs are deprecated. * The D-Bus interface remains unstable, to reflect this the current interface name has changed to "com.ubuntu.Upstart0_6" and the name of the job and instance interfaces have changed to match. * The "EmitEvent" D-Bus method gains a wait argument, when given as TRUE (the recommended setting) the method call will be blocked until all effects of the event have finished. When FALSE the method call will return once the event has been queued. * The "Start", "Stop" and "Restart" D-Bus methods of jobs and instances gain a similar wait argument. * The Upstart D-Bus object now has "version" and "log_priority" properties. The former is to obtain the version of the init daemon, the latter allows you to obtain and change the logging priority. * Job D-Bus objects now have "name", "description", "author" and "version" properties to obtain the job name and the contents of the equivalent job file fields for the others. * Instance D-Bus objects now have "name", "goal", "state" and "processes" properties to obtain the instance name, goal, state and list of running processes and their pids respectively. * The default D-Bus security policy now permits use of the "Get" methods by all users, including obtaining values of properties. * initctl has been rewritten with functionality more along the lines of Upstart 0.3.x than before; since many distributions are still shipping 0.3.x the summary of changes for the tool reflects both changes from 0.3.x and 0.5.x * The global "-p"/"--pid" argument has been dropped, since communication is over D-Bus. New "--system" and "--dest" arguments have been added to force communication over the system bus, and specify the destination, instead of using the private socket (this is the default when run as non-root to permit "list" and "status" to work for ordinary users). * The "-i"/"--id" and "--show-ids" options to commands have been dropped since jobs no longer have ids. * Since instances may now have names, these will be displayed in brackets after the job name when one is present. The output of the goal and state are now expressed as "start/running" instead of "(start) running" to disambiguate. * initctl "start" and "stop" now only output the final state of the job, not intermediate states it passes through. When called with "--no-wait", the commands now output a status before returning (which may not be the final status). * initctl "start", "stop" and "status" now only accept a single job name. Further arguments are taken as KEY=VALUE environment variables to pass to the job, replacing the previous "-e" option. * There is a new initctl "restart" command, with matching /sbin/restart symlink. This is the atomic equivalent of calling "stop" and "start" with the exception that a stopped job will not be started again. * In keeping with the newer instance model, instance jobs are now output on separate lines with their full names rather than indented under a "master" instance. * initctl "status" will exit non-zero if the job name was not found. (Bug: #328323) * initctl "status" now outputs information for multi-instance jobs. (Bug: #331407) * initctl "list" no longer accepts a pattern, use grep. Output is no longer sorted. * initctl "emit" no longer outputs changes that occur as a result of the event. * When initctl "emit" is called with "--no-wait", it will return immediately. (Bug: #324890) * initctl "emit" now only accepts a single event name. Further arguments are taken as KEY=VALUE environment for the event, replacing the previous "-e" option. * initctl "jobs" and "events" have been dropped. * initctl "log-priority" may be called without arguments, in which case it will output the current priority. (Bug: #280529) * initctl "reload" has been renamed to "reload-configuration" to avoid confusion with reloading a job's configuration. * initctl(8) man page updated. (Bug: #285753) * runlevel no longer accepts the --set and --reboot arguments, instead telinit and shutdown write these records into utmp and wtmp. * runlevel(7) man page added to describe the runlevel event, and the implementation of runlevels and System V compatibility in Upstart. (Bug: #60429) * telinit will no longer silently ignore the "a", "b" or "c" runlevels. * telinit now accepts the previously ignored "-e" argument, passing the environment variables given along with the runlevel event. * telinit now officially accepts the "q"/"Q" and "u"/"U" arguments, the former will reload the Upstart configuration while the latter will re-execute Upstart. * telinit q will also attempt to reconnect to the D-Bus system bus if the connection has not been made, or has been lost. (Bug: #323022) * reboot no longer silently ignores the "-t" option. * reboot now silently ignores the "-n", "-i" and "-h" options; it will no longer sync your disks, down your network interfaces or spin down your hard drives. This functionality is all handled by the kernel on a modern system. (Bug: #92685) * reboot now writes a "shutdown" record to /var/log/wtmp, this means that the "-w" option is honoured with its original intent. We still silently ignore the "-d" option. * shutdown message generation fixed to be more easily translatable. (Bug: #102565) * The TERM/KILL timeout, and other system timeouts, now use the monotonic clock so are unaffected by system clock changes. (Bug: #389588) * Respawn detection now uses the monotonic clock so is unaffected by system clock changes. (Bug: #389586) * Significant improvement in the amount of manual pages included with Upstart and their content. (Bug: #60429) * A manual page refering people from /etc/inittab to /etc/init is also included. (Bug: #72058)