I was wondering what is the alternative or equivalent to Windows services on Gnu/Linux. Is it a sever like X or Pulseaudio but that wouldn't make any sense because the theme service on windows, a alternative to that on Gnu/Linux would be a WM, or a DE. Is it like the Windows registry when there isn't truly a alternative or a equivalent to it other then the your home user directory.
Windows – the alternative or equivalent to Windows services on Gnu/Linux
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There is an ext2/ext3 filesystem driver for Windows. I know nothing about it other than the fact that it exists. It or something like it should do the job, though.
It may be possible to use UDF for this, particularly since you can stick to recent versions of Windows.
Windows is very picky about what it will recognize as a valid UDF filesystem, so it is best to create the filesystem within Windows, then mount it on the Linux side which is less strict:
c:\> format /fs:udf x:
You would look up the drive letter x:
in the Windows Disk Management tool. You might want to (re)create the partition there, too.
Don't use /q
with the format
command: that creates a filesystem that is less likely to mount in other OSes for some reason. Yes, this means formatting a many-GB filesystem will take a long time. You may therefore want to experiment with a temporarily shrunk version of the filesystem, rebuilding it once you're sure both sides see it and are storing things properly in it.
On the Linux side, if it succeeds in mounting the filesystem, it will be able to set file permissions and such correctly on files within it. Windows should ignore these permissions, though if you modify a permission-sensitive file from the Windows side, it may overwrite them with null permissions, causing problems on the Linux side.
Be warned: if this works, it will be by a bleeding edge kind of luck. There is no technical reason it cannot work, but because it isn't being banged on regularly, and no large class of users depends on it, the code involved doesn't get a lot of testing and enhancement. The fact that you have to do the formatting in Windows from the command line is just one manifestation of this.
Another alternative you might look into is some form of NAS.
Many questions. Let's take a couple and see if we can't clear things up.
Q1
I understand that the equivalent services are in /etc/init where the services start/stop. But I assume that if I install a package it does not necessarily create a startup script in /etc/init right?
No when you install applications on Linux distros (ones that make use of package managers such as dpkg/APT, RPM/YUM, pacman, etc.), as part of the software being installed the package manager has a scripting "feature" similar to those found in Windows that can add scripts, create scripts, add users to the system, and start services after they're installed.
Q2
So how does one know what has been installed and is available in Linux (like we can in Windows from Start -> Programs)?
Easy. The same package managers that I mentioned above have commands you can use to query the system to find out what applications have been installed, what files are related to these packages etc. etc.
Example
On Red Hat based distros you can use the command rpm
to find out information about the packages installed.
$ rpm -aq | head -5
libgssglue-0.4-2.fc19.x86_64
pygame-1.9.1-13.fc19.x86_64
perl-HTML-Parser-3.71-1.fc19.x86_64
ibus-libs-1.5.4-2.fc19.x86_64
libnl-1.1-17.fc19.x86_64
To find out what files are part of a package:
$ rpm -ql pygame | head -5
/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pygame
/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pygame-1.9.1release-py2.7.egg-info
/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pygame/LGPL
/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pygame/__init__.py
/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/pygame/__init__.pyc
How can it show me just the executable pieces to that are included in the package (the applications)? Most of the time executables are installed in certain locations on Linux, /usr/bin
or /bin
are 2 such directories. I usually search the RPM packages like so for these:
$ rpm -ql pygtk2 | grep "/bin"
/usr/bin/pygtk-demo
$ rpm -ql httpd | grep -E "bin/|sbin/" | head -10
/usr/sbin/apachectl
/usr/sbin/fcgistarter
/usr/sbin/htcacheclean
/usr/sbin/httpd
/usr/sbin/rotatelogs
/usr/sbin/suexec
Best Answer
as I mentioned in the comment:
as Wikipedia link mention: In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background.[1] It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon.
A daemon is a type of program on Unix-like operating systems that runs unobtrusively in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user, waiting to be activated by the occurance of a specific event or condition.
On the Microsoft Windows operating systems, programs called services perform the functions of daemons, although the term daemon is now sometimes being used with regard to those systems as well.
source: http://www.linfo.org/daemon.html
UPDATE( More details and actual comparison):