What will happen if I run the command init in my Ubuntu Gnome terminal?

Question

command init seems to be the first process running after each booting.

If I init in my Ubuntu Gnome terminal, will that restart my OS?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you're not root (and you shouldn't normally be logging in as root), you'll just get a message:

bash$ init
init: Need to be root

if you are root, you can change the current run level of the system using init (it actually runs "telinit" to make the change).

bash$ sudo init
init: missing runlevel
Try `init --help' for more information.

if you really want to reboot your system, you can do it by telling init to switch to run level six:

bash$ sudo init 6

(I'm not actually going to do this because I don't want to really reboot my machine.)

For future reference, all of this stuff is well described in the man pages. Try running man init for example. Other interesting man pages include runlevel and telinit.