Restarting init without restarting the system

Question

In this question, the accepted answers states that

For example, /sbin/init uses glibc [the vulnerable lib], and restarting that without a reboot is non-trivial.

Now, non-trivial is engineer'ish for impossible, but I'm still curious:

Is it possible to restart init without restarting the whole system?

In this case, “non-trivial” is engineerish for “I don't know how to do it”. — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Jan 29, 2015 at 21:55

Stephen Kitt · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-29 11:45:32Z

17

telinit u

will restart init without affecting the rest of the system.

answered Jan 29, 2015 at 11:45

Stephen Kitt

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Not a that crazy work arround as I expected/hoped for, but correct. Thank you :)
– Sebb
Jan 29, 2015 at 11:58
5

I can't imagine that the sysv init does any calls to gethostbyname() etc., and certainly not with data that comes from outside of the system so I don't consider restarting init a priority in the context of the ghost bug.
– wurtel
Jan 29, 2015 at 13:46
5

This works for sysvinit and systemd (equivalent to systemd daemon-reexec).
– Braiam
Jan 29, 2015 at 15:30
1

This doesn't work with all init implementations on all Unix variants (IIRC on AIX you're out of work), but as far as I know it does work with all init implementations that might be linked with glibc.
– Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
Jan 29, 2015 at 21:51

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don_crissti · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-03 15:02:29Z

3

A simple init u does the trick!

Afterwards, zypper ps doesn't report deleted files of the init process any more.

don_crissti

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answered Mar 3, 2016 at 14:21

Thomas

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2 Answers 2