'\" e
.\" SuSE man page for startpar
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2003 SuSE Linux AG, Nuernberg, Germany.
.\"
.\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
.\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
.\" the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
.\" any later version.
.\"
.\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
.\" along with this program (see the file COPYING); if not, write to the
.\" Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston,
.\" MA 02110-1301, USA.
.\"
.\" Author: Michael Schroeder <mls@suse.de>
.\"
.TH STARTPAR 1 "Mar 2019"
.SH NAME
startpar \- start runlevel scripts in parallel

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B startpar
.RB [ \-p
.IR par ]
.RB [ \-i
.IR iorate ]
.RB [ \-e
.IR etcdir ]
.RB [ \-n ]
.RB [ \-t
.IR timeout ]
.RB [ \-T
.IR global_timeout ]
.RB [ \-a
.IR arg ]
.B prg1
.B prg2
.B ...
.br
.B startpar
.RB [ \-p
.IR par ]
.RB [ \-i
.IR iorate ]
.RB [ \-n ]
.RB [ \-t
.IR timeout ]
.RB [ \-T
.IR global_timeout ]
.B \-M [
.IR boot | start | stop ]
.br
.B startpar
.RB [ -f ]
.br
.B startpar
.RB [ -v ]
.br

.SH DESCRIPTION
startpar is used to run multiple run\-level scripts in parallel.
The degree of parallelism on one
.B CPU
can be set with the
.B \-p
option, the default is full parallelism. An argument to all of
the scripts can be provided with the
.B \-a
option.
Processes blocked by pending
.B I/O
will cause new process creation to be weighted by the iorate factor
.IR 800 .
To change this factor the option
.B \-i
can be used to specify another value.  The amount
.EQ
weight = (nblocked times iorate) / 1000
.EN
will be subtracted from the total number of processes which could be
started, where nblocked is the number of processes currently blocked
by pending I/O.

The output of each script is buffered and written when the script
exits, so output lines of different scripts won't mix. You can
modify this behaviour by setting a timeout.

The timeout set with the
.B \-t
option is used as buffer timeout. If the output buffer of a
script is not empty and the last output was
.I timeout
seconds ago, startpar will flush the buffer.

The
.B \-T
option timeout works more globally. If no output is printed for
more than
.I global_timeout
seconds, startpar will flush the buffer of the script with
the oldest output. Afterwards it will only print output of this
script until it is finished.

When the 
.B \-n
flag is used, output from a running job is prefixed with the name
of the program or script being run.

The
.B \-M
option switches
.B startpar
into a
.BR make (1)
like behaviour.  This option takes three different arguments:
.IR boot ", " start ", and " stop
for reading
.IR .depend.boot " or " .depend.start " or " .depend.stop
respectively in the directory
.IR /etc/init.d/ .
By scanning the boot and runlevel scripts in
.I /etc/init.d/
it then executes the appropriate scripts in parallel.

The
.B \-e
option allows the user to set the location of the system's etc configuration
directory. The default is to use /etc. Using \-e we can use alternative locations
such as /usr/local/etc.

The 
.B \-f
option causes startpar to copy standard input (stdin) to standard output (stdout)
until startpar reaches the end of input or the process is killed. When \-f
is used no programs are started and other parameters on the command line are
ignored. This option is only kept for legacy purposes.

The
.B \-v
option tells startpar to print its name and version number. When the
version flag is used, all other command line parameters are ignored.
The version number will be printed and startpar then immediately exits.

.SH FILES
.I /etc/init.d/.depend.boot
.br
.I /etc/init.d/.depend.start
.br
.I /etc/init.d/.depend.stop

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR init (8),
.BR insserv (8),

.SH COPYRIGHT
2003,2004 SuSE Linux AG, Nuernberg, Germany.
.br
2007 SuSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nuernberg, Germany.
.br
2019 Jesse Smith

.SH AUTHOR
Michael Schroeder <mls@suse.de>
.br
Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
.br
Werner Fink <werner@suse.de>