Some history, as I recall it: Unix hard-coded "init" as PID 1, and (I believe) hard-coded the initial search path to "/bin" and "/usr/bin".
Unix didn't pass any command-line arguments _to_ init, because there was no environment from which they could come. Most especially, the concept of run-level is an init concept, not a kernel concept, and it got it only from the inittab file, and not from the kernel in any way. Linux only supports command-line arguments because _uboot_ (et al.) does, and between the two of them they conspire to have arguments that are meaningful to the kernel. Which, as part of that, chooses to be able to pass some of them off to init. This is all new behavior, when compared to Unix and several of its successors. So, traditionally there weren't any command-line arguments to init, and it certainly didn't rely upon them. I do not know who decided that (probably for compatibility) this newer system should mimic the appearance of the older, but there it is nonetheless. There are numerous reasons for a program to choose to mangle its own command-line arguments, given that "ps" has always been able to show them to you. Some reasons: 1) Fork faces. Forks without exec would be indistinguishable from each other, if not for this. 2) Security. What if sensitive information had been passed on the command-line? Hide it. 3) Advertisement. Cheesy way to make known things discovered at runtime. -- Jim _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
