Solaris

Originally Posted by Tommyk

a RUN level determines what services are started and what file systems are mounted. its like the difference between windows safe mode, safe mode with netowrking or a normal boot.

A milestone is baically a check to determine what services are started up and when a set of specified services have been started the milestone is marked online.

Originally Posted by Tommyk

init s is your run level and defines what services are running (which for single user mode is not very many).

if you run the following command you can see what milstones are online.

Code:

#svcs "svc:/milestone/*"
STATE          STIME    FMRI
disabled       Aug_18   svc:/milestone/patching:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/name-services:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/devices:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/network:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/single-user:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/sysconfig:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/multi-user:default
online         Aug_18   svc:/milestone/multi-user-server:default

each milestone is marked as online when the pre-requisite services are running, so if you ran init s you should see single usermode online.

Multi user mode would be disbaled because the services required for this would be stopped.

a run level defines what services are stopped/started, a milestone marks whether the required services have been started i.e. has the milestone for that group been reached.