Run levels in HPUX at a glance

Learn list of different run levels in HPUX and their roles. Also see how to check current run level in which system is running.

Run level is state of system depending on which system services will spawn. Normally lower run levels are having less services available for user and mainly used for administrative purpose. Higher levels has more services available and targets end user’s use. In HPUX highest run levels like 5 and 6 are kept reserved for future purpose. We will see list of run levels and their offerings in following article.

Current run level in HPUX can be identified using below command :

The output fields of above commands are as below:
1. A dot (.) indicates that the terminal has seen activity in the last minute and is therefore its . i.e. current.
2. Current run level
3. Timestamp
4. Current state of init
5. The number of times that state has been previously entered
6. The previous state

Read also : Different usage of ‘who’ command.

List of run levels in HPUX

0 indicates shutdown state
S indicates single user mode booted to local console only with root FC (RO) mounted
s indicates same as S only current terminal acts as system console.
1 indicates single user mode with local FS (RW) mounted
2 indicates multi user state with CDE launched
3 indicates same as 2 but with NFS
4 indicates GUI (here VUE started instead of CDE)
5,6 indicates reserved state and not yet defined in kernel code.