>
[...]
>
> I never knew a discussion of such a "trivial" (saracasm) process such as init
> was not for the kernel list.
>
Just my bit.
Get sysvinit package and compile it with the -g compiler switch. Then
restart and debug the running init with 'gdb init <init-pid>' and you
will find.
Any thing you can do is to 'strace -p <init-pid> /sbin/init' your stock
/sbin/init and wou will see what the running init is doing, unless is an
internal loop of course.
Ciao,
Riccardo.