When run levels are changed (for example, when halting the system), init sends the TERM and KILL signals to the processes which it started. Init prints "Sending processes the TERM signal" to the screen. This seems to imply that init is sending these signals to all the currently running processes. To avoid this confusion, the init.c file can be modified, so that the sentence reads "Sending the TERM signal to processes started by init". Edit the halt message: cp src/init.c{,.backup} sed 's/Sending processes/Sending the TERM signal to processes started by init/g' \     src/init.c.backup > src/init.c Compile Sysvinit: make -C src And install it: make -C src install