init is the lightweight BSD-style init and syslog system used in Arachsys Linux. It includes a number of small utilities, including a minimal init, a wrapper for turning simple commands into well-behaved background daemons, and a simple but flexible syslog implementation. The design aim for this suite is to provide a toolkit of small components which can be joined together with standard shell scripting to produce a complete system, rather than the large, monolithic, inflexible daemons which are typical elsewhere. Despite the focus on minimalism, the init and daemon tools can be used to implement fast, parallel, dependency-based booting, and are used for this purpose in Arachsys Linux.