Hopefully someone of you can enlighten me:

In this section

for i in /etc/init.d/S*; do
  $i start 2>&1
done | logger -s -p 6 -t '' &

rcS will loop through the init-scripts and the

logger -s -p 6 -t '' &

is used to log the output created by the individual scripts to the syslog.

After all init-scripts are executed there will be no more work for this logger process so it is safe to
a) kill it afterwards (or better)
b) start it without the &

Is there an error in reasoning by myself or why gets the logger process backgrounded'?

The process should terminate as soon as all S* scripts have been executed : its standard input is then closed and in this case, logger just terminates (like if you do echo blah | logger).

The process is started in background to allow you to get a shell on the serial console as soon as possible. init spawns process from /etc/inittab only when rcS is done.

Vincent Bernat wrote:

The process should terminate as soon as all S* scripts have been executed : its standard input is then closed and in this case, logger just terminates (like if you do echo blah | logger).

'should'  - but it is keeps running (sleeping state), therefore i was wondering about.