Re: sysusers and tmpfiles
On Sun, Dec 08, 2019 at 03:57:57PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <zbyszek@in.waw.pl> writes:
>
> > Using systemd-sysusers and systemd-tmpfiles more widely was mentioned a
> > few times, along with a statement that an implementation for non-systemd
> > systems would need to be provided. Both those programs work just fine
> > without systemd not running as PID1. (systemd has unit files to start
> > them automatically during boot and at regular intervals, so that part
> > would need to be reimplemented appropriately for a given init system if
> > desired. The programs themselves don't care at all how they are
> > started.)
>
> Hi Zbigniew,
>
> Do you know if systemd upstream would be willing to commit to that
> continuing to be the case? I wasn't sure if that would be an acceptable
> limitation; if not, that's certainly an easy solution for those two
> facilities.
Yes, there is a commitment to stability for the syntax of
tmpfiles.d/sysusers.d, and for --root support to continue to exist
(which makes the tool independent of pid1 by definition), so those
tools will continue to run standalone.
> I admit that I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't run without
> systemd as PID 1, but I wasn't sure I was anticipating possible future
> changes.
It is possible that those tools might gain some features that involve
interaction with the system manager, but that'd be additions, not
removal of existing features. But that is purely theoretical at this
point, upstream has no plans like that.
Zbyszek
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