Bug#862873: RFA: vblade-persist

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: normal

I'm both upstream and the debian maintainer for vblade-persist.  I
don't currently use it, and i don't have much time for it.
Furthermore, it relies on runit because i didn't trust sysvinit.  with
the advent of systemd, i think that vblade-persist would be better
implemented as a vblade-launch script and a vblade@.service systemd
template that invokes vblade-launch.  Then the standard systemctl
mechanisms could be used to control arbitrary vblade processes.

this would remove the dependency on runit, and would allow local
sysadmins to control persistent units like so:

      systemctl install vblade@eth0.2.3-dev-sda2.service

this would mean a systemd template file like (untested):

---------------
[Unit]
Description=vblade AOE exporter %i

[Service]
type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vblade-launch %i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
---------------

It'd take a bit of thinking about how to handle mac address
limitations, and the decision about whether to place the symlink or
not, to bring this up to parity with the current implementation, but
then this work could be donated directly to the vblade upstream, and
we could leave it at that.

If someone wants to adopt vblade-persist, that would be fine with me.
If someone wants to take the systemd approach i describe above, i'd be
happy to ask for an RM: for vblade-persist as well.

      --dkg