systemd System and Service Manager
CHANGES WITH 215:
- * A new system group "input" is introduced, and all input
- device nodes get this group assigned. This is useful for
- system-level software to get access to input devices. It
+
+ * A new tool systemd-sysusers has been added. This tool
+ creates system users and groups in /etc/passwd and
+ /etc/group, based on static declarative system user/group
+ definitions in /usr/lib/sysusers.d/. This is useful to
+ enable factory resets and volatile systems that boot up with
+ an empty /etc directory, and thus need system users and
+ groups created during early boot. systemd now also ships
+ with two default sysusers.d/ files for the most basic
+ users and groups systemd and the core operating system
+ require.
+
+ * A new tmpfiles snippet has been added that rebuilds the
+ essential files in /etc on boot, should they be missing.
+
+ * A directive for ensuring automatic clean-up of
+ /var/cache/man/ has been removed from the default
+ configuration. This line should now be shipped by the man
+ implementation. The necessary change has been made to the
+ man-db implementation. Note that you need to update your man
+ implementation to one that ships this line, otherwise no
+ automatic clean-up of /var/cache/man will take place.
+
+ * A new condition ConditionNeedsUpdate= has been added that
+ may conditionalize services to only run when /etc or /var
+ are "older" than the vendor operating system resources in
+ /usr. This is useful for reconstructing or updating /etc
+ after an offline update of /usr or a factory reset, on the
+ next reboot. Services that want to run once after such an
+ update or reset should use this condition and order
+ themselves before the new systemd-update-done.service, which
+ will mark the two directories as fully updated. A number of
+ service files have been added making use of this, to rebuild
+ the udev hardware database, the journald message catalog and
+ dynamic loader cache (ldconfig). The systemd-sysusers tool
+ described above also makes use of this now. With this in
+ place it is now possible to start up a minimal operating
+ system with /etc empty cleanly. Fore more information on the
+ concepts involved see this recent blog story:
+
+ http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/stateless.html
+
+ * A new system group "input" has been introduced, and all
+ input device nodes get this group assigned. This is useful
+ for system-level software to get access to input devices. It
complements what is already done for "audio" and "video".
+ * systemd-networkd learnt minimal DHCPv4 server support in
+ addition to the existing DHCPv4 client support. It also
+ learnt DHCPv6 client and IPv6 Router Solicitation client
+ support. The DHCPv4 client gained support for static routes
+ passed in from the server. Note that the [DHCPv4] section
+ known in older systemd-networkd versions has been renamed to
+ [DHCP] and is now also used by the DHCPv6 client. Existing
+ .network files using settings of this section need to be
+ updated.
+
+ * networkd gained support for vxlan virtual networks.
+
+ * networkd gained support for automatic allocation of address
+ ranges for interfaces from a system-wide pool of
+ addresses. This is useful for dynamically managing a large
+ number of interfaces with a single network configuration
+ file. In particular this is useful to easily assign
+ appropriate IP addresses to the veth links of a large number
+ of nspawn instances.
+
+ * RPM macros for processing sysusers, sysctl and binfmt
+ drop-in snippets at package installation time have been
+ added.
+
+ * The /etc/os-release file should now be placed in
+ /usr/lib/os-release. The old location is automatically
+ created as symlink. /usr/lib is the more appropriate
+ location of this file, since it shall actually describe the
+ vendor operating system shipped in /usr, and not the
+ configuration stored in /etc.
+
+ * .mount units gained a new boolean SloppyOptions= setting
+ that maps to mount(8)'s -s option which enables permissive
+ parsing of unknown mount options.
+
+ * tmpfiles learnt a new "L+" directive which creates a symlink
+ but (unlike "L") deletes a pre-existing file first, should
+ it already exist and not already be the correct
+ symlink. Similar, "b+", "c+" and "p+" directives have been
+ added as well, which create block and character devices, as
+ well as fifos in the filesystem, possibly removing any
+ pre-existing files of different types.
+
+ * For tmpfiles' "L", "L+", "C" and "C+" directives the final
+ 'argument' field (which so far specified the source to
+ symlink/copy the files from) is now optional. If ommited the
+ same file os copied from /usr/share/factory/ suffixed by the
+ full destination path. This is useful for populating /etc
+ with essential files, by copying them from vendor defaults
+ shipped in /usr/share/factory/etc.
+
+ * A new command "systemctl preset-all" has been added that
+ applies the service preset settings to all installed unit
+ files. A new switch --preset-mode= has been added that
+ controls whether only enable or only disable operations
+ shall be executed.
+
+ * A new command "systemctl is-system-running" has been added
+ that allows checking the overall state of the system, for
+ example whether it is fully up an running.
+
+ * When the system boots up with an empty /etc, the equivalent
+ to "systemctl preset-all" is executed during early boot, to
+ make sure all default services are enabled after a factory
+ reset.
+
+ * systemd now contains a minimal preset file that enables the
+ most basic services systemd ships by default.
+
+ * Unit files' [Install] section gained a new DefaultInstance=
+ field for defining the default instance to create if a
+ template unit is enabled with no instance specified.
+
+ * A new passive target cryptsetup-pre.target has been added
+ that may be used by services that need to make they run and
+ finish before the first LUKS cryptographic device is set up.
+
+ * The /dev/loop-control and /dev/btrfs-control device nodes
+ are now owned by the "disk" group by default, opening up
+ access to this group.
+
+ * systemd-coredump will now automatically generate a
+ stack trace of all core dumps taking place on the system,
+ based on elfutils' libdw library. This stack trace is logged
+ to the journal.
+
+ * systemd-coredump may now optionally store coredumps directly
+ on disk (in /var/lib/systemd/coredump, possibly compressed),
+ instead of storing them unconditionally in the journal. This
+ mode is the new default. A new configuration file
+ /etc/systemd/coredump.conf has been added to configure this
+ and other parameters of systemd-coredump.
+
+ * coredumpctl gained a new "info" verb to show details about a
+ specific coredump. A new switch "-1" has also been added
+ that makes sure to only show information about the most
+ recent entry instead of all entries. Also, as the tool is
+ generally useful now the "systemd-" prefix of the binary
+ name has been removed. Distributions that want to maintain
+ compatibility with the old name should add a symlink from
+ the old name to the new name.
+
+ * journald's SplitMode= now defaults to "uid". This makes sure
+ that unpriviliged users can access their own coredumps with
+ coredumpctl without restrictions.
+
+ * New kernel command line options "systemd.wants=" (for
+ pulling an additional unit during boot), "systemd.mask="
+ (for masking a specific unit for the boot), and
+ "systemd.debug-shell" (for enabling the debug shell on tty9)
+ have been added. This is implemented in the new generator
+ "systemd-debug-generator".
+
+ * systemd-nspawn will now by default filter a couple of
+ syscalls for containers, among them those required for
+ kernel module loading, direct x86 IO port access, swap
+ management, and kexec. Most importantly though
+ open_by_handle_at() is now prohibited for containers,
+ closing a hole similar to a recently discussed vulnerability
+ in docker regarding access to files on file hierarchies the
+ container should normally not have access to. Note that for
+ nspawn we generally make no security claims anyway (and
+ this is explicitly documented in the man page), so this is
+ just a fix for one of the most obvious problems.
+
+ * A new man page file-hierarchy(7) has been added that
+ contains a minimized, modernized version of the file system
+ layout systemd expects, similar in style to the FHS
+ specification or hier(5).
+
+ * Automatic time-based clean-up of $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is no
+ longer done. Since the directory now has a per-user size
+ limit, and is cleaned on logout this appears unnecessary,
+ in particular since this now brings the lifecycle of this
+ directory closer in line with how IPC objects are handled.
+
+ * systemd.pc now exports a number of additional directories,
+ including $libdir (which is useful to identify the library
+ path for the primary architecture of the system), and a
+ couple of drop-in directories.
+
CHANGES WITH 214:
* As an experimental feature, udev now tries to lock the
projects / platform / upstream / systemd.git / commitdiff