Mark Eschbach

Software Developer && System Analyst

SystemD

SystemD is a replace of the contemporary SysV style RC.d systems, the primary boot and service orchestration frameworks of the 90s through the mid-2ks. Modeled after LunachD (OSX's system management), SystemD provides service management at boot time and replaces the traditional roles of the init PID 1 process. In addition ot activation, orchestration, the suite of application also provides binary journling and daemon management.

Community Reaction

The Linux community passionatly polarized over the adoption of SystemD, including plently of mud slinging. Two primary problems at the heart was the quick widespread adoption by all major linux distros along with a drastic change in how core services are managed. Many distributions, such as Ubuntu, chose to abandon their own attempts of improving the rc.d systems in favor of SystemD.

NOTES: To be organized.

  • To launch a service at boot: systemctl enable {{service}}
  • To view a service's logs: journalctl -u {{service}}
  • To view the current system state: systemctl status
  • Most services are stored at: /lib/systemd/system (I need to find a good ref on the heir)
  • The [Install] section of the file dictates how the enable is activated. As a top level service, you generally want to depend on Wanted-By: multi-user.target.
  • Setting per executable unit syslog identifiers is easy, just use the SyslogIdentifier proprety in the unit's executable configuration.
Xrefs to read further
  • http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/47695/how-to-write-startup-script-for-systemd
  • http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit.html
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers#Example_Services
  • http://www.dsm.fordham.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi.pl?topic=systemd
  • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd

Configuring network interfaces

Significantly changed from the RC.d and Upstart systems.

Xrefs to read further

Proper install locations for SystemD scripts

The following work for ArchLinux, I haven't had a problem under Ubuntu for it either though.

/etc/systemd/system/
System administrators install location
/usr/lib/systemd/system/
Package providers default service file
Xrefs to read further