Bug#1138618: seedfiles: add init scripts for boot/shutdown setup and clean

[Matthias Geiger]

Control: tag -1 upstream

On Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:31, Lorenzo Puliti <plore...@disroot.org> wrote:

Package: seedfiles
Version: 1.4.2-3
Severity: normal
Tags: patch
X-Debbugs-Cc: plore...@disroot.org, debian-init-divers...@chiark.greenend.org.uk

Hi folks,

Matthias, thanks for your work on this package :)
I'm attaching git patches to add sysv init scripts to seedfiles;
I can do a MR on salsa if you prefer that way.
the two scripts are a rework of my previous contributions to
opentmpfiles Debian package, when it was a thing.

Thanks!

Sorry this is long but I think is better to discuss in details:

* I've not included the *-dev scripts that create devices in /dev; IMHO, even if
 something like seedfiles is used to create the devices, it's better to delegate
 the task to each init system (for sysv it would be the initscripts package).
 By the way on my system if I do
 'seedfiles --dry-run  --prefix=/dev --create --boot' it does nothing; I guess 
the
 conf files for this are shipped by systemd ?

* even the setup script does not look safe to me, it removes stuff that I'm not 
sure
 it's a good idea to remove at runtime, so I've restricted the actions to 
runlevel 0|6|S

 'seedfiles --dry-run  --create --remove --boot --exclude-prefix=/dev'
   seedfiles: Would empty directory '/run/sudo'.
   seedfiles: Would remove '/tmp/xauth_qsiNAb'.
   seedfiles: Would remove '/tmp/xauth_QRWHsY'.

   (maybe we could run this without '--remove' ?)

 'seedfiles --clean --dry-run'
   seedfiles: Would remove "/run/lirc/lircd".
   seedfiles: Would remove "/run/lirc/lircd.pid".

  cleaning there? systemd thinks that 'clean' is safe and there is a timer for
  it.. maybe we can --exclude-prefix=/run for clean ?)

(lircd is running here; also I have run mounted as tmpfs, what's the value of

Hm, I'm not that well versed with sysvinit, and I know for a fact that under openrc (which I use) the devfs service sets up /devtmpfs, and then udev mounts the /dev devices.

* also, maybe is better to make 'stop' a noop (currently is not) as
 getting the order right at shutdown, considering the cleaup, is not
 that simple

* on my system
 'seedfiles --dry-run  --create --remove  --boot --exclude-prefix=/dev'
   creates a lot of stuff under /run even for services that are disabled

   seedfiles: Would create '/run/postgresql' (type d).
   seedfiles: Would create '/run/proftpd' (type d).
   seedfiles: Would create '/run/sddm' (type d).
   seedfiles: Would create '/run/wdm' (type d).
   seedfiles: Would create '/run/wdm/GNUstep' (type L).

 even if systemd has directives for this in service files,
 and I don't like /run to be flooded with dirs for disabled
 services this way;
 on the other hand I've already seen that sometimes when
 a tmpfiles.conf is added it happens that code to create
 those dirs is removed from the init script.

I think maintainers are abusing tmpfiles for runtime dirs

That may very well be.

 Also, more frequently, code to create dirs in /var/ is
 removed from maintscripts so if we don't run this at boot,
 some sysv service may fail to start in the near future

Thoughts ?

I would suggest that you reach out to upstream; they have been very helpful in getting bugs fixed, and also state that they will merge any needed tmpfiles config. seedfiles is also still very new, so the issue with --clean in /run should best also be discussed upstream. Once those questions are resolved I am happy to include an init script.

best,

werdahias

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