Hi Simon and Dmitry, Thank you for chiming in, Simon.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 09:34:04AM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > https://packages.debian.org/sid/opentmpfiles is one known implementation > of the tmpfiles.d interface, other than systemd's. (See also #947847.) Great! > If the systemd maintainers are willing to split out systemd-tmpfiles > from the systemd binary package, that would be another possible > implementation to use in containers where the Installed-Size of systemd > is not desired. It seems they might be willing to do so, but it hasn't > been a high priority. (See #946456; its title is about -sysusers, but most > conversations around tmpfiles.d and sysusers.d seem to agree that whatever > changes might happen for one of those interfaces, it makes sense to do > the same for the other at the same time, because they're conceptually > fairly similar.) At this point, I think that whether systemd-tmpfiles becomes a real package or not is more of an implementation detail than important to the issue at hand. What is important is that systemd-tmpfiles becomes a (virtual or real) package to depend upon. Once that is in place, systemd maintainers can still go beyond and improve the container use case. > It is very common for systemd units to rely on systemd features > that are conceptually simpler/lower-level than the service manager, > such as tmpfiles.d support - for example, /etc/init.d/dbus creates > necessary files in /run and /var as needed, but dbus.service relies on > /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/dbus.conf for that functionality - so I think a > Depends (or Recommends?) on an implementation of the tmpfiles.d interface > would make docker-systemctl-replacement able to start a lot more systemd > units successfully. Yes. Let me propose the following immediate actions: * Create a new bug asking systemd to provide systemd-tmpfiles. * Repurpose the php-fpm bug report #959174 for making opentmpfiles provide systemd-tmpfiles. That also solves the matter at hand. Block on the previous one. * Create a new bug asking debian-policy to register systemd-tmpfiles as a virtual package. (Thanks Sean). Block on the first one. * Create a new bug asking systemctl to depend or recommend systemd-tmpfiles. It is my understanding of the matter, that the above actions fully resolve Dmitry's use case. Dmitry: Is that correct? I'd like to see an explicit response from you. Unless anyone objects, I intend to perform these changes to the bts next week. I have good hope that systemd maintainers will cooperate on this. Helmut
