On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 10:41:15AM -0500, pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote: > Folks: > > I've been reading up on systemd, both from Red Hat's documentation, > Debian's and the man files. One thing I haven't been able to explain is > why systemd has config files in /etc, /lib, /run, and /usr/lib.
/lib and /usr/lib are the same thing, or will be the same thing in a future release. Don't worry about that. /run is transient. It's an in-memory file system, created and populated at boot time, or by running programs. It's not a place for configuration. So really you're looking at /etc vs. /usr/lib. /usr/lib contains the defaults created by the Debian maintainers or the upstream authors. When you install a new package that has a systemd unit file, that's where it'll go. /etc contains the overrides and configuration elements that are unique to your system. If a service is masked or disabled, it'll be done here. If you install a locally built service, and write a systemd unit for it, this is where you'll put it. If you override part or all of a package's unit file, you do it here.
