[HEADS-UP] systemd for F14 - the next steps

[Lennart Poettering]

On Wed, 14.07.10 14:24, Jeff Garzik (jgarzik at pobox.com) wrote:

> > /etc/systemd/system. You could do this:
> >
> > /etc/systemd/system/default.target → /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target
> >
> > to avoid the graphical UI, and boot into the text console only
> > (i.e. much like the old runlevel 3)
> >
> > Or you could do this:
> >
> > /etc/systemd/system/default.target → /lib/systemd/system/graphical.target
> >
> > to boot into the graphical stuff by default. This is the default as we
> > package it.
> 
> Or you could just parse inittab and notice when runlevel 3 was listed. 
> Keeps everything nice and compatible, including existing manuals and 
> books, and sysadmin knowledge.

Is this really such a biggie? I mean Upstart ignores inittab too, the
only option it still takes into account is this default runlevel and
that only via some shell hackery.

We go one step further and also ignore that one line. If Upstart managed
to pull this off without complains by simply replacing inittab with a
big blurb "Hey, changing this has no effect except for this one line",
and only left one option in there that still matters then we can go one
step further and place a file there which says "Hey, this file is
completely redundant, please do this other thing instead.", or can't we?

The manual and books already are wrong for almost everything
they say about inittab on all Fedora systems that run Upstart (and that
is F12 and F13 at least?). Just replacing one more option shouldn't make
any difference.

I'd also argue that simply changing a symlink in /etc/systemd/system is
a lot easier to understand and discoverable than having to edit old and
crufty /etc/inittab which to fully understand you really must have a
historical Unix background for.

Let's keep things simple, do the clean cut, document that in the file
itself and point people to the right and modern approach.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.