[RFC] plans for initscripts in F22

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 04:38:07PM +0200, Lukáš Nykrýn wrote:
> Hi,
> for the F22 I am planning some bigger changes regarding initscripts
> and I would like to ask for comments.
> 
> Initscripts package was in the past a crucial part of the system.
> They basicaly set up whole system during the boot. Currently
> initscripts package contains "support" for initscripts
> (/etc/init.d/function, service command), network initscripts and
> tons of leftovers.
> 
> So my plan is following:
> 
> We must keep initscripts support, but I can imagine a setup where
> every service uses a systemd unit, so this part does not have to be
> installed by default, but could be pulled in as a dependency.
> 
> Network initscript. This will be probably the most controversial part.
> In fedora 21 we will have three different tools for networking
> (initscripts, NetworkManager and systemd-networkd) and all of them
> will be installed by default. For various design reasons network
> initscripts does not have any future (it is completely synchronous
> and does not work with parallel boot very well). So I would like to
> split it in its own package and drop it in the future. For most of
> the use-cases NM is sufficient replacement and if somebody will miss
> a static configuration we are planning to replace network initscript
> functionality in networkd.
> 
> Than there are scripts and configs like
> /etc/crypttab
This should be moved to cryptsetup or systemd, probably the latter.

> /etc/inittab
This should be moved to systemd, it is essentially a README. In
addition, it contains outdated advice.

> /etc/profile.d/256term.sh
> /usr/lib/systemd/fedora-autorelabel
> /usr/bin/ipcalc
> /usr/bin/usleep
> /usr/sbin/consoletype
> /usr/sbin/genhostid
> /usr/sbin/sushell

> /var/log/btmp
> /var/log/wtmp
+ /var/run/utmp
Those three could be picked up by systemd too. Even if the long-term
plan is to get rid of them, systemd writes those files anyway.

Also the sysctl stuff should be consumed by systemd:
/usr/lib/sysctl.d/00-system.conf
/etc/sysctl.conf
/etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

Can we have a joint initscripts + systemd release in a few days to
change ownership of those files?

> I would like to find a new better home for them.
> 
> So I am suggesting to start with splitting initscripts to these
> sub-packages.
> 
> initscripts - initscripts support
> initscripts-core (looking for better name) - the leftovers which
> needs to by installed by default for now, but we will move
> everything from it to different components
> initscripts-network - network initscript
> initscripts-readonly - support for readonly root should be
> redesigned completelly
> initscripts-doc
> initscripts-locale
> initscripts-man
I too think that this split is a lot of work for small gain. Working
out the full dependencies set of what needs what is going to take a
while, but I think it would be better to simply shrink the package to
nothing in small steps.

Zbyszek