[systemd-devel] systemd and templates

[Michal Sekletar]

On Tue, 2012-07-10 at 00:54 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> Can you elaborate on this? Would generators work for you?
> 
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Generators
> 
> (Sorry for not responding earlier!)
> 
> Lennart
> 

Hi Lennart,

I'd like to work on this, because I think it makes sense and it will
simplify administrators work-flow. I will try to make a proof of
concept. Despite the fact that I have rough idea how to proceed I still
have some doubts about the approach here. Maybe you (Kay, Michal) can
provide opinion or suggestion how all this should work.

First thing from top of my head, is the placement of generated unit
files. Question here is following: should we generate unit files once
and store them to some more permanent location or proceed like in case
of fstab or cryptsetup and store them in /run/systemd. So should we
generate them on every boot or they should be generated only upon user
request? I think it should be possible to run generator when requested
by administrator.

My second concern is that, since these generators will be used to
automatize work with large number of template instances, they will be
similar, just like template units are similar to each other(from user
point-of-view). Differences are hidden inside the template but usage is
pretty much the same. So question here is, do we need only one universal
generator capable to handle all template units in system (or selected
subset) and generate instances if desired, or we need distinct generator
for each template service? I'd say that solution with one universal
generator is better.

Regards,

Michal