[systemd-devel] PATCH: handle SYSTEMCTL_OPTIONS in systemctl

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Frederic Crozat at 16/01/13 17:15 did gyre and gimble:
> Yes, we have a similar patch in /etc/rc.status on openSUSE, which is
> using SYSTEMCTL_OPTIONS as variable name. So far, I haven't found a case
> where --no-block was needed, only "--ignore-dependencies" was needed
> (which is why I used a catch-all variable name, just in case
> "--no-block" would be needed later, so we wouldn't need to release
> another version of the package shipping /etc/rc.status).
> 
> But it is no longer enough because we started to migrate some
> initscripts to systemd unit and our YaST tools have also learned to call
> systemctl to start / stop services. And because of that, the
> "workaround" in /etc/rc.status is no longer effective. And YaST team
> doesn't handle to handle the "SYSTEMCTL_OPTIONS" workaround in their
> generic service handling code (I can understand that).

It feels kinda weird that --ignore-dependancies is the right solution
here. I would have thought that --no-block makes more sense generally.
Ignoring deps when starting a job could easily lead to failures, but if
you just want to start something and not necessarily wait for it to be
available, --no-block seems the better solution to me.

I guess it very much depends on where you are using it and for what
purposes, but as mentioned in the man page --ignore-dependencies "is
mostly a debugging and rescue tool for the administrator and should not
be used by applications" which makes me wonder if --no-block might be
the better solution to at least some of your problems.

Col


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Colin Guthrie
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