[systemd-devel] sysv-generator: doesn't handle /etc/insserv/overrides or /etc/chkconfig.d

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sun, 15.02.15 17:21, Christian Seiler (christian at iwakd.de) wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just noticed that sysv-generator doesn't handle
> /etc/insserv/overrides (e.g. older SuSE, Debian) or /etc/chkconfig.d
> (e.g. RHEL <= 6, Centos, old Fedora), it just ignores it, thus not
> retaining administrator overrides to init script headers. Now
> obviously, one can create a native unit file that overrides the sysv
> service, but that is not always so nice.
> 
> In the simplest case, the init script is trivial and you just create a
> simple native service and are better off anyway. But most of the time,
> init scripts where you want to override headers are provided by third
> parties, and do a lot of involved things, and as an administrator you
> don't want to port the old init script yourself, you just want to call
> the original one and be done with it. (And even worse, some
> third-party init scripts don't even come with LSB headers, even in
> 2015.)
> 
> Obviously, one can always just copy and modify the generated service
> file from /run/systemd/generator.late, so it's not like there is no
> technical solution to this issue, but I think this is one the ugliest
> ways for the administrator to achieve this, because the settings you
> want to override are in one format (LSB headers), the format you have
> to use to override them is a completely different one (service file).
> Also, if you want to compare the two, you have to manually keep a
> copy of the service file around as a reference, since sysv-generator
> doesn't generate units where there's a native one around (which is
> good in general, but hurts here), otherwise you can't easily just
> look at both files and view the changes.
> 
> Would you accept a patch that makes the sysv-generator consider these
> local overrides? (I have a test patch just for insserv/overrides
> that's diffstat +14 -8; for chkconfig.d it would be a bit more longer,
> because you can override individual settings there (and not just all
> of them at once), but shouldn't be too complicated.

We currently have support for calling out to chkconfig, but zero
support for calling out to update-rcd or insserv. It would be weird
supporting some facilities they provide without supporting the tools
themsevles...

This is also the first time I hear about chkconfig.d, which is kinda
interesting, given that the transition on Fedora is already years
past... We never got any request for it to be supported
explicitly. Which makes me wonder if it really makes sense to support
this now.

So, I am pretty conservative about this. That said I am note entirely
sure what precisely the patch you propose would entail. What precisely
would it do? Just look for init scripts in some other place in
addition to /etc/rc.d?

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat