[systemd-devel] Semantic of WantedBy=default.target

[Andrei Borzenkov]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 11:59 AM Silvio Knizek <killermoehre at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Am Dienstag, dem 12.08.2025 um 11:02 +0300 schrieb Andrei Borzenkov:
>
> I spent some time trying to understand why a service that should have been started was not. It turned out rather simple - the service was WantedBy=default.target, I explicitly used "3" on the kernel command line and this made systemd to ignore /etc/systemd/system/default.target.wants.
>
> Is there any reason to not treat systemd.unit as default in this case? After all, "default target" is the target that systemd starts when running as /sbin/init and passing systemd.unit is entirely equivalent to overriding default.target once at run-time.
>
> Hi Andrei,
>
> 3 on the k-c-l means "isolate into multi-user.target", not "make the multi-user.target the default.target" or "isolate into default.target".
>
> So your default.target was never started.
>

Sigh. Please explain the reason why starting multi-user.target as
alias to defaut.target should start different services compared to
starting multi-user.target as systemd.target on the kernel command
line.

I know how it is implemented and why it happens. I ask whether this
behavior is intentional and reasonable.

> If you want default behaviour, don't specify anything.
>
> BR
> Silvio