>1. Run btmpd, utmpd, wtmpd as s6 service. But this option will add s6 as extra dependency.
>
>2. Run btmpd, utmpd, wtmpd as systemd service. The dependency is minimal. Only
>depends on s6-ipcserver.
On Alpine, s6-ipcserver is in a separate package because Alpine is very
careful about disk space, so much that they wanted me to make utmps
available without the bulk of s6. (Yes, I find this pretty hypocritical
given other decisions they make, but I was tired of arguing with them.)
On RedHat, you will not have the same concern: s6 is a drop in the
water
compared to the amount of disk space you need to boot anyway. So it does
not make sense to separate s6 from s6-ipcserver, and I suggest making
the
utmps package depend on the s6 package anyway.
This is a separate question from running the [uwb]tmpd services under
s6-svscan or systemd. Both approaches have advantages.
Running the utmps services under systemd:
- they start earlier
- you can make any systemd service depend on them
Running the utmps services under s6:
- independence from systemd, can be portable anywhere
- shows an example of how to run a service under s6
>3. Run btmpd, utmpd, wtmpd as s6-rc service. Add two more dependencies: s6 and s6-rc.
That option, on the other hand, isn't a good one. There is an argument
for running a s6 supervision tree under systemd, but there is little
argument for running s6-rc and having a parallel service manager
ecosystem
- this probably adds more complexity than it's worth. (Unless it's for
transitional purposes, but transitioning Fedora out of systemd isn't
happening.)
...
All of that being said, however, my opinion is that you *should not*
package utmps for Fedora. utmp management is a distro-wide decision:
the utmp database is unique and accessed by several components in the
system. Fedora uses glibc, and glibc has its own utmp implementation,
and all the existing Fedora packages expect utmp to be managed by the
glibc implementation. Adding utmps, and packages that will use utmps,
will introduce conflict, and break things. (The utmp databases won't
have the correct permissions, glibc will access the files directly
without the locking that utmps does and concurrent access will cause
file corruption, etc.)
utmps isn't something that you can add like this and have some packages
depend on it and others not. It has to be a concerted effort by the
whole
distribution, to decide if they switch to it or not. Alpine uses it
because musl doesn't provide a real utmp implementation; the transition
could be done incrementally without conflicting. glibc-based distros are
another story, a transition would need to be done atomically. And unless
you submit a proposal to Fedora and it is discussed and accepted by the
Powers That Be, it's not happening.
--
Laurent
Received on Fri Apr 12 2024 - 13:49:17 CEST