From Fedora Project Wiki

SysV to Systemd

Summary

Porting from sysVinit init scripts to systemd unit file.

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 16
  • Last updated:
  • Percentage of completion: 0

Detailed Description

Coordinating feature regarding conversion of sysvinit init scripts to native systemd service files to ensure the best user experience.

The best outcome is that we manage to convert all services from sysvinit scripts to native systemd unit files preferable in one Fedora release Fedora 16.

Benefit to Fedora

See previous feature page concerning systemd for the benefits this will bring to Fedora which can be found here.

Scope

  • Review all service files that got provided and potentially shipped in F15 and make sure they meet the packaging guidelines. The list of those packages can be found here.
  • Create a wiki page containing all package we ship that contain sysvinit init scripts
  • Identify which packages contain sysvinit init scripts that are hardware activated socket activated and dbus activated
  • Divide that page into four section regular service activation, hardware activated on, socket activated ones and dbus activated ones.
  • Developers will need to convert the old sysvinit init script to native systemd one and or review and use ones that have been provided to them and package them as per packaging guidlines which can be found here with sample scriptlet snippet which can be found here no later then beta for inclusions in the release.

How To Test

  • Install/update to the package that contains the new native systemd unit file.
    • Check if the update process happened cleanly
    • Check if the old sysvinit init script did get removed after install
    • Check if the service starts cleanly after install
    • check if the service stops cleanly after and install
    • Check if the service reloads cleanly correctly if applicable
  • Enable the service then restart
    • check if the shutdown process happened cleanly with the service enabled
    • check if the service started cleanly at startup

User Experience

Native systemd service configuration files are much easier to understand and configure compared to sysvinit scripts and the bootup process should get faster.

Dependencies

Depends on present of systemd being installed which is the case for Fedora 15 and onwards.

Contingency Plan

Continue to ship the old sysvinit init script.

Documentation

  • It's recommended that documentation is updated to reflect usage of the native systemd commands instead of service and chkconfig commands allthou that service and chkconfig commands will continue to work and are backwards compatible up to a certain extent.
  • An example usage of systemd commands usage compared to service and chkconfig ones can be found here.
  • Some documentation regarding starting and stopping some service might need to be updated since the sysvinit init script might have been split into more then one service file note that should not be the general case.

Release Notes

There shouldn't be anything we need to specifically say other than highlighting the change.

Comments and Discussion