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d657c51f 1systemd System and Service Manager
31cee6f6 2
31cee6f6 3WEB SITE:
2777a4a3 4 https://systemd.io
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5
6GIT:
eb0914fc 7 git@github.com:systemd/systemd.git
eb0914fc 8 https://github.com/systemd/systemd
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9
10MAILING LIST:
19d9372b 11 https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
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12
13IRC:
fb906b00 14 #systemd on irc.libera.chat
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15
16BUG REPORTS:
eb0914fc 17 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues
31cee6f6 18
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19OLDER DOCUMENTATION:
20
21 http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html
22 https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd
23
31cee6f6 24AUTHOR:
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25 Lennart Poettering
26 Kay Sievers
27 ...and many others
31cee6f6 28
673eab9b 29LICENSE:
7fe57498 30 LGPL-2.1-or-later for all code, exceptions noted in LICENSES/README.md
673eab9b 31
31cee6f6 32REQUIREMENTS:
277f0587 33 Linux kernel ≥ 3.15
ad11dd94 34 ≥ 4.3 for ambient capabilities
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35 ≥ 4.5 for pids controller in cgroup v2
36 ≥ 4.6 for cgroup namespaces
37 ≥ 4.9 for RENAME_NOREPLACE support in vfat
38 ≥ 4.10 for cgroup-bpf egress and ingress hooks
39 ≥ 4.15 for cgroup-bpf device hook and cpu controller in cgroup v2
40 ≥ 4.17 for cgroup-bpf socket address hooks
be6447b4 41 ≥ 4.20 for PSI (used by systemd-oomd)
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42 ≥ 5.3 for bounded loops in BPF program
43 ≥ 5.4 for signed Verity images
44 ≥ 5.7 for BPF links and the BPF LSM hook
45
46 Kernel versions below 4.15 have significant gaps in functionality and
47 are not recommended for use with this version of systemd. Taint flag
48 'old-kernel' will be set. Systemd will most likely still function, but
49 upstream support and testing are limited.
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50
51 Kernel Config Options:
713bc0cf 52 CONFIG_DEVTMPFS
d28315e4 53 CONFIG_CGROUPS (it is OK to disable all controllers)
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54 CONFIG_INOTIFY_USER
55 CONFIG_SIGNALFD
56 CONFIG_TIMERFD
57 CONFIG_EPOLL
8d186a35 58 CONFIG_UNIX (it requires CONFIG_NET, but every other flag in it is not necessary)
713bc0cf 59 CONFIG_SYSFS
06d461ee 60 CONFIG_PROC_FS
5d31974e 61 CONFIG_FHANDLE (libudev, mount and bind mount handling)
713bc0cf 62
12801295 63 Kernel crypto/hash API:
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64 CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER_API_HASH
65 CONFIG_CRYPTO_HMAC
66 CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA256
67
be2ea723 68 udev will fail to work with the legacy sysfs layout:
f28cbd03 69 CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=n
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70
71 Legacy hotplug slows down the system and confuses udev:
72 CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH=""
73
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74 Userspace firmware loading is not supported and should be disabled in
75 the kernel:
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76 CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER=n
77
78 Some udev rules and virtualization detection relies on it:
79 CONFIG_DMIID
80
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81 Support for some SCSI devices serial number retrieval, to create
82 additional symlinks in /dev/disk/ and /dev/tape:
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83 CONFIG_BLK_DEV_BSG
84
45a582d5 85 Required for PrivateNetwork= in service units:
13468826 86 CONFIG_NET_NS
b52a4a3b 87 Note that systemd-localed.service and other systemd units use
45a582d5 88 PrivateNetwork so this is effectively required.
13468826 89
0ca48bb0 90 Required for PrivateUsers= in service units:
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91 CONFIG_USER_NS
92
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93 Optional but strongly recommended:
94 CONFIG_IPV6
0c651d32 95 CONFIG_AUTOFS_FS
713bc0cf 96 CONFIG_TMPFS_XATTR
0ceced3d 97 CONFIG_{TMPFS,EXT4_FS,XFS,BTRFS_FS,...}_POSIX_ACL
f28cbd03 98 CONFIG_SECCOMP
fd74fa79 99 CONFIG_SECCOMP_FILTER (required for seccomp support)
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100 CONFIG_KCMP (for the kcmp() syscall, used to be under
101 CONFIG_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE before ~5.12)
713bc0cf 102
12801295 103 Required for CPUShares= in resource control unit settings:
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104 CONFIG_CGROUP_SCHED
105 CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED
106
12801295 107 Required for CPUQuota= in resource control unit settings:
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108 CONFIG_CFS_BANDWIDTH
109
c3080258 110 Required for IPAddressDeny=, IPAddressAllow=, IPIngressFilterPath=,
12801295 111 IPEgressFilterPath= in resource control unit settings unit settings:
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112 CONFIG_BPF
113 CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL
114 CONFIG_BPF_JIT
115 CONFIG_HAVE_EBPF_JIT
116 CONFIG_CGROUP_BPF
117
43689840 118 Required for SocketBind{Allow|Deny}=, RestrictNetworkInterfaces= in
12801295 119 resource control unit settings:
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120 CONFIG_BPF
121 CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL
122 CONFIG_BPF_JIT
123 CONFIG_HAVE_EBPF_JIT
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124 CONFIG_CGROUP_BPF
125
f28cbd03 126 For UEFI systems:
f33016ff 127 CONFIG_EFIVAR_FS
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128 CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION
129
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130 Required for signed Verity images support:
131 CONFIG_DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG
132
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133 Required for RestrictFileSystems= in service units:
134 CONFIG_BPF
135 CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL
136 CONFIG_BPF_LSM
137 CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF
138 CONFIG_LSM="...,bpf" or kernel booted with lsm="...,bpf".
139
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140 We recommend to turn off Real-Time group scheduling in the kernel when
141 using systemd. RT group scheduling effectively makes RT scheduling
142 unavailable for most userspace, since it requires explicit assignment of
143 RT budgets to each unit whose processes making use of RT. As there's no
144 sensible way to assign these budgets automatically this cannot really be
145 fixed, and it's best to disable group scheduling hence:
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146 CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED=n
147
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148 It's a good idea to disable the implicit creation of networking bonding
149 devices by the kernel networking bonding module, so that the
150 automatically created "bond0" interface doesn't conflict with any such
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151 device created by systemd-networkd (or other tools). Ideally there would
152 be a kernel compile-time option for this, but there currently isn't. The
153 next best thing is to make this change through a modprobe.d drop-in.
154 This is shipped by default, see modprobe.d/systemd.conf.
f5a93d5d 155
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156 Required for systemd-nspawn:
157 CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES or Linux kernel >= 4.7
158
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159 Required for systemd-oomd:
160 CONFIG_PSI
161
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162 Note that kernel auditing is broken when used with systemd's container
163 code. When using systemd in conjunction with containers, please make
164 sure to either turn off auditing at runtime using the kernel command
165 line option "audit=0", or turn it off at kernel compile time using:
77b6e194 166 CONFIG_AUDIT=n
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167 If systemd is compiled with libseccomp support on architectures which do
168 not use socketcall() and where seccomp is supported (this effectively
169 means x86-64 and ARM, but excludes 32-bit x86!), then nspawn will now
170 install a work-around seccomp filter that makes containers boot even
171 with audit being enabled. This works correctly only on kernels 3.14 and
172 newer though. TL;DR: turn audit off, still.
77b6e194 173
3dd26f3e 174 glibc >= 2.16
3ede835a 175 libcap
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176 libmount >= 2.30 (from util-linux)
177 (util-linux *must* be built without --enable-libmount-support-mtab)
6abfd303 178 libseccomp >= 2.3.1 (optional)
d47f6ca5 179 libblkid >= 2.24 (from util-linux) (optional)
a18535d9 180 libkmod >= 15 (optional)
3ede835a 181 PAM >= 1.1.2 (optional)
c2923fdc 182 libcryptsetup (optional), >= 2.3.0 required for signed Verity images support
3ede835a 183 libaudit (optional)
19d5d4cb 184 libacl (optional)
c3080258 185 libbpf >= 0.2.0 (optional)
baec7d78 186 libfdisk >= 2.32 (from util-linux) (optional)
3ede835a 187 libselinux (optional)
19d5d4cb 188 liblzma (optional)
e0a1d4b0 189 liblz4 >= 1.3.0 / 130 (optional)
ef5924aa 190 libzstd >= 1.4.0 (optional)
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191 libgcrypt (optional)
192 libqrencode (optional)
193 libmicrohttpd (optional)
2cc86f09 194 libpython (optional)
87057e24 195 libidn2 or libidn (optional)
38e053c5 196 gnutls >= 3.1.4 (optional, >= 3.6.0 is required to support DNS-over-TLS with gnutls)
096cbdce 197 openssl >= 1.1.0 (optional, required to support DNS-over-TLS with openssl)
5b244719 198 elfutils >= 158 (optional)
d79a2f5f 199 polkit (optional)
781748af 200 tzdata >= 2014f (optional)
72cdb3e7 201 pkg-config
8f968c73 202 gperf
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203 docbook-xsl (optional, required for documentation)
204 xsltproc (optional, required for documentation)
e0698c66 205 python-jinja2
72cdb3e7 206 python-lxml (optional, required to build the indices)
40f116f5 207 python >= 3.5
e8a68817 208 meson >= 0.53.2
40f116f5 209 ninja
bab5d847 210 gcc >= 4.7
211 awk, sed, grep, and similar tools
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212 clang >= 10.0, llvm >= 10.0 (optional, required to build BPF programs
213 from source code in C)
53f69d67 214 gnu-efi >= 3.0.5 (optional, required for systemd-boot)
2cc86f09 215
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216 During runtime, you need the following additional
217 dependencies:
2cc86f09 218
1d40ddbf 219 util-linux >= v2.27.1 required
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220 dbus >= 1.4.0 (strictly speaking optional, but recommended)
221 NOTE: If using dbus < 1.9.18, you should override the default
222 policy directory (--with-dbuspolicydir=/etc/dbus-1/system.d).
2cc86f09 223 dracut (optional)
d35f51ea 224 polkit (optional)
3ede835a 225
3e609a8a 226 To build in directory build/:
e8a68817 227 meson setup build/ && ninja -C build/
3e609a8a 228
5238e957 229 Any configuration options can be specified as -Darg=value... arguments
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230 to meson. After the build directory is initially configured, meson will
231 refuse to run again, and options must be changed with:
5adfb06d 232 meson configure -Darg=value build/
233 meson configure without any arguments will print out available options and
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234 their current values.
235
236 Useful commands:
e8a68817 237 ninja -C build -v some/target
8b08be40 238 meson test -C build/
ead7e86d 239 sudo meson install -C build/ --no-rebuild
8b08be40 240 DESTDIR=... meson install -C build/
3e609a8a 241
72cdb3e7 242 A tarball can be created with:
3983fc02 243 v=250 && git archive --prefix=systemd-$v/ v$v | zstd >systemd-$v.tar.zstd
82627069 244
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245 When systemd-hostnamed is used, it is strongly recommended to install
246 nss-myhostname to ensure that, in a world of dynamically changing
247 hostnames, the hostname stays resolvable under all circumstances. In
248 fact, systemd-hostnamed will warn if nss-myhostname is not installed.
fff2e5b5 249
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250 nss-systemd must be enabled on systemd systems, as that's required for
251 DynamicUser= to work. Note that we ship services out-of-the-box that
252 make use of DynamicUser= now, hence enabling nss-systemd is not
253 optional.
254
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255 Note that the build prefix for systemd must be /usr. (Moreover, packages
256 systemd relies on — such as D-Bus — really should use the same prefix,
257 otherwise you are on your own.) -Dsplit-usr=false (which is the default
258 and does not need to be specified) is the recommended setting.
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259 -Dsplit-usr=true can be used to give a semblance of support for systems
260 with programs installed split between / and /usr. Moving everything
261 under /usr is strongly encouraged.
01c8938e 262
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263 Additional packages are necessary to run some tests:
264 - busybox (used by test/TEST-13-NSPAWN-SMOKE)
265 - nc (used by test/TEST-12-ISSUE-3171)
266 - python3-pyparsing
267 - python3-evdev (used by hwdb parsing tests)
268 - strace (used by test/test-functions)
e94681ad 269 - capsh (optional, used by test-execute)
a2fc3d87 270
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271POLICY FOR SUPPORT OF DISTRIBUTIONS AND ARCHITECTURES:
272
273 systemd main branch and latest major or stable releases are generally
274 expected to compile on current versions of popular distributions (at
275 least all non-EOL versions of Fedora, Debian unstable/testing/stable,
276 latest Ubuntu LTS and non-LTS releases, openSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap,
b16e93d7 277 CentOS Stream 8 and 9, up-to-date Arch, etc.) We will generally
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278 attempt to support also other non-EOL versions of various distros.
279 Features which would break compilation on slightly-older distributions
280 will only be introduced if there are significant reasons for this
281 (i.e. supporting them interferes with development or requires too many
282 resources to support). In some cases backports of specific libraries or
283 tools might be required.
284
285 The policy is similar wrt. architecture support. systemd is regularly
286 tested on popular architectures (currently amd64, i386, arm64, ppc64el,
287 and s390x), but should compile and work also on other architectures, for
288 which support has been added. systemd will emit warnings when
289 architecture-specific constants are not defined.
290
a24c64f0 291USERS AND GROUPS:
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292 Default udev rules use the following standard system group names, which
293 need to be resolvable by getgrnam() at any time, even in the very early
294 boot stages, where no other databases and network are available:
37495eed 295
2422bd21 296 audio, cdrom, dialout, disk, input, kmem, kvm, lp, render, tape, tty, video
37c0e8f3 297
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298 During runtime, the journal daemon requires the "systemd-journal" system
299 group to exist. New journal files will be readable by this group (but
300 not writable), which may be used to grant specific users read access. In
301 addition, system groups "wheel" and "adm" will be given read-only access
302 to journal files using systemd-tmpfiles.service.
a24c64f0 303
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304 The journal remote daemon requires the "systemd-journal-remote" system
305 user and group to exist. During execution this network facing service
306 will drop privileges and assume this uid/gid for security reasons.
37495eed 307
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308 Similarly, the network management daemon requires the "systemd-network"
309 system user and group to exist.
323a2f0b 310
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311 Similarly, the name resolution daemon requires the "systemd-resolve"
312 system user and group to exist.
323a2f0b 313
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314 Similarly, the coredump support requires the "systemd-coredump" system
315 user and group to exist.
888e378d 316
a4a79605 317NSS:
409093fe 318 systemd ships with four glibc NSS modules:
a4a79605 319
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320 nss-myhostname resolves the local hostname to locally configured IP
321 addresses, as well as "localhost" to 127.0.0.1/::1.
a4a79605 322
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323 nss-resolve enables DNS resolution via the systemd-resolved DNS/LLMNR
324 caching stub resolver "systemd-resolved".
a4a79605 325
409093fe 326 nss-mymachines enables resolution of all local containers registered
38ccb557 327 with machined to their respective IP addresses.
a4a79605 328
38ccb557 329 nss-systemd enables resolution of users/group registered via the
1d10005b 330 User/Group Record Lookup API (https://systemd.io/USER_GROUP_API),
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331 including all dynamically allocated service users. (See the
332 DynamicUser= setting in unit files.)
a4a79605 333
409093fe 334 To make use of these NSS modules, please add them to the "hosts:",
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335 "passwd:" and "group:" lines in /etc/nsswitch.conf. The "resolve" module
336 should replace the glibc "dns" module in this file (and don't worry, it
337 chain-loads the "dns" module if it can't talk to resolved).
a4a79605 338
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339 The four modules should be used in the following order:
340
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341 passwd: compat systemd
342 group: compat systemd
a42d4f57 343 hosts: files mymachines resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns myhostname
a4a79605 344
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345SYSV INIT.D SCRIPTS:
346 When calling "systemctl enable/disable/is-enabled" on a unit which is a
347 SysV init.d script, it calls /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install;
348 this needs to translate the action into the distribution specific
349 mechanism such as chkconfig or update-rc.d. Packagers need to provide
350 this script if you need this functionality (you don't if you disabled
351 SysV init support).
352
353 Please see src/systemctl/systemd-sysv-install.SKELETON for how this
354 needs to look like, and provide an implementation at the marked places.
355
88a3af94 356WARNINGS and TAINT FLAGS:
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357 systemd will warn during early boot if /usr is not already mounted at
358 this point (that means: either located on the same file system as / or
359 already mounted in the initrd). While in systemd itself very little
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360 will break if /usr is on a separate late-mounted partition, many of its
361 dependencies very likely will break sooner or later in one form or
9e93f6f0 362 another. For example, udev rules tend to refer to binaries in /usr,
8bf9eb7e 363 binaries that link to libraries in /usr, or binaries that refer to data
9e93f6f0 364 files in /usr. Since these breakages are not always directly visible,
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365 systemd will warn about this. Such setups are not really supported by
366 the basic set of Linux OS components. Taint flag 'split-usr' will be
367 set when this condition is detected.
47bc23c1 368
aa167132 369 For more information on this issue consult
c6749ba5 370 https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
aa167132 371
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372 systemd will warn if the filesystem is not usr-merged (i.e.: /bin, /sbin
373 and /lib* are not symlinks to their counterparts under /usr). Taint flag
374 'unmerged-usr' will be set when this condition is detected.
375
376 For more information on this issue consult
377 https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge
378
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379 systemd requires that the /run mount point exists. systemd also
380 requires that /var/run is a symlink to /run. Taint flag 'var-run-bad'
381 will be set when this condition is detected.
382
383 Systemd will also warn when the cgroup support is unavailable in the
384 kernel (taint flag 'cgroups-missing'), the system is using the old
385 cgroup hierarchy (taint flag 'cgroupsv1'), the hardware clock is
386 running in non-UTC mode (taint flag 'local-hwclock'), the kernel
387 overflow UID or GID are not 65534 (taint flags 'overflowuid-not-65534'
388 and 'overflowgid-not-65534'), the UID or GID range assigned to the
389 running systemd instance covers less than 0…65534 (taint flags
390 'short-uid-range' and 'short-gid-range').
391
392 Taint conditions are logged during boot, but may also be checked at any
393 time with:
394
395 busctl get-property org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager Tainted
396
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397 See org.freedesktop.systemd1(5) for more information.
398
88a3af94 399VALGRIND:
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400 To run systemd under valgrind, compile with meson option
401 -Dvalgrind=true and have valgrind development headers installed
402 (i.e. valgrind-devel or equivalent). Otherwise, false positives will be
403 triggered by code which violates some rules but is actually safe. Note
404 that valgrind generates nice output only on exit(), hence on shutdown
405 we don't execve() systemd-shutdown.
2b671e95 406
ba9e3fc4 407STABLE BRANCHES AND BACKPORTS:
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408 Stable branches with backported patches are available in the
409 systemd-stable repo at https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable.
410
411 Stable branches are started for certain releases of systemd and named
412 after them, e.g. v238-stable. Stable branches are managed by
413 distribution maintainers on an as needed basis. See
a25d9395 414 https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Backports for some
bfeb370a 415 more information and examples.