README

   1 systemd System and Service Manager
   2
   3 WEB SITE:
   4         https://systemd.io
   5
   6 GIT:
   7         git@github.com:systemd/systemd.git
   8         https://github.com/systemd/systemd
   9
  10 MAILING LIST:
  11         https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
  12
  13 IRC:
  14         #systemd on irc.libera.chat
  15
  16 BUG REPORTS:
  17         https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues
  18
  19 OLDER DOCUMENTATION:
  20         https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html
  21         https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd
  22
  23 AUTHOR:
  24         Lennart Poettering
  25         Kay Sievers
  26         ...and many others
  27
  28 LICENSE:
  29         LGPL-2.1-or-later for all code, exceptions noted in LICENSES/README.md
  30
  31 REQUIREMENTS:
  32         Linux kernel ≥ 3.15
  33                      ≥ 4.3 for ambient capabilities
  34                      ≥ 4.5 for pids controller in cgroup v2
  35                      ≥ 4.6 for cgroup namespaces
  36                      ≥ 4.9 for RENAME_NOREPLACE support in vfat
  37                      ≥ 4.10 for cgroup-bpf egress and ingress hooks
  38                      ≥ 4.15 for cgroup-bpf device hook and cpu controller in cgroup v2
  39                      ≥ 4.17 for cgroup-bpf socket address hooks
  40                      ≥ 4.20 for PSI (used by systemd-oomd)
  41                      ≥ 5.3 for bounded loops in BPF program
  42                      ≥ 5.4 for signed Verity images
  43                      ≥ 5.7 for BPF links and the BPF LSM hook
  44
  45         ⛔ Kernel versions below 3.15 ("minimum baseline") are not supported at
  46         all, and are missing required functionality (e.g. CLOCK_BOOTTIME
  47         support for timerfd_create()).
  48
  49         ⚠️ Kernel versions below 4.15 ("recommended baseline") have significant
  50         gaps in functionality and are not recommended for use with this version
  51         of systemd (e.g. lack sufficiently comprehensive and working cgroupv2
  52         support). Taint flag 'old-kernel' will be set. systemd will most likely
  53         still function, but upstream support and testing are limited.
  54
  55         Kernel Config Options:
  56           CONFIG_DEVTMPFS
  57           CONFIG_CGROUPS (it is OK to disable all controllers)
  58           CONFIG_INOTIFY_USER
  59           CONFIG_SIGNALFD
  60           CONFIG_TIMERFD
  61           CONFIG_EPOLL
  62           CONFIG_UNIX (it requires CONFIG_NET, but every other flag in it is not necessary)
  63           CONFIG_SYSFS
  64           CONFIG_PROC_FS
  65           CONFIG_FHANDLE (libudev, mount and bind mount handling)
  66
  67         udev will fail to work with the legacy sysfs layout:
  68           CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=n
  69
  70         Legacy hotplug slows down the system and confuses udev:
  71           CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH=""
  72
  73         Userspace firmware loading is not supported and should be disabled in
  74         the kernel:
  75           CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER=n
  76
  77         Some udev rules and virtualization detection relies on it:
  78           CONFIG_DMIID
  79
  80         Support for some SCSI devices serial number retrieval, to create
  81         additional symlinks in /dev/disk/ and /dev/tape:
  82           CONFIG_BLK_DEV_BSG
  83
  84         Required for PrivateNetwork= in service units:
  85           CONFIG_NET_NS
  86         Note that systemd-localed.service and other systemd units use
  87         PrivateNetwork so this is effectively required.
  88
  89         Required for PrivateUsers= in service units:
  90           CONFIG_USER_NS
  91
  92         Optional but strongly recommended:
  93           CONFIG_IPV6
  94           CONFIG_AUTOFS_FS
  95           CONFIG_TMPFS_XATTR
  96           CONFIG_{TMPFS,EXT4_FS,XFS,BTRFS_FS,...}_POSIX_ACL
  97           CONFIG_SECCOMP
  98           CONFIG_SECCOMP_FILTER (required for seccomp support)
  99           CONFIG_KCMP (for the kcmp() syscall, used to be under
 100                        CONFIG_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE before ~5.12)
 101
 102         Required for CPUShares= in resource control unit settings:
 103           CONFIG_CGROUP_SCHED
 104           CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED
 105
 106         Required for CPUQuota= in resource control unit settings:
 107           CONFIG_CFS_BANDWIDTH
 108
 109         Required for IPAddressDeny=, IPAddressAllow=, IPIngressFilterPath=,
 110         IPEgressFilterPath= in resource control unit settings unit settings:
 111           CONFIG_BPF
 112           CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL
 113           CONFIG_BPF_JIT
 114           CONFIG_HAVE_EBPF_JIT
 115           CONFIG_CGROUP_BPF
 116
 117         Required for SocketBind{Allow|Deny}=, RestrictNetworkInterfaces= in
 118         resource control unit settings:
 119           CONFIG_BPF
 120           CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL
 121           CONFIG_BPF_JIT
 122           CONFIG_HAVE_EBPF_JIT
 123           CONFIG_CGROUP_BPF
 124
 125         For UEFI systems:
 126           CONFIG_EFIVAR_FS
 127           CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION
 128
 129         Required for signed Verity images support:
 130           CONFIG_DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG
 131         Required to verify signed Verity images using keys enrolled in the MoK
 132         (Machine-Owner Key) keyring:
 133           CONFIG_DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG_SECONDARY_KEYRING
 134           CONFIG_IMA_ARCH_POLICY
 135           CONFIG_INTEGRITY_MACHINE_KEYRING
 136
 137         Required for RestrictFileSystems= in service units:
 138           CONFIG_BPF
 139           CONFIG_BPF_SYSCALL
 140           CONFIG_BPF_LSM
 141           CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF
 142           CONFIG_LSM="...,bpf" or kernel booted with lsm="...,bpf".
 143
 144         We recommend to turn off Real-Time group scheduling in the kernel when
 145         using systemd. RT group scheduling effectively makes RT scheduling
 146         unavailable for most userspace, since it requires explicit assignment of
 147         RT budgets to each unit whose processes making use of RT. As there's no
 148         sensible way to assign these budgets automatically this cannot really be
 149         fixed, and it's best to disable group scheduling hence:
 150            CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED=n
 151
 152         It's a good idea to disable the implicit creation of networking bonding
 153         devices by the kernel networking bonding module, so that the
 154         automatically created "bond0" interface doesn't conflict with any such
 155         device created by systemd-networkd (or other tools). Ideally there would
 156         be a kernel compile-time option for this, but there currently isn't. The
 157         next best thing is to make this change through a modprobe.d drop-in.
 158         This is shipped by default, see modprobe.d/systemd.conf.
 159
 160         Required for systemd-nspawn:
 161           CONFIG_DEVPTS_MULTIPLE_INSTANCES or Linux kernel >= 4.7
 162
 163         Required for systemd-oomd:
 164           CONFIG_PSI
 165
 166         Note that kernel auditing is broken when used with systemd's container
 167         code. When using systemd in conjunction with containers, please make
 168         sure to either turn off auditing at runtime using the kernel command
 169         line option "audit=0", or turn it off at kernel compile time using:
 170           CONFIG_AUDIT=n
 171         If systemd is compiled with libseccomp support on architectures which do
 172         not use socketcall() and where seccomp is supported (this effectively
 173         means x86-64 and ARM, but excludes 32-bit x86!), then nspawn will now
 174         install a work-around seccomp filter that makes containers boot even
 175         with audit being enabled. This works correctly only on kernels 3.14 and
 176         newer though. TL;DR: turn audit off, still.
 177
 178         glibc >= 2.16
 179         libcap
 180         libmount >= 2.30 (from util-linux)
 181                 (util-linux *must* be built without --enable-libmount-support-mtab)
 182         libseccomp >= 2.3.1 (optional)
 183         libblkid >= 2.24 (from util-linux) (optional)
 184         libkmod >= 15 (optional)
 185         PAM >= 1.1.2 (optional)
 186         libcryptsetup (optional), >= 2.3.0 required for signed Verity images support
 187         libaudit (optional)
 188         libacl (optional)
 189         libbpf >= 0.1.0 (optional)
 190         libfdisk >= 2.32 (from util-linux) (optional)
 191         libselinux (optional)
 192         liblzma (optional)
 193         liblz4 >= 1.3.0 / 130 (optional)
 194         libzstd >= 1.4.0 (optional)
 195         libgcrypt (optional)
 196         libqrencode (optional)
 197         libmicrohttpd (optional)
 198         libpython (optional)
 199         libidn2 or libidn (optional)
 200         gnutls >= 3.1.4 (optional, >= 3.6.0 is required to support DNS-over-TLS with gnutls)
 201         openssl >= 1.1.0 (optional, required to support DNS-over-TLS with openssl)
 202         elfutils >= 158 (optional)
 203         polkit (optional)
 204         tzdata >= 2014f (optional)
 205         pkg-config
 206         gperf
 207         docbook-xsl (optional, required for documentation)
 208         xsltproc    (optional, required for documentation)
 209         python-jinja2
 210         python-pefile
 211         python-lxml (optional, required to build the indices)
 212         python >= 3.5
 213         meson >= 0.53.2
 214         ninja
 215         gcc >= 4.7
 216         awk, sed, grep, and similar tools
 217         clang >= 10.0, llvm >= 10.0 (optional, required to build BPF programs
 218                 from source code in C)
 219         gnu-efi >= 3.0.5 (optional, required for systemd-boot)
 220
 221         During runtime, you need the following additional
 222         dependencies:
 223
 224         util-linux >= v2.27.1 required
 225         dbus >= 1.4.0 (strictly speaking optional, but recommended)
 226                 NOTE: If using dbus < 1.9.18, you should override the default
 227                 policy directory (--with-dbuspolicydir=/etc/dbus-1/system.d).
 228         dracut (optional)
 229         polkit (optional)
 230
 231         To build in directory build/:
 232           meson setup build/ && ninja -C build/
 233
 234         Any configuration options can be specified as -Darg=value... arguments
 235         to meson. After the build directory is initially configured, meson will
 236         refuse to run again, and options must be changed with:
 237           meson configure -Darg=value build/
 238         meson configure without any arguments will print out available options and
 239         their current values.
 240
 241         Useful commands:
 242           ninja -C build -v some/target
 243           meson test -C build/
 244           sudo meson install -C build/ --no-rebuild
 245           DESTDIR=... meson install -C build/
 246
 247         A tarball can be created with:
 248           v=250 && git archive --prefix=systemd-$v/ v$v | zstd >systemd-$v.tar.zstd
 249
 250         When systemd-hostnamed is used, it is strongly recommended to install
 251         nss-myhostname to ensure that, in a world of dynamically changing
 252         hostnames, the hostname stays resolvable under all circumstances. In
 253         fact, systemd-hostnamed will warn if nss-myhostname is not installed.
 254
 255         nss-systemd must be enabled on systemd systems, as that's required for
 256         DynamicUser= to work. Note that we ship services out-of-the-box that
 257         make use of DynamicUser= now, hence enabling nss-systemd is not
 258         optional.
 259
 260         Note that the build prefix for systemd must be /usr. (Moreover, packages
 261         systemd relies on — such as D-Bus — really should use the same prefix,
 262         otherwise you are on your own.) -Dsplit-usr=false (which is the default
 263         and does not need to be specified) is the recommended setting.
 264         -Dsplit-usr=true can be used to give a semblance of support for systems
 265         with programs installed split between / and /usr. Moving everything
 266         under /usr is strongly encouraged.
 267
 268         Additional packages are necessary to run some tests:
 269         - busybox            (used by test/TEST-13-NSPAWN-SMOKE)
 270         - nc                 (used by test/TEST-12-ISSUE-3171)
 271         - python3-pyparsing
 272         - python3-evdev      (used by hwdb parsing tests)
 273         - strace             (used by test/test-functions)
 274         - capsh              (optional, used by test-execute)
 275
 276 POLICY FOR SUPPORT OF DISTRIBUTIONS AND ARCHITECTURES:
 277         systemd main branch and latest major or stable releases are generally
 278         expected to compile on current versions of popular distributions (at
 279         least all non-EOL versions of Fedora, Debian unstable/testing/stable,
 280         latest Ubuntu LTS and non-LTS releases, openSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap,
 281         CentOS Stream 8 and 9, up-to-date Arch, etc.)  We will generally
 282         attempt to support also other non-EOL versions of various distros.
 283         Features which would break compilation on slightly-older distributions
 284         will only be introduced if there are significant reasons for this
 285         (i.e. supporting them interferes with development or requires too many
 286         resources to support). In some cases backports of specific libraries or
 287         tools might be required.
 288
 289         The policy is similar wrt. architecture support. systemd is regularly
 290         tested on popular architectures (currently amd64, i386, arm64, ppc64el,
 291         and s390x), but should compile and work also on other architectures, for
 292         which support has been added. systemd will emit warnings when
 293         architecture-specific constants are not defined.
 294
 295 USERS AND GROUPS:
 296         Default udev rules use the following standard system group names, which
 297         need to be resolvable by getgrnam() at any time, even in the very early
 298         boot stages, where no other databases and network are available:
 299
 300         audio, cdrom, dialout, disk, input, kmem, kvm, lp, render, tape, tty, video
 301
 302         During runtime, the journal daemon requires the "systemd-journal" system
 303         group to exist. New journal files will be readable by this group (but
 304         not writable), which may be used to grant specific users read access. In
 305         addition, system groups "wheel" and "adm" will be given read-only access
 306         to journal files using systemd-tmpfiles.service.
 307
 308         The journal remote daemon requires the "systemd-journal-remote" system
 309         user and group to exist. During execution this network facing service
 310         will drop privileges and assume this uid/gid for security reasons.
 311
 312         Similarly, the network management daemon requires the "systemd-network"
 313         system user and group to exist.
 314
 315         Similarly, the name resolution daemon requires the "systemd-resolve"
 316         system user and group to exist.
 317
 318         Similarly, the coredump support requires the "systemd-coredump" system
 319         user and group to exist.
 320
 321 GLIBC NSS:
 322         systemd ships with four glibc NSS modules:
 323
 324         nss-myhostname resolves the local hostname to locally configured IP
 325         addresses, as well as "localhost" to 127.0.0.1/::1.
 326
 327         nss-resolve enables DNS resolution via the systemd-resolved DNS/LLMNR
 328         caching stub resolver "systemd-resolved".
 329
 330         nss-mymachines enables resolution of all local containers registered
 331         with machined to their respective IP addresses.
 332
 333         nss-systemd enables resolution of users/group registered via the
 334         User/Group Record Lookup API (https://systemd.io/USER_GROUP_API),
 335         including all dynamically allocated service users. (See the
 336         DynamicUser= setting in unit files.)
 337
 338         To make use of these NSS modules, please add them to the "hosts:",
 339         "passwd:" and "group:" lines in /etc/nsswitch.conf. The "resolve" module
 340         should replace the glibc "dns" module in this file (and don't worry, it
 341         chain-loads the "dns" module if it can't talk to resolved).
 342
 343         The four modules should be used in the following order:
 344
 345                 passwd: compat systemd
 346                 group: compat systemd
 347                 hosts: files mymachines resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns myhostname
 348
 349 SYSV INIT.D SCRIPTS:
 350         When calling "systemctl enable/disable/is-enabled" on a unit which is a
 351         SysV init.d script, it calls /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install;
 352         this needs to translate the action into the distribution specific
 353         mechanism such as chkconfig or update-rc.d. Packagers need to provide
 354         this script if you need this functionality (you don't if you disabled
 355         SysV init support).
 356
 357         Please see src/systemctl/systemd-sysv-install.SKELETON for how this
 358         needs to look like, and provide an implementation at the marked places.
 359
 360 WARNINGS and TAINT FLAGS:
 361         systemd will warn during early boot if /usr is not already mounted at
 362         this point (that means: either located on the same file system as / or
 363         already mounted in the initrd). While in systemd itself very little
 364         will break if /usr is on a separate late-mounted partition, many of its
 365         dependencies very likely will break sooner or later in one form or
 366         another. For example, udev rules tend to refer to binaries in /usr,
 367         binaries that link to libraries in /usr, or binaries that refer to data
 368         files in /usr. Since these breakages are not always directly visible,
 369         systemd will warn about this. Such setups are not really supported by
 370         the basic set of Linux OS components. Taint flag 'split-usr' will be
 371         set when this condition is detected.
 372
 373         For more information on this issue consult
 374         https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken
 375
 376         systemd will warn if the filesystem is not usr-merged (i.e.: /bin, /sbin
 377         and /lib* are not symlinks to their counterparts under /usr). Taint flag
 378         'unmerged-usr' will be set when this condition is detected.
 379
 380         For more information on this issue consult
 381         https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge
 382
 383         systemd requires that the /run mount point exists. systemd also
 384         requires that /var/run is a symlink to /run. Taint flag 'var-run-bad'
 385         will be set when this condition is detected.
 386
 387         Systemd will also warn when the cgroup support is unavailable in the
 388         kernel (taint flag 'cgroups-missing'), the system is using the old
 389         cgroup hierarchy (taint flag 'cgroupsv1'), the hardware clock is
 390         running in non-UTC mode (taint flag 'local-hwclock'), the kernel
 391         overflow UID or GID are not 65534 (taint flags 'overflowuid-not-65534'
 392         and 'overflowgid-not-65534'), the UID or GID range assigned to the
 393         running systemd instance covers less than 0…65534 (taint flags
 394         'short-uid-range' and 'short-gid-range').
 395
 396         Taint conditions are logged during boot, but may also be checked at any
 397         time with:
 398
 399           busctl get-property org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager Tainted
 400
 401         See org.freedesktop.systemd1(5) for more information.
 402
 403 VALGRIND:
 404         To run systemd under valgrind, compile with meson option
 405         -Dvalgrind=true and have valgrind development headers installed
 406         (i.e. valgrind-devel or equivalent). Otherwise, false positives will be
 407         triggered by code which violates some rules but is actually safe. Note
 408         that valgrind generates nice output only on exit(), hence on shutdown
 409         we don't execve() systemd-shutdown.
 410
 411 STABLE BRANCHES AND BACKPORTS:
 412         Stable branches with backported patches are available in the
 413         systemd-stable repo at https://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable.
 414
 415         Stable branches are started for certain releases of systemd and named
 416         after them, e.g. v238-stable. Stable branches are managed by
 417         distribution maintainers on an as needed basis. See
 418         https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Backports for some
 419         more information and examples.