NAME
systemd.generator - systemd unit generatorsSYNOPSIS
/path/to/generator
normal-dir [early-dir] [late-dir]
/run/systemd/system-generators/* /etc/systemd/system-generators/* /usr/local/lib/systemd/system-generators/* /lib/systemd/system-generators/*
/run/systemd/user-generators/* /etc/systemd/user-generators/* /usr/local/lib/systemd/user-generators/* /usr/lib/systemd/user-generators/*
DESCRIPTION
Generators are small executables placed in /lib/systemd/system-generators/ and other directories listed above. systemd(1) will execute these binaries very early at bootup and at configuration reload time — before unit files are loaded. Their main purpose is to convert configuration and execution context parameters that are not native to the service manager into dynamically generated unit files, symlinks or unit file drop-ins, so that they can extend the unit file hierarchy the service manager subsequently loads and operates on. systemd will call each generator with three directory paths that are to be used for generator output. In these three directories, generators may dynamically generate unit files (regular ones, instances, as well as templates), unit file .d/ drop-ins, and create symbolic links to unit files to add additional dependencies, create aliases, or instantiate existing templates. Those directories are included in the unit load path, allowing generated configuration to extend or override existing definitions. For tests, generators may be called with just one argument; the generator should assume that all three paths are the same in that case. Directory paths for generator output differ by priority: .../generator.early has priority higher than the admin configuration in /etc/, while .../generator has lower priority than /etc/ but higher than vendor configuration in /usr/, and .../generator.late has priority lower than all other configuration. See the next section and the discussion of unit load paths and unit overriding in systemd.unit(5). Generators are loaded from a set of paths determined during compilation, as listed above. System and user generators are loaded from directories with names ending in system-generators/ and user-generators/, respectively. Generators found in directories listed earlier override the ones with the same name in directories lower in the list. A symlink to /dev/null or an empty file can be used to mask a generator, thereby preventing it from running. Please note that the order of the two directories with the highest priority is reversed with respect to the unit load path, and generators in /run/ overwrite those in /etc/. After installing new generators or updating the configuration, systemctl daemon-reload may be executed. This will delete the previous configuration created by generators, re-run all generators, and cause systemd to reload units from disk. See systemctl(1) for more information.OUTPUT DIRECTORIES
Generators are invoked with three arguments: paths to directories where generators can place their generated unit files or symlinks. By default those paths are runtime directories that are included in the search path of systemd, but a generator may be called with different paths for debugging purposes. If only one argument is provided, the generator should use the same directory as the the three output paths. 1.normal-dir
In normal use this is /run/systemd/generator in case of the system generators
and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/systemd/generator in case of the user generators. Unit
files placed in this directory take precedence over vendor unit configuration
but not over native user/administrator unit configuration.
2.early-dir
In normal use this is /run/systemd/generator.early in case of the system
generators and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/systemd/generator.early in case of the user
generators. Unit files placed in this directory override unit files in /usr/,
/run/ and /etc/. This means that unit files placed in this directory take
precedence over all normal configuration, both vendor and
user/administrator.
3.late-dir
In normal use this is /run/systemd/generator.late in case of the system
generators and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/systemd/generator.late in case of the user
generators. This directory may be used to extend the unit file tree without
overriding any other unit files. Any native configuration files supplied by
the vendor or user/administrator take precedence.
ENVIRONMENT
The service manager sets a number of environment variables when invoking generator executables. They carry information about the execution context of the generator, in order to simplify conditionalizing generators to specific environments. The following environment variables are set: $SYSTEMD_SCOPEIf the generator is invoked from the system
service manager this variable is set to "system"; if invoked from
the per-user service manager it is set to "user".
$SYSTEMD_IN_INITRD
If the generator is run as part of an initrd
this is set to "1". If it is run from the regular host (i.e. after
the transition from initrd to host) it is set to "0". This
environment variable is only set for system generators.
$SYSTEMD_FIRST_BOOT
If this boot-up cycle is considered a
"first boot", this is set to "1"; if it is a subsequent,
regular boot it is set to "0". For details see the documentation of
ConditionFirstBoot= in systemd.unit(5). This environment
variable is only set for system generators.
$SYSTEMD_VIRTUALIZATION
If the service manager is run in a virtualized
environment, $SYSTEMD_VIRTUALIZATION is set to a pair of strings,
separated by a colon. The first string is either "vm" or
"container", categorizing the type of virtualization. The second
string identifies the implementation of the virtualization technology. If no
virtualization is detected this variable will not be set. This data is
identical to what systemd-detect-virt(1) detects and reports, and uses
the same vocabulary of virtualization implementation identifiers.
$SYSTEMD_ARCHITECTURE
This variable is set to a short identifier of
the reported architecture of the system. For details about defined values, see
documentation of ConditionArchitecture= in
systemd.unit(5).
NOTES ABOUT WRITING GENERATORS
•All generators are executed in
parallel. That means all executables are started at the very same time and
need to be able to cope with this parallelism.
•Generators are run very early at boot
and cannot rely on any external services. They may not talk to any other
process. That includes simple things such as logging to syslog(3), or
systemd itself (this means: no systemctl(1))! Non-essential file
systems like /var/ and /home/ are mounted after generators have run.
Generators can however rely on the most basic kernel functionality to be
available, as well as mounted /sys/, /proc/, /dev/, /usr/ and /run/ file
systems.
•Units written by generators are
removed when the configuration is reloaded. That means the lifetime of the
generated units is closely bound to the reload cycles of systemd
itself.
•Generators should only be used to
generate unit files, .d/*.conf drop-ins for them and symlinks to them, not any
other kind of non-unit related configuration. Due to the lifecycle logic
mentioned above, generators are not a good fit to generate dynamic
configuration for other services. If you need to generate dynamic
configuration for other services, do so in normal services you order before
the service in question.
Note that using the StandardInputData=/StandardInputText= settings
of service unit files (see systemd.exec(5)), it is possible to make
arbitrary input data (including daemon-specific configuration) part of the
unit definitions, which often might be sufficient to embed data or
configuration for other programs into unit files in a native fashion.
•Since syslog(3) is not
available (see above), log messages have to be written to /dev/kmsg
instead.
•The generator should always include
its own name in a comment at the top of the generated file, so that the user
can easily figure out which component created or amended a particular unit.
The SourcePath= directive should be used in generated files to specify
the source configuration file they are generated from. This makes things more
easily understood by the user and also has the benefit that systemd can warn
the user about configuration files that changed on disk but have not been read
yet by systemd. The SourcePath= value does not have to be a file in a
physical filesystem. For example, in the common case of the generator looking
at the kernel command line, SourcePath=/proc/cmdline should be
used.
•Generators may write out dynamic unit
files or just hook unit files into other units with the usual .wants/ or
.requires/ symlinks. Often, it is nicer to simply instantiate a template unit
file from /usr/ with a generator instead of writing out entirely dynamic unit
files. Of course, this works only if a single parameter is to be used.
•If you are careful, you can implement
generators in shell scripts. We do recommend C code however, since generators
are executed synchronously and hence delay the entire boot if they are
slow.
•Regarding overriding semantics: there
are two rules we try to follow when thinking about the overriding semantics:
Of these two rules the first rule is probably the more important one and breaks
the second one sometimes. Hence, when deciding whether to use argv[1],
argv[2], or argv[3], your default choice should probably be argv[1].
1.User configuration should override vendor
configuration. This (mostly) means that stuff from /etc/ should override stuff
from /usr/.
2.Native configuration should override
non-native configuration. This (mostly) means that stuff you generate should
never override native unit files for the same purpose.
•Instead of heading off now and writing
all kind of generators for legacy configuration file formats, please think
twice! It is often a better idea to just deprecate old stuff instead of
keeping it artificially alive.
EXAMPLES
Example 1. systemd-fstab-generator systemd-fstab-generator(8) converts /etc/fstab into native mount units. It uses argv[1] as location to place the generated unit files in order to allow the user to override /etc/fstab with their own native unit files, but also to ensure that /etc/fstab overrides any vendor default from /usr/. After editing /etc/fstab, the user should invoke systemctl daemon-reload. This will re-run all generators and cause systemd to reload units from disk. To actually mount new directories added to fstab, systemctl start /path/to/mountpoint or systemctl start local-fs.target may be used. Example 2. systemd-system-update-generator systemd-system-update-generator(8) temporarily redirects default.target to system-update.target, if a system update is scheduled. Since this needs to override the default user configuration for default.target, it uses argv[2]. For details about this logic, see systemd.offline-updates(7). Example 3. Debugging a generatordir=$(mktemp -d) SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug /lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-fstab-generator \ "$dir" "$dir" "$dir" find $dir
SEE ALSO
systemd(1), systemd-cryptsetup-generator(8), systemd-debug-generator(8), systemd-fstab-generator(8), fstab(5), systemd-getty-generator(8), systemd-gpt-auto-generator(8), systemd-hibernate-resume-generator(8), systemd-rc-local-generator(8), systemd-system-update-generator(8), systemd-sysv-generator(8), systemd-xdg-autostart-generator(8), systemd.unit(5), systemctl(1), systemd.environment-generator(7)systemd 252 |