Story 3P2 Systemd stateless systems and factory resets

Systemd stateless systems and factory resets

by
in linux on (#3P2)
Lennart is at it again, this time changing how /etc and /var are populated in a systemd system. In Linux, remember, system-wide configuration data (computer name, startup scripts, and such) are stored under the /etc directory, while all variable state data (caches, mail spools, and such) are stored under the /var directory. Both of these directories have traditionally been preserved across reboots.

With these changes one can perform a "factory reset" by simply removing these two directories and letting the system reconfigure itself with defaults or by dynamic means, such as DHCP. This idea isn't exactly new, as UNIX admins have been doing similar feats for network booting, live disks , and security conscious systems for many years. Still, though, by building it into systemd, wiping the installation to a clean state and maintaining a "stateless" system by default could get a lot easier in future distributions.
Reply 2 comments

Great feature (Score: 1)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2014-06-18 04:07 (#25E)

Seems like it's pretty obvious, but it's been a long time coming. Nice.

Classic vs Modern (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-06-18 09:48 (#25H)

And now, via the bitching, we'll see who likes Linux because of its 'classic Unix goodness' and who wants to see radical innovation. I'm currently not sure which I prefer. A lot of recent changes have kind of annoyed me. Systemd doesn't impress me that much because I liked the original init.d architecture, I understood it, and it works. That said, it's nice when I boot up a Mac and am at a log-in screen in just a few seconds. Can't have it both ways, and part of the problem is expectations - I don't expect my Linux box to boot up quickly, so it doesn't annoy me if it doesn't. If Linux keeps getting radical this way, I might just switch to FreeBSD on the desktop though (PC-BSD is awesome: nice way to get BSD on a desktop, though it's wonky on laptop hardware). BSD has no pretentions of doing this radical sort of stuff, as far as I can tell, making it more suitable for those of us who like *nix the way it is. Or something like that.