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</style><a href="index.html">Index </a>·
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<a href="../libudev/index.html">gudev </a><span style="float:right">systemd 219</span><hr><div class="refentry"><a name="systemd.generator"></a><div class="titlepage"></div><div class="refnamediv"><h2>Name</h2><p>systemd.generator — Systemd unit generators</p></div><div class="refsynopsisdiv"><h2>Synopsis</h2><div class="cmdsynopsis"><p><code class="command">/path/to/generator</code> <em class="replaceable"><code>normal-dir</code></em> <em class="replaceable"><code>early-dir</code></em> <em class="replaceable"><code>late-dir</code></em> </p></div><p>
</p><div class="literallayout"><p><code class="filename">/run/systemd/system-generators/*</code><br>
<code class="filename">/etc/systemd/system-generators/*</code><br>
<code class="filename">/usr/local/lib/systemd/system-generators/*</code><br>
<code class="filename">/usr/lib/systemd/system-generators/*</code></p></div><p>
</p><p>
</p><div class="literallayout"><p><code class="filename">/run/systemd/user-generators/*</code><br>
<code class="filename">/etc/systemd/user-generators/*</code><br>
<code class="filename">/usr/local/lib/systemd/user-generators/*</code><br>
<code class="filename">/usr/lib/systemd/user-generators/*</code></p></div><p>
</p></div><div class="refsect1"><a name="idm140270263216512"></a><h2 id="Description">Description<a class="headerlink" title="Permalink to this headline" href="#Description"></a></h2><p>Generators are small binaries that live in
<code class="filename">/usr/lib/systemd/user-generators/</code> and other directories
listed above.
<a href="systemd.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd</span>(1)</span></a>
will execute those binaries very early at bootup and at
configuration reload time — before unit files are loaded.
Generators can dynamically generate unit files or create symbolic
links to unit files to add additional dependencies, thus extending
or overriding existing definitions. Their main purpose is to
convert configuration files that are not native unit files
dynamically into native unit files.</p><p>Generators are loaded from a set of paths determined during
compilation, listed above. System and user generators are loaded
from directories with names ending in
<code class="filename">system-generators/</code> and
<code class="filename">user-generators/</code>, respectively. Generators
found in directories listed earlier override the ones with the
same name in directories lower in the list. A symlink to
<code class="filename">/dev/null</code> 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
<code class="filename">/run</code> overwrite those in
<code class="filename">/etc</code>.</p><p>After installing new generators or updating the
configuration, <span class="command"><strong>systemctl daemon-reload</strong></span> may be
executed. This will delete the previous configuration created by
generators, re-run all generators, and cause
<span class="command"><strong>systemd</strong></span> to reload units from disk. See
<a href="systemctl.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemctl</span>(1)</span></a>
for more information.
</p></div><div class="refsect1"><a name="idm140270267147776"></a><h2 id="Writing generators">Writing generators<a class="headerlink" title="Permalink to this headline" href="#Writing%20generators"></a></h2><p>Generators are invoked with three arguments: paths to
runtime directories where generators can place their generated
unit files or symlinks.</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol class="orderedlist" type="1"><li class="listitem"><p><em class="parameter"><code>normal-dir</code></em></p><p>argv[1] may be used to override unit files in
<code class="filename">/usr</code>, but not those in
<code class="filename">/etc</code>. This means that unit files placed
in this directory take precedence over vendor unit
configuration but not over native user/administrator unit
configuration.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p><em class="parameter"><code>early-dir</code></em></p><p>argv[2] may be used to override unit files in
<code class="filename">/usr</code> and in
<code class="filename">/etc</code>. This means that unit files placed
in this directory take precedence over all configuration,
both vendor and user/administrator.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p><em class="parameter"><code>late-dir</code></em></p><p>argv[3] may be used to extend the unit file tree without
overridding any other unit files. Any native configuration
files supplied by the vendor or user/administrator take
precedence over the generated ones placed in this directory.
</p></li></ol></div><div class="refsect2"><a name="idm140270267099792"></a><h3 id="Notes">Notes<a class="headerlink" title="Permalink to this headline" href="#Notes"></a></h3><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>
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.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
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
<a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/syslog.3.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">syslog</span>(3)</span></a>,
or <span class="command"><strong>systemd</strong></span> itself (this means: no
<a href="systemctl.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemctl</span>(1)</span></a>!). They
can however rely on the most basic kernel functionality to
be available, including mounted <code class="filename">/sys</code>,
<code class="filename">/proc</code>, <code class="filename">/dev</code>.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Units written by generators are removed when configuration
is reloaded. That means the lifetime of the generated
units is closely bound to the reload cycles of
<span class="command"><strong>systemd</strong></span> itself.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Generators should only be used to generate unit files, not
any other kind of 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.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Since
<a href="http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/syslog.3.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">syslog</span>(3)</span></a>
is not available (see above) log messages have to be
written to <code class="filename">/dev/kmsg</code> instead.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
It is a good idea to use the
<code class="varname">SourcePath=</code> directive in generated unit
files to specify the source configuration file you are
generating the unit 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.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Generators may write out dynamic unit files or just hook
unit files into other units with the usual
<code class="filename">.wants/</code> or
<code class="filename">.requires/</code> symlinks. Often it is
nicer to simply instantiate a template unit file from
<code class="filename">/usr</code> with a generator instead of
writing out entirely dynamic unit files. Of course this
works only if a single parameter is to be used.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
If you are careful you can implement generators in shell
scripts. We do recommend C code however, since generators
delay are executed synchronously and hence delay the
entire boot if they are slow.
</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Regarding overriding semantics: there are two rules we
try to follow when thinking about the overriding semantics:
</p><div class="orderedlist"><ol class="orderedlist" type="i"><li class="listitem"><p>User configuration should override vendor
configuration. This (mostly) means that stuff from
<code class="filename">/etc</code> should override stuff from
<code class="filename">/usr</code>.</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Native configuration should override non-native
configuration. This (mostly) means that stuff you
generate should never override native unit files for the
same purpose.</p></li></ol></div><p>Of these two rules the first rule is probably the more
important one and breaks the second one sometimes. Hence,
when deciding whether to user argv[1], argv[2], or argv[3],
your default choice should probably be argv[1].</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
Instead of heading off now and writing all kind of
generators for legacy configuration file formats, please
think twice! It's often a better idea to just deprecate
old stuff instead of keeping it artificially alive.
</p></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="refsect1"><a name="idm140270267080928"></a><h2 id="Examples">Examples<a class="headerlink" title="Permalink to this headline" href="#Examples"></a></h2><div class="example"><a name="idm140270267080256"></a><p class="title"><b>Example 1. systemd-fstab-generator</b></p><div class="example-contents"><p><a href="systemd-fstab-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-fstab-generator</span>(8)</span></a>
converts <code class="filename">/etc/fstab</code> into native mount
units. It uses argv[1] as location to place the generated unit
files in order to allow the user to override
<code class="filename">/etc/fstab</code> with her own native unit files,
but also to ensure that <code class="filename">/etc/fstab</code>
overrides any vendor default from <code class="filename">/usr</code>.
</p><p>After editing <code class="filename">/etc/fstab</code>, the user
should invoke <span class="command"><strong>systemctl daemon-reload</strong></span>. This
will re-run all generators and cause <span class="command"><strong>systemd</strong></span>
to reload units from disk. To actually mount new directories
added to <code class="filename">fstab</code>, <span class="command"><strong>systemctl start
<em class="replaceable"><code>/path/to/mountpoint</code></em></strong></span> or
<span class="command"><strong>systemctl start local-fs.target</strong></span> may be used.
</p></div></div><br class="example-break"><div class="example"><a name="idm140270262127408"></a><p class="title"><b>Example 2. systemd-system-update-generator</b></p><div class="example-contents"><p><a href="systemd-system-update-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-system-update-generator</span>(8)</span></a>
temporarily redirects <code class="filename">default.target</code> to
<code class="filename">system-update.target</code> if a system update is
scheduled. Since this needs to override the default user
configuration for <code class="filename">default.target</code> it uses
argv[2]. For details about this logic, see
<a class="ulink" href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/SystemUpdates" target="_top">Implementing
Offline System Updates</a>.</p></div></div><br class="example-break"><div class="example"><a name="idm140270262122992"></a><p class="title"><b>Example 3. Debuging a generator</b></p><div class="example-contents"><pre class="programlisting">dir=$(mktemp -d)
SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug /usr/lib/systemd/system-generators/systemd-fstab-generator \
"$dir" "$dir" "$dir"
find $dir</pre></div></div><br class="example-break"></div><div class="refsect1"><a name="idm140270262121312"></a><h2 id="See also">See also<a class="headerlink" title="Permalink to this headline" href="#See%20also"></a></h2><p>
<a href="systemd.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd</span>(1)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-cryptsetup-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-cryptsetup-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-debug-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-debug-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-efi-boot-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-efi-boot-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-fstab-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-fstab-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="fstab.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">fstab</span>(5)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-getty-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-getty-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-gpt-auto-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-gpt-auto-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-hibernate-resume-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-hibernate-resume-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-system-update-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-system-update-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd-sysv-generator.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd-sysv-generator</span>(8)</span></a>,
<a href="systemd.unit.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemd.unit</span>(5)</span></a>,
<a href="systemctl.html"><span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">systemctl</span>(1)</span></a>
</p></div></div></body></html>