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SYSTEMD.GENERATOR(7) systemd.generator SYSTEMD.GENERATOR(7)
NAME
systemd.generator - systemd unit generators
SYNOPSIS
/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 that is 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.
Each generator is called 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 of
systemd(1), allowing generated configuration to extend or override existing definitions.
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.
1. normal-dir
In normal use this is /run/systemd/generator in case of the system generators and
$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/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/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/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.
NOTES ABOUT WRITING GENERATORS
o 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.
o 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.
o 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.
o 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.
o Since syslog(3) is not available (see above), log messages have to be written to
/dev/kmsg instead.
o 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.
o 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.
o 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.
o Regarding overriding semantics: there are two rules we try to follow when thinking
about the overriding semantics:
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.
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].
o 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 generator
dir=$(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 249 SYSTEMD.GENERATOR(7)
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