[PATCH] rpmostreepayload: create /var/spool/mail required when adding user

Colin Walters walters at verbum.org
Thu Jul 3 19:35:09 UTC 2014


On Thu, Jul 3, 2014, at 07:11 AM, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:

> WHAT?! ACK, but this is real madness.

Oh it's pretty ugly for sure in Anaconda, I wouldn't disagree.  systemd
upstream is moving to include some of this logic there:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=9339db7187c61eb7ae7e6ffcddb2b2f2686954eb

What we're missing then after a newer systemd is the "mail"
subdirectory; probably the "filesystem" RPM should ship a snippet for
it?

There is a real set of benefits to this model: all local system state is
cleanly isolated into /var (with config files in /etc).    

This enables:
* Clarity of state management: On upgrades (or rollback), you know that
the OSTree upgrade tool simply *will not touch* anything in /var.  It's
yours to back up and manage, in concert with upgrades, or
asynchronously.

* Factory reset: Reset this system to a pristine state, with no local
users, no data or caches, etc.  On reboot, the OS takes you back to
firstboot setup.

* Readonly systems: If you want a readonly system, you now only need to
make /var a tmpfs, and /etc be a read-only bind mount.  (You can also
make /var readonly but we're a bit aways from the OS not being full of
error spew in that scenario)



More information about the anaconda-patches mailing list