Documentation Boot Beat

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stateless systems (note)

A lot of work is being done here on stateless systems - aka bootup with minimal configuration. look into that, talk to systemd maintainers to see if this functionality exists in a marketable state.

systemd-sysusers creates system users on demand

A new tool, systemd-sysusers, can be used to create system users and groups on startup. On startup, the systemd-sysusers service reads configuration files in /usr/lib/sysusers.d/, which are provided by packages or adminstrators, and creates the relevant entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/groups.

These configuration files can be used to create users, create groups, or add users to a group. The syntax for entries in these files is defined in man 5 sysusers.d.

By default, systemd provides configurations for required users like root, required groups such as wheel, and common system groups such as dialout, video, or users.

The existence of systemd-sysusers ensures that a system can boot and be accessible, even if the /etc directory is not present - whether by design in a stateless system, or due to a system fault. Fedora 21 will still provide a default /etc/passwd and /etc/groups, and does not rely on systemd-sysusers exclusively to provide these system accounts.

man:

• systemd-sysusers
• sysusers.d