What is with the systemd name?!…

… Lot’s of confusion when the name “systemd” is included in the path or file name for config files used by other utilities outside of systemd!

As part of an ongoing functionality grab, udev functionality is being subsumed by the systemd project and that includes various config files…

Hence there was some confusion suffered by myself just now for the dracut utility complaining:

Cannot find [systemd-]udevd binary!

Yet… I’m running Gentoo that uses OpenRC… There should be no systemd in there… So?! Or?…

Checking the Gentoo changelog for dracut:

27 Feb 2014; Amadeusz Żołnowski dracut-034-r4.ebuild,
dracut-036-r3.ebuild, dracut-036-r4.ebuild:
>=sys-fs/udev-210 moved /sbin/udevd to /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd, and
started installing a new file for network interface naming setup at
/lib/systemd/network/99-default.link

And sure enough, there are “systemd” bits and pieces even though I am not intentionally using systemd… Very confusing unless you are already very sure that systemd has not taken over your system from OpenRC!

The fix for dracut for my example was to set in “/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords”:

sys-kernel/dracut amd64 ~amd64

to allow emerge to pull in the very latest (‘testing’/’experimental’) version.

Is this an example of ‘aggressive naming’ to embrace all that is “udev” and others?

A good post summarizing the state of play as of March 2014 is “sysvinit vs. systemd, udev vs eudev vs mdev, virtuals and other things…“. Also, hopefully there will always be this option for freedom!