<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>. The
syntax is inspired by <ulink
url="http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/">XDG
- Desktop Entry Specificiation</ulink> <filename>.desktop</filename> files, which are in turn
+ Desktop Entry Specification</ulink> <filename>.desktop</filename> files, which are in turn
inspired by Microsoft Windows
<filename>.ini</filename> files.</para>
<option>false</option> and <option>off</option> are
equivalent.</para>
+ <para>Time span values encoded in unit files can be
+ written in various formats. A stand-alone number
+ specifies a time in seconds. If suffixed with a time
+ unit, the unit is honored. A concatentation of
+ multiple value with units is supported, in which case
+ the values are added up. Example: "50" refers to 50
+ seconds; "2min 200ms" refers to 2 minutes plus 200
+ milliseconds, i.e. 120200ms. The following time units
+ are understood: s, min, h, d, w, ms, us.</para>
+
<para>Empty lines and lines starting with # or ; are
ignored. This may be used for commenting.</para>
activation which makes dependencies implicit, which
both results in a simpler and more flexible
system.</para>
+
+ <para>Some unit names reflect paths existing in the
+ file system name space. Example: a device unit
+ <filename>dev-sda.device</filename> refers to a device
+ with the device node <filename>/dev/sda</filename> in
+ the file system namespace. If this applies a special
+ way to escape the path name is used, so that it is
+ usable as part of a file name. Basically, given a path,
+ "/" is replaced by "-", and all unprintable characters
+ and the "-" are replaced by C-style "\x20"
+ escapes. This escaping is reversible.</para>
+
+ <para>Optionally, units may be instantiated from a
+ template file at runtime. This allows creation of
+ multiple units from a single configuration file. If
+ systemd looks for a unit configuration file it will
+ first search for the literal unit name in the
+ filesystem. If that yields no success and the unit
+ name contains an @ character, systemd will look for a
+ unit template that shares the same name but with the
+ instance string (i.e. the part between the @ character
+ and the suffix) removed. Example: if a service
+ <filename>getty@tty3.service</filename> is requested
+ and no file by that name is found, systemd will look
+ for <filename>getty@.service</filename> and
+ instantiate a service from that configuration file if
+ it is found. To refer to the instance string from
+ within the configuration file you may use the special
+ <literal>%i</literal> specifier in many of the
+ configuration options. Other specifiers that may be
+ used are <literal>%n</literal>, <literal>%N</literal>,
+ <literal>%p</literal>, <literal>%P</literal> and
+ <literal>%I</literal>, for the full unit name, the
+ unescaped unit name, the prefix name, the unescaped
+ prefix name and the unescaped instance name,
+ respectively. The prefix name here refers to the
+ string before the @, i.e. "getty" in the example
+ above, where "tty3" is the instance name.</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
must be fulfilled and otherwise the
transaction fails. Hence, this option
may be used to configure dependencies
- that are normally honoured unless the
+ that are normally honored unless the
user explicitly starts up the unit, in
which case whether they failed or not
is irrelevant.</para></listitem>
dependency of another unit start-up
will succeed. This is mostly a safety
feature to ensure that the user does
- not accidently activate units that are
+ not accidentally activate units that are
not intended to be activated
explicitly. This option defaults to
<option>false</option>.</para></listitem>
<varlistentry>
<term><varname>Alias=</varname></term>
- <listitem><para>Additional names this
+ <listitem><para>Additional names, this
unit shall be installed under. The
names listed here must have the same
suffix (i.e. type) as the unit file
name. This option may be specified
more than once, in which case all
listed names are used. At installation
- time
+ time,
<command>systemd-install</command>
will create symlinks from these names
to the unit file name. Note that this