+CHANGES WITH 218:
+
+ * If compiled with --enable-xkbcommon, systemd-localed will
+ verify x11 keymap settings by compiling the given keymap. It
+ will spew out warnings if the compilation fails. This
+ requires libxkbcommon to be installed.
+
+ * All systemd programs that read standalone configuration files
+ in /etc now also support a corresponding series of
+ .conf.d configuration directories in /etc/, /run/,
+ /usr/local/lib/, /usr/lib/, and (if configured with
+ --enable-split-usr) /lib/. In particular, the following
+ configuration files now have corresponding configuration
+ directories: system.conf user.conf, logind.conf,
+ journald.conf, sleep.conf, bootchart.conf, coredump.conf,
+ resolved.conf, timesyncd.conf, journal-remote.conf, and
+ journal-upload.conf. Note that distributions should use the
+ configuration directories in /usr/lib/; the directories in
+ /etc/ are reserved for the system administrator.
+
+CHANGES WITH 217:
+
+ * journalctl gained the new options -t/--identifier= to match
+ on the syslog identifier (aka "tag"), as well as --utc to
+ show log timestamps in the UTC timezone. journalctl now also
+ accepts -n/--lines=all to disable line capping in a pager.
+
+ * journalctl gained a new switch, --flush, that synchronously
+ flushes logs from /run/log/journal to /var/log/journal if
+ persistent storage is enabled. systemd-journal-flush.service
+ now waits until the operation is complete.
+
+ * Services can notify the manager before they start a reload
+ (by sending RELOADING=1) or shutdown (by sending
+ STOPPING=1). This allows the manager to track and show the
+ internal state of daemons and closes a race condition when
+ the process is still running but has closed its D-Bus
+ connection.
+
+ * Services with Type=oneshot do not have to have any ExecStart
+ commands anymore.
+
+ * User units are now loaded also from
+ $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/systemd/user/. This is similar to the
+ /run/systemd/user directory that was already previously
+ supported, but is under the control of the user.
+
+ * Job timeouts (i.e. time-outs on the time a job that is
+ queued stays in the run queue) can now optionally result in
+ immediate reboot or power-off actions (JobTimeoutAction= and
+ JobTimeoutRebootArgument=). This is useful on ".target"
+ units, to limit the maximum time a target remains
+ undispatched in the run queue, and to trigger an emergency
+ operation in such a case. This is now used by default to
+ turn off the system if boot-up (as defined by everything in
+ basic.target) hangs and does not complete for at least
+ 15min. Also, if power-off or reboot hang for at least 30min
+ an immediate power-off/reboot operation is triggered. This
+ functionality is particularly useful to increase reliability
+ on embedded devices, but also on laptops which might
+ accidentally get powered on when carried in a backpack and
+ whose boot stays stuck in a hard disk encryption passphrase
+ question.
+
+ * systemd-logind can be configured to also handle lid switch
+ events even when the machine is docked or multiple displays
+ are attached (HandleLidSwitchDocked= option).
+
+ * A helper binary and a service have been added which can be
+ used to resume from hibernation in the initramfs. A
+ generator will parse the resume= option on the kernel
+ command line to trigger resume.
+
+ * A user console daemon systemd-consoled has been
+ added. Currently, it is a preview, and will so far open a
+ single terminal on each session of the user marked as
+ Desktop=systemd-console.
+
+ * Route metrics can be specified for DHCP routes added by
+ systemd-networkd.
+
+ * The SELinux context of socket-activated services can be set
+ from the information provided by the networking stack
+ (SELinuxContextFromNet= option).
+
+ * Userspace firmware loading support has been removed and
+ the minimum supported kernel version is thus bumped to 3.7.
+
+ * Timeout for udev workers has been increased from 1 to 3
+ minutes, but a warning will be printed after 1 minute to
+ help diagnose kernel modules that take a long time to load.
+
+ * Udev rules can now remove tags on devices with TAG-="foobar".
+
+ * systemd's readahead implementation has been removed. In many
+ circumstances it didn't give expected benefits even for
+ rotational disk drives and was becoming less relevant in the
+ age of SSDs. As none of the developers has been using
+ rotating media anymore, and nobody stepped up to actively
+ maintain this component of systemd it has now been removed.
+
+ * Swap units can use Options= to specify discard options.
+ Discard options specified for swaps in /etc/fstab are now
+ respected.
+
+ * Docker containers are now detected as a separate type of
+ virtualization.
+
+ * The Password Agent protocol gained support for queries where
+ the user input is shown, useful e.g. for user names.
+ systemd-ask-password gained a new --echo option to turn that
+ on.
+
+ * The default sysctl.d/ snippets will now set:
+
+ net.core.default_qdisc = fq_codel
+
+ This selects Fair Queuing Controlled Delay as the default
+ queuing discipline for network interfaces. fq_codel helps
+ fight the network bufferbloat problem. It is believed to be
+ a good default with no tuning required for most workloads.
+ Downstream distributions may override this choice. On 10Gbit
+ servers that do not do forwarding, "fq" may perform better.
+ Systems without a good clocksource should use "pfifo_fast".
+
+ * If kdbus is enabled during build a new option BusPolicy= is
+ available for service units, that allows locking all service
+ processes into a stricter bus policy, in order to limit
+ access to various bus services, or even hide most of them
+ from the service's view entirely.
+
+ * networkctl will now show the .network and .link file
+ networkd has applied to a specific interface.
+
+ * sd-login gained a new API call sd_session_get_desktop() to
+ query which desktop environment has been selected for a
+ session.
+
+ * UNIX utmp support is now compile-time optional to support
+ legacy-free systems.
+
+ * systemctl gained two new commands "add-wants" and
+ "add-requires" for pulling in units from specific targets
+ easily.
+
+ * If the word "rescue" is specified on the kernel command line
+ the system will now boot into rescue mode (aka
+ rescue.target), which was previously available only by
+ specifying "1" or "systemd.unit=rescue.target" on the kernel
+ command line. This new kernel command line option nicely
+ mirrors the already existing "emergency" kernel command line
+ option.
+
+ * New kernel command line options mount.usr=, mount.usrflags=,
+ mount.usrfstype= have been added that match root=, rootflags=,
+ rootfstype= but allow mounting a specific file system to
+ /usr.
+
+ * The $NOTIFY_SOCKET is now also passed to control processes of
+ services, not only the main process.
+
+ * This version reenables support for fsck's -l switch. This
+ means at least version v2.25 of util-linux is required for
+ operation, otherwise dead-locks on device nodes may
+ occur. Again: you need to update util-linux to at least
+ v2.25 when updating systemd to v217.
+
+ * The "multi-seat-x" tool has been removed from systemd, as
+ its functionality has been integrated into X servers 1.16,
+ and the tool is hence redundant. It is recommended to update
+ display managers invoking this tool to simply invoke X
+ directly from now on, again.
+
+ * Support for the new ALLOW_INTERACTIVE_AUTHORIZATION D-Bus
+ message flag has been added for all of systemd's PolicyKit
+ authenticated method calls has been added. In particular
+ this now allows optional interactive authorization via
+ PolicyKit for many of PID1's privileged operations such as
+ unit file enabling and disabling.
+
+ * "udevadm hwdb --update" learnt a new switch "--usr" for
+ placing the rebuilt hardware database in /usr instead of
+ /etc. When used only hardware database entries stored in
+ /usr will be used, and any user database entries in /etc are
+ ignored. This functionality is useful for vendors to ship a
+ pre-built database on systems where local configuration is
+ unnecessary or unlikely.
+
+ * Calendar time specifications in .timer units now also
+ understand the strings "semi-annually", "quarterly" and
+ "minutely" as shortcuts (in addition to the preexisting
+ "anually", "hourly", ...).
+
+ * systemd-tmpfiles will now correctly create files in /dev
+ at boot which are marked for creation only at boot. It is
+ recommended to always create static device nodes with 'c!'
+ and 'b!', so that they are created only at boot and not
+ overwritten at runtime.
+
+ * When the watchdog logic is used for a service (WatchdogSec=)
+ and the watchdog timeout is hit the service will now be
+ terminated with SIGABRT (instead of just SIGTERM), in order
+ to make sure a proper coredump and backtrace is
+ generated. This ensures that hanging services will result in
+ similar coredump/backtrace behaviour as services that hit a
+ segmentation fault.
+
+ Contributions from: Andreas Henriksson, Andrei Borzenkov,
+ Angus Gibson, Ansgar Burchardt, Ben Wolsieffer, Brandon L.
+ Black, Christian Hesse, Cristian Rodríguez, Daniel Buch,
+ Daniele Medri, Daniel Mack, Dan Williams, Dave Reisner, David
+ Herrmann, David Sommerseth, David Strauss, Emil Renner
+ Berthing, Eric Cook, Evangelos Foutras, Filipe Brandenburger,
+ Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri, Hans de Goede, Harald Hoyer, Hristo
+ Venev, Hugo Grostabussiat, Ivan Shapovalov, Jan Janssen, Jan
+ Synacek, Jonathan Liu, Juho Son, Karel Zak, Kay Sievers, Klaus
+ Purer, Koen Kooi, Lennart Poettering, Lukas Nykryn, Lukasz
+ Skalski, Łukasz Stelmach, Mantas Mikulėnas, Marcel Holtmann,
+ Marius Tessmann, Marko Myllynen, Martin Pitt, Michael Biebl,
+ Michael Marineau, Michael Olbrich, Michael Scherer, Michal
+ Schmidt, Michal Sekletar, Miroslav Lichvar, Patrik Flykt,
+ Philippe De Swert, Piotr Drąg, Rahul Sundaram, Richard
+ Weinberger, Robert Milasan, Ronny Chevalier, Ruben Kerkhof,
+ Santiago Vila, Sergey Ptashnick, Simon McVittie, Sjoerd
+ Simons, Stefan Brüns, Steven Allen, Steven Noonan, Susant
+ Sahani, Sylvain Plantefève, Thomas Hindoe Paaboel Andersen,
+ Timofey Titovets, Tobias Hunger, Tom Gundersen, Torstein
+ Husebø, Umut Tezduyar Lindskog, WaLyong Cho, Zbigniew
+ Jędrzejewski-Szmek.
+
+ -- Berlin, 2014-10-28
+