+ <refsect1>
+ <title>Concepts</title>
+
+ <para>systemd provides a dependency system between
+ various entities called "units". Units encapsulate
+ various objects that are relevant for system boot-up
+ and maintenance. The majority of units are configured
+ in unit configuration files, whose syntax and basic
+ set of options is described in
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.unit</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ however some are created automatically from other
+ configuration or dynamically from system state. Units
+ may be 'active' (meaning started, bound, plugged in,
+ ... depending on the unit type, see below), or
+ 'inactive' (meaning stopped, unbound, unplugged, ...),
+ as well as in the process of being activated or
+ deactivated, i.e. between the two states (these states
+ are called 'activating', 'deactivating'). A special
+ 'failed' state is available as well which is very
+ similar to 'inactive' and is entered when the service
+ failed in some way (process returned error code on
+ exit, or crashed, or an operation timed out). If this
+ state is entered the cause will be logged, for later
+ reference. Note that the various unit types may have a
+ number of additional substates, which are mapped to
+ the five generalized unit states described
+ here.</para>
+
+ <para>The following unit types are available:</para>
+
+ <orderedlist>
+ <listitem><para>Service units, which control
+ daemons and the processes they consist of. For
+ details see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.service</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Socket units, which
+ encapsulate local IPC or network sockets in
+ the system, useful for socket-based
+ activation. For details about socket units see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.socket</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
+ for details on socket-based activation and
+ other forms of activation, see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>daemon</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Target units are useful to
+ group units, or provide well-known
+ synchronization points during boot-up, see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.target</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Device units expose kernel
+ devices in systemd and may be used to
+ implement device-based activation. For details
+ see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.device</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Mount units control mount
+ points in the file system, for details see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.mount</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Automount units provide
+ automount capabilities, for on-demand mounting
+ of file systems as well as parallelized
+ boot-up. See
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.automount</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Snapshot units can be used to
+ temporarily save the state of the set of
+ systemd units, which later may be restored by
+ activating the saved snapshot unit. For more
+ information see
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.snapshot</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Timer units are useful for
+ triggering activation of other units based on
+ timers. You may find details in
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.timer</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Swap units are very similar to
+ mount units and encapsulate memory swap
+ partitions or files of the operating
+ system. They are described in <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.swap</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ <listitem><para>Path units may be used
+ to activate other services when file system
+ objects change or are modified. See
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.path</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para></listitem>
+
+ </orderedlist>
+
+ <para>Units are named as their configuration
+ files. Some units have special semantics. A detailed
+ list is available in
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.special</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>.</para>
+
+ <para>systemd knows various kinds of dependencies,
+ including positive and negative requirement
+ dependencies (i.e. <varname>Requires=</varname> and
+ <varname>Conflicts=</varname>) as well as ordering
+ dependencies (<varname>After=</varname> and
+ <varname>Before=</varname>). NB: ordering and
+ requirement dependencies are orthogonal. If only a
+ requirement dependency exists between two units
+ (e.g. <filename>foo.service</filename> requires
+ <filename>bar.service</filename>), but no ordering
+ dependency (e.g. <filename>foo.service</filename>
+ after <filename>bar.service</filename>) and both are
+ requested to start, they will be started in
+ parallel. It is a common pattern that both requirement
+ and ordering dependencies are placed between two
+ units. Also note that the majority of dependencies are
+ implicitly created and maintained by systemd. In most
+ cases it should be unnecessary to declare additional
+ dependencies manually, however it is possible to do
+ this.</para>
+
+ <para>Application programs and units (via
+ dependencies) may request state changes of units. In
+ systemd, these requests are encapsulated as 'jobs' and
+ maintained in a job queue. Jobs may succeed or can
+ fail, their execution is ordered based on the ordering
+ dependencies of the units they have been scheduled
+ for.</para>
+
+ <para>On boot systemd activates the target unit
+ <filename>default.target</filename> whose job is to
+ activate on-boot services and other on-boot units by
+ pulling them in via dependencies. Usually the unit
+ name is just an alias (symlink) for either
+ <filename>graphical.target</filename> (for
+ fully-featured boots into the UI) or
+ <filename>multi-user.target</filename> (for limited
+ console-only boots for use in embedded or server
+ environments, or similar; a subset of
+ graphical.target). However it is at the discretion of
+ the administrator to configure it as an alias to any
+ other target unit. See
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.special</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ for details about these target units.</para>
+
+ <para>Processes systemd spawns are placed in
+ individual Linux control groups named after the unit
+ which they belong to in the private systemd
+ hierarchy. (see <ulink
+ url="http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt">cgroups.txt</ulink>
+ for more information about control groups, or short
+ "cgroups"). systemd uses this to effectively keep
+ track of processes. Control group information is
+ maintained in the kernel, and is accessible via the
+ file system hierarchy (beneath
+ <filename>/sys/fs/cgroup/systemd/</filename>), or in tools
+ such as
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>ps</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ (<command>ps xawf -eo pid,user,cgroup,args</command>
+ is particularly useful to list all processes and the
+ systemd units they belong to.).</para>
+
+ <para>systemd is compatible with the SysV init system
+ to a large degree: SysV init scripts are supported and
+ simply read as an alternative (though limited)
+ configuration file format. The SysV
+ <filename>/dev/initctl</filename> interface is
+ provided, and compatibility implementations of the
+ various SysV client tools are available. In addition to
+ that, various established Unix functionality such as
+ <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> or the
+ <filename>utmp</filename> database are
+ supported.</para>
+
+ <para>systemd has a minimal transaction system: if a
+ unit is requested to start up or shut down it will add
+ it and all its dependencies to a temporary
+ transaction. Then, it will verify if the transaction
+ is consistent (i.e. whether the ordering of all units
+ is cycle-free). If it is not, systemd will try to fix
+ it up, and removes non-essential jobs from the
+ transaction that might remove the loop. Also, systemd
+ tries to suppress non-essential jobs in the
+ transaction that would stop a running service. Finally
+ it is checked whether the jobs of the transaction
+ contradict jobs that have already been queued, and
+ optionally the transaction is aborted then. If all
+ worked out and the transaction is consistent and
+ minimized in its impact it is merged with all already
+ outstanding jobs and added to the run
+ queue. Effectively this means that before executing a
+ requested operation, systemd will verify that it makes
+ sense, fixing it if possible, and only failing if it
+ really cannot work.</para>
+
+ <para>Systemd contains native implementations of
+ various tasks that need to be executed as part of the
+ boot process. For example, it sets the host name or
+ configures the loopback network device. It also sets
+ up and mounts various API file systems, such as
+ <filename>/sys</filename> or
+ <filename>/proc</filename>.</para>
+
+ <para>For more information about the concepts and
+ ideas behind systemd please refer to the <ulink
+ url="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">Original
+ Design Document</ulink>.</para>
+
+ <para>Note that some but not all interfaces provided
+ by systemd are covered by the <ulink
+ url="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/InterfaceStabilityPromise">Interface
+ Stability Promise</ulink>.</para>
+ </refsect1>
+