Lennart Poettering
4b58153dd2
This adds a new invocation ID concept to the service manager. The invocation ID identifies each runtime cycle of a unit uniquely. A new randomized 128bit ID is generated each time a unit moves from and inactive to an activating or active state. The primary usecase for this concept is to connect the runtime data PID 1 maintains about a service with the offline data the journal stores about it. Previously we'd use the unit name plus start/stop times, which however is highly racy since the journal will generally process log data after the service already ended. The "invocation ID" kinda matches the "boot ID" concept of the Linux kernel, except that it applies to an individual unit instead of the whole system. The invocation ID is passed to the activated processes as environment variable. It is additionally stored as extended attribute on the cgroup of the unit. The latter is used by journald to automatically retrieve it for each log logged message and attach it to the log entry. The environment variable is very easily accessible, even for unprivileged services. OTOH the extended attribute is only accessible to privileged processes (this is because cgroupfs only supports the "trusted." xattr namespace, not "user."). The environment variable may be altered by services, the extended attribute may not be, hence is the better choice for the journal. Note that reading the invocation ID off the extended attribute from journald is racy, similar to the way reading the unit name for a logging process is. This patch adds APIs to read the invocation ID to sd-id128: sd_id128_get_invocation() may be used in a similar fashion to sd_id128_get_boot(). PID1's own logging is updated to always include the invocation ID when it logs information about a unit. A new bus call GetUnitByInvocationID() is added that allows retrieving a bus path to a unit by its invocation ID. The bus path is built using the invocation ID, thus providing a path for referring to a unit that is valid only for the current runtime cycleof it. Outlook for the future: should the kernel eventually allow passing of cgroup information along AF_UNIX/SOCK_DGRAM messages via a unique cgroup id, then we can alter the invocation ID to be generated as hash from that rather than entirely randomly. This way we can derive the invocation race-freely from the messages.
systemd - System and Service Manager
Details
General information about systemd can be found in the systemd Wiki.
Information about build requirements are provided in the README file.
Consult our NEWS file for information about what's new in the most recent systemd versions.
Please see the HACKING file for information how to hack on systemd and test your modifications.
Please see our Contribution Guidelines for more information about filing GitHub Issues and posting GitHub Pull Requests.
When preparing patches for systemd, please follow our Coding Style Guidelines.
If you are looking for support, please contact our mailing list or join our IRC channel.