Systemd's Plan For Stateless Systems, Factory Resets

Following the exciting systemd 214 release that worked on new sandboxing features and other improvements toward a stateless Linux system, Lennart Poettering has blogged about the latest features and their plans going forward.

The current big work within systemd involves a factory reset option, stateless system support, and the ability to have reproducible/verifiable systems. Systemd 214 laid some ground work while the upcoming systemd 215 release does more on this front.

The short story is for allowing factory resets to be done on systemd Linux boxes by flushing out /etc and /var while just preserving the /usr directory while a stateless system is similar and nevers stores the two former directories within persistent storage. The reproducible and verifiable system features are along similar lines but with mandates about storing local configuration data, etc.

While other Linux distributions/platforms have worked on similar functionality in the past, the systemd crew is trying to come up with their own generic approach now that they're at the heart of so many Linux distributions.

Those wishing to learn more about the current plans for these systemd features, what else is ahead for systemd 215 and beyond, you can read Lennart's lengthy blog post for more details.