systemd 256-rc2 Released With A Few More Features

The first release candidate of systemd 256 came just under one month ago with new features like run0 as the new sudo alternative, a new "systemd-vpick" binary, importctl as another new tool, Zboot kernel support with systemd ukify, systemd-homed improvements, and much more. Systemd 256-rc2 is out this evening with a few more features and other fixes collected over the past several weeks.

One of the new options to systemd 256-rc2 is the "systemd.crash_action=" kernel command line option that configures what to happen if the system manager crashes. This systemd.crash_action= option in turn deprecates the prior "systemd.crash_reboot" option. The systemd.crash_action= values can be either freeze, reboot, or poweroff.

Meanwhile systemd-journald added a new "journal.storage" credential when determining where to store journal files.

Also new with the second release candidate is "systemctl kill" supporting the "--wait" argument to make the command wait until the signaled services terminate. The "systemctl kill --wait" can be useful due to otherwise potentially hitting racy conditions.

New to systemd-machined is the GetMachineSSHInfo() D-Bus method used by systemd-vmspawn for fetching the information needed to SSH into the machine. Systemd-machined also adds a new Varlink interface used by systemd-vmspawn to register machines with additional information/metadata.

Lastly, systemd ELF binaries that use libraries via dlopen() are built with a new ELF header note section. The new functionality allows for tools and packagers to programmatically discover the list of optional dependencies used by all systemd ELF binaries. There is a new "systemd/package-notes" project that provides a parser with packaging integration tools.

Downloads and more details on the systemd 256-rc2 release via GitHub. Systemd 256 should be out in time for being found with the H2'2024 Linux distributions.