openrc/NEWS.md

OpenRC NEWS

This file will contain a list of notable changes for each release. Note the information in this file is in reverse order.

OpenRC-0.23

The tmpfiles.d processing code, which was part of previous versions of OpenRC, has been separated into its own package [1]. If you need to process systemd style tmpfiles.d files, please install this package.

[1] https://github.com/openrc/opentmpfiles

OpenRC-0.22

In previous versions of OpenRC, configuration information was processed so that service-specific configuration stored in /etc/conf.d/* was overridden by global configuration stored in /etc/rc.conf. This release reverses that. Global configuration is now overridden by service-specific configuration.

The swapfiles service, which was basically a copy of the swap service, has been removed. If you are only using swap partitions, this change will not affect you. If you are using swap files, please adjust the dependencies of the swap service as shown in /etc/conf.d/swap.

OpenRC-0.21

This version adds a daemon supervisor which can start daemons and restart them if they crash. See supervise-daemon-guide.md in the distribution for details on its use.

It is now possible to mark certain mount points as critical. If these mount points are unable to be mounted, localmount or netmount will fail. This is handled in /etc/conf.d/localmount and /etc/conf.d/netmount. See these files for the setup.

The deprecation messages in 0.13.x for runscript and rc are now made visible in preparation for the removal of these binaries in 1.0.

The steps you should take to get rid of these warnings is to run openrc in initialization steps instead of rc and change the shebang lines in service scripts to refer to "openrc-run" instead of "runscript".

In 0.21.4, a modules-load service was added. This works like the equivalent service in systemd. It looks for files named *.conf first in /usr/lib/modules-load.d, then /run/modules-load.d, then /etc/modules-load.d. These files contain a list of modules, one per line, which should be loaded into the kernel. If a file name appears in /run/modules-load.d, it overrides a file of the same name in /usr/lib/modules-load.d. A file appearing in /etc/modules-load.d overrides a file of the same name in both previous directories.

OpenRC-0.19

This version adds a net-online service. By default, this service will check all known network interfaces for a configured interface or a carrier. It will register as started only when all interfaces are configured and there is at least a carrier on one interface. The behaviour of this service can be modified in /etc/conf.d/net-online.

Currently, this only works on Linux, but if anyone wants to port to *bsd, that would be welcomed.

OpenRC-0.18.3

Modern Linux systems expect /etc/mtab to be a symbolic link to /proc/self/mounts. Reasons for this change include support for mount namespaces, which will not work if /etc/mtab is a file. By default, the mtab service enforces this on each reboot.

If you find that this breaks your system in some way, please do the following:

• Set mtab_is_file=yes in /etc/conf.d/mtab.

• Restart mtab. This will recreate the /etc/mtab file.

• Check for an issue on https://github.com/openrc/openrc/issues explaining why you need /etc/mtab to be a file. If there isn't one, please open one and explain in detail why you need this to be a file. If there is one, please add your comments to it. Please give concrete examples of why it is important that /etc/mtab be a file instead of a symbolic link. Those comments will be taken into consideration for how long to keep supporting mtab as a file or when the support can be removed.

OpenRC-0.18

The behaviour of localmount and netmount in this version is changing. In the past, these services always started successfully. In this version, they will be able to fail if file systems they mount fail to mount. If you have file systems listed in fstab which should not be mounted at boot time, make sure to add noauto to the mount options. If you have file systems that you want to attempt to mount at boot time but failure should be allowed, add nofail to the mount options for these file systems in fstab.

OpenRC-0.14

The binfmt service, which registers misc binary formats with the Linux kernel, has been separated from the procfs service. This service will be automatically added to the boot runlevel for new Linux installs. When you upgrade, you will need to use rc-update to add it to your boot runlevel.

The procfs service no longer automounts the deprecated usbfs and usbdevfs file systems. Nothing should be using usbdevfs any longer, and if you still need usbfs it can be added to fstab.

Related to the above change, the procfs service no longer attempts to modprobe the usbcore module. If your device manager does not load it, you will need to configure the modules service to do so.

The override order of binfmt.d and tmpfiles.d directories has been changed to match systemd. Files in /run/binfmt.d and /run/tmpfiles.d override their /usr/lib counterparts, and files in the /etc counterparts override both /usr/lib and /run.

OpenRC-0.13.2

A chroot variable has been added to the service script variables. This fixes the support for running a service in a chroot. This is documented in man 8 openrc-run.

The netmount service now mounts nfs file systems. This change was made to correct a fix for an earlier bug.

OpenRC-0.13

/sbin/rc was renamed to /sbin/openrc and /sbin/runscript was renamed to /sbin/openrc-run due to naming conflicts with other software.

Backward compatible symbolic links are currently in place so your system will keep working if you are using the old names; however, it is strongly advised that you migrate to the new names because the symbolic links will be removed in the future. Warnings have been added to assist with this migration; however, due to the level of noise they produce, they only appear in verbose mode in this release.

The devfs script now handles the initial mounting and setup of the /dev directory. If /dev has already been mounted by the kernel or an initramfs, devfs will remount /dev with the correct mount options instead of mounting a second /dev over the existing mount point.

It attempts to mount /dev from fstab first if an entry exists there. If it doesn't it attempts to mount devtmpfs if it is configured in the kernel. If not, it attempts to mount tmpfs. If none of these is available, an error message is displayed and static /dev is assumed.

OpenRC-0.12

The net.* scripts, originally from Gentoo Linux, have been removed. If you need these scripts, look for a package called netifrc, which is maintained by them.