systemdconf(2): 1st day / workshop summary

systemdconf(2)

So it's the second time systemdconf takes place. Again - in Berlin, which I find even more pretty in early Autumn than year before (which was in November) - sunny and warm.

Full schedule of this year's edition is here . Last year there was no workshops, but there was a hackfest on the last day. This time we have a workshop on the 0 - day (I call it "0 - day" as this is an optional and needs an additional ticket).

So first 2 sessions were common for all attendees:

Demystifying systemd - Hands On by Ben Breard Using the Journal Efficiently by Lennart Poettering

Afterwards I found it very hard to choose between next sessions that were taking place in same time. I really wanted to take part in Luká Nykrn's workshop about systemd-nspawn 101 and learn about mgmt from James Shubin . But I finally chose almost 5 - hour session about Writing services the systemd way lead by David Strauss .

Session 1: Demystifying systemd - Hands on by Ben Breard

I was late almost 90 minutes as my coach bus was late almost 2 - hours (thanks to traffic jams on south entrance to Berlin). But I quickly synced to the rest of people thanks to wonderful materials prepared by Ben .

I decided to go through this workshop without using VMs but systemd-nspawn container instead. Thanks to this approach I was able to create one container per workshop task in a quick and elegant way without wasting resources on KVM VMs or some other Vagrant abomination ;)

I found a little error in the materials for systemd-nspawn preparation. It should be:

dnf --releasever=24 --installroot=/var/lib/machine/f24 \ install systemd passwd dnf fedora-release

Also I suggest creating this container under /var/lib/machines as this directory already has proper selinux type (and we don't want to run with selinux disabled, yeah?)

Also I'd suggest installing following packages:

dnf install systemd-devel telnet telnet-server procps \ pkg-config make automake gcc git vim-enhanced iproute

And in the end - use this container as template for any following task from all the workshop sessions:

cp -R /var/lib/machines/f24 /var/lib/machines/f24-workshop1

I've published notes from this session on my github

Generally speaking I'm very glad to attend this session - it was a wholesome recap of systemd basics!

Session 2: Using the Journal Efficiently by Lennart Poettering

This session was run by Lennart. If I were asked how to describe it in one sentence it would be: man systemctl with Lennart's incredible comment and things that can't be find in man . I really loved it. And as usual - Lennart explained the matter of logging w/journald so extensively that actually it was hard to even ask about anything.

Beside man systemctl things Lennart talked in details about unit's metadata (see -o verbose and all those uppercase params), cursors and gatewayd.

I've published notes from this session on my github

Again - outstanding session.

Session 3: Writing services the systemd way by David Strauss

During this session we created a simple C application which later we converted into a systemd service with some basic systemd functionalities:

journald integration via sd_journal monitoring / watchdog via sd_notify socket activation

Whole session was packed with coding, compiling, re - compiling and trying. It was very intensive, fast - paced and... great! Afterwards we also saw corresponding python-systemd wrappers. Actually one of my ideas for Saturday hackfest is to rewrite this session's subject in Python in order to learn how Python integration works.

Again - totally awesome session!

Materials for this session are hosted on Github . Simply start with starter directory and apply logdaemon, watchdogdaemon and sadaemon on that starter content.

I didn't make notes during this session - there was no time, only coding and compiling.

systemd-nspawn 101 by Luká Nykrn

Unfortunately I didn't attend this workshops. However I asked Luká about materials - he already published his slides

Next Generation Config Mgmt: Workshop by James (purpleidea) Shubin

And now for something completely different ;) Also - I couldn't attend this one, but I caught up day after with James and asked about materials. However there're no dedicated materials from that workshops, you can basically hack around mgmt basing on github project page . This is very interesting project which needs contributions (GoLang here) so if you're interested - go for it!

So that's it

Basically that's it. I have to say that I really like the idea of workshops and this day was 100% worth its price. I was able to recap my systemd knowledge, update it, ask questions to people who actually develop systemd and understand concepts which were not tha easy for me. Also I already have some implementations ideas that were born during those workshops so - thank you guys!