Re: [PATCH] fstrim: add systemd units

[Dave Reisner <d@falconindy.com>]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 02:07:28PM +0200, Ruediger Meier wrote:
> On Tuesday 08 April 2014, Thomas Bächler wrote:
> > Am 08.04.2014 12:25, schrieb Ruediger Meier:
> > > Hm, isn't this a bit over the top? Adding a script just to
> > > call "fstrim -a" automatically?
> >
> > It's a common task. I was getting tired of having to add this on
> > every single machine that I set up.
> 
> For me it's very common task to do "rm -rf /tmp" after each reboot. I 
> have to setup this on every single machine. Should I go to coreutils, 
> the developers of rm to add a script which calls "rm -rf /tmp" on 
> reboot?
> No, of course my distribution should give me that feature.

You're again comparing one-time bootstrap tasks to recurring maintenance
tasks. Does your distribution ship any cronjobs which reside in
/etc/cron.*? You'd be better off comparing the proposed timer and
service unit to this.

> > > Should we also add scripts for "mount -a" or "fsck -a" or "swapon
> > > -a"?
> >
> > And what purpose would that serve? Did you just take random commands
> > and add '-a' to prove a point?
> 
> I wanted to point out that util-linux is a project to provide us tools 
> and not all the ways how and when to use them. systemd ustream is 
> mounting and fsck'ing our filesystems automatically. So they can also 
> fstrim if they find it useful.

Again, you're not making a reasonable comparison here.

> > > And wouldn't we also need to add "example crontab" lines for
> > > non-systemd systems! Sounds a bit ridiculous, right?
> >
> > You can add them if you feel like it. But this is not an "example"
> > file, it is ready to be used.
> 
> An example crontab line is also ready to use. Your example timer is 
> (hopefully) not automatically enabled just because it is installed.

No, it's up to the local admin to enable it.

> > > I think it's the distro's or admin's job to write and add the
> > > scripts for filesystems maintenance etc.
> >
> > That's ridiculous. We finally, for the first time ever, have a
> > unified way of creating service definitions that can be used
> > unchanged in all relevant distributions (except Gentoo and Slackware,
> > of course).
> 
> Beside the fact that before "unique service definitions" were invented 
> nobody would have thought that one would need such thing just to call a 
> single commandline one time per day.

Really? You've never heard of cron?

> > The main advantage of this unification is that they can  
> > be shipped and maintained by upstream projects - after all, the
> > upstream projects know what services make sense and how to start them
> > properly.
> 
> I don't say something against systemd here and I don't see this black 
> and white only. I'am just against adding sysadmin scripts which 
> actually do only trivial things. Though it might be worth to add such 
> unit file if it does something more interesting, like we have already 
> uuidd.service and uuidd.socket (and uuidd.rc) which provides nices ways 
> how to start uuidd.

> > > BTW fstrim.timer is missing in "make dist" tar ball.
> >
> > Sorry, you are right. I'm a bit lost in this build system, Karel
> > probably knows how to fix this.
> 
> cu,
> Rudi
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