Systemd 261 has been released after three months of development. The new release includes key changes such as preparation for API support for age verification, support for subsystems like Kexec Handover and Live Update Orchestration for restarting without losing state, the IMDS subsystem, functionality for boot protection on systems without a physical TPM, and the systemd-sysinstall component with the installer implementation.
Among the changes in the new release:
- Added a new component systemd-sysinstall with the implementation of a simple operating system installer that can be controlled from the command line or through an interactive text interface. The functionality of systemd-sysinstall is based on existing capabilities of systemd like configuring disk partitions with systemd-repart, installing the kernel with ‘bootctl link’ command, installing the bootloader with ‘bootctl install’ command, and setting up the installed system with systemd-creds.
- In preparation for integrating age verification into the OS API, a birthDate field has been added to the database userdb. This field can be used in upcoming projects for distributions like the xdg-desktop-portal and AccountsService to provide applications with information about the user’s age category. The homectl utility now has the ‘–birth-date’ option to set the user’s age.
- Support for the Linux kernel subsystems LUO and KHO has been added to the PID1 handler in systemd. This allows for full reboot and kernel update without stopping work or losing system state. LUO preserves device and RAM state while KHO enables launching a new kernel without system state loss. File descriptors can be saved and restored before and after kernel reboot using kexec in systemd. LUOs are saved and restored during kexec, and file descriptor store state persistence can be enabled with ‘FileDescriptorStorePreserve=yes’ setting.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.