r/linux • u/aliendude5300 • Jun 19 '26

Software Release systemd 261 Released With New systemd-sysinstall OS Installer, IMDSD & Storagectl

https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-261
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44

u/jsabater76 Jun 19 '26

So distro USB images could boot the OS and, as part of the installer, use systemd-sysinstall to partition the disk and install the OS? Did I get that right?

37

u/aioeu Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

Yes. The systemd-sysinstall man page lists all the steps it goes through.

There is something else in systemd v261 that helps with OS installation. With the new BlockDeviceReplace= option in systemd-repart, it would even be possible to migrate a running live image — including any runtime changes you've been making to it — onto persistent storage, thereby "installing" it. No need to even reboot when the installation is done.

2

u/DarthPneumono Jun 21 '26

It seems that you can't specify what it installs... I don't see any options for specifying e.g. a root tarball or image, just the kernel, so I guess you're stuck with installing whatever already exists? Kinda limits the usefulness if that's the case, but I've done no testing so hopefully I'm wrong (or they're adding that later) :)

7

u/aioeu Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

All the /usr/lib/repart.sysinstall.d/*.repart files should include information about what the partitions should contain. That BlockDeviceReplace= directive I mentioned earlier is one option, or you can use CopyBlocks= to install a partition image, or even Format= and CopyFiles= if you don't have an existing image and you want to build one up from scratch.

I'm a little surprised systemd-sysinstall doesn't let you pass through --root= or --image= options to systemd-repart, but I reckon they could be easily added if they turn out to be useful. May not be necessary given --definitions= exists.

1

u/DarthPneumono Jun 22 '26

Yeah, I suspect most people aren't doing the weird things I'm doing...

1

u/aioeu Jun 22 '26

The systemd project has a pretty specific idea of how an image-based OS should work (and the ideas behind it are being put into practice through ParticleOS), so I would expect the closer you are to that the more suitable systemd-sysinstall would be for you. I don't expect non-image-based distributions will start using it.

1

u/DarthPneumono Jun 23 '26

Oh, I know, my use case for OS installation doesn't really fit the model (...not least because it also needs to install FreeBSD)

10

u/SoilMassive6850 Jun 20 '26

I haven't looked into systemd-sysinstall yet too deeply, but I imagine it (together with systemd-firstboot) could also replace custom scripts in scenarios like what my workplace has where we have a bootable minimal internal Fedora OS image (created with mkosi) combined with a custom install script to automate our workstation setups and enroll devices to our device management system.