[arch-general] Systemd Questions / Problem

[Eric Griffith]

Hey everyone, I've been reading up on Systemd lately, trying it out in
a VM just to see how the setup and everything and I've run into 1
problem, along with a few questions about it.

The main question I have about it related to its "On Demand Loading"
of daemons. What exactly does this mean in a desktop or server
environment? Such as, if my desktop is just sitting there, no
configuration done beyond just installing openssh, and I'm at my
laptop and I tell it ssh root at desktop. Will systemd automatically spot
the incoming ssh connection, since its watching the ssh socket, and
start sshd, and then stop it again when I close the connection? Or
would I still need to issue "systemctl enable sshd.service" so that
sshd is permanently enabled after a reboot?


Related to the above; whats the difference between 'enabled' and
'started' / 'active.' following a reboot? The reason I ask is because
after I got systemd setup in the VM, and enabled network.service, i
rebooted. When I got back into the VM, i tried to ping google, and it
wouldn't go through. I checked the status of network.service, it said
it was enabled, but "started (inactive),"  So i'm confused. If its
enabled, and started...why was it inactive? If we assume for a second
that systemd temporarily killed the network because nothing was being
done with it, then why didnt systemd restart it when it caught
activity on the network from me issuing the ping command?


The problem I'm having is after sym-linking
/etc/systemd/system/default.target to
/lib/systemd/system/graphical.target, when I reboot I get dropped into
a rescue shell saying:

"Failed to issue method call: Unit graphical.target is masked."

Anyone able to translate that?