[arch-general] want to try systemd but need some advice

[Kevin Chadwick]

> In particular there's no place for polkit
> or anything similar here.
> 
> I'd want things to be configured that way 'once and for all', meaning that
> a) I'm not really looking forward to having to do this for each and every
> device or command, and b) that a routine system update (a frequent enough
> event on an Arch system) must not be able to modify this policy.
> 

I can't help with systemd but this is getting harder with initscripts
even too on linux, but atleast it's almost guaranteed to be possible
and easyish with scripted rc. Do you have polkit installed as you may
want to make sure it isn't or remove it's rights, letting it error may
pollute your logs but may also prevent any potential timeouts from
dependent or expectant packages. 

> >From reading the avaiable docs I'm not convinced this will be possible, in  
> particular since the docs concerning logind are rather incomplete (where are
> those ACLs defined for example). And 'ping Lennart if you need more info' as
> suggested, is not really a sustainable solution IMHO.

I approached the polkit dev with similar concerns asking how I can be
sure what rights are granted and giving a blatant example of the
inadequate documentation. He picked out the parts of my email suggesting
OTHERS were wondering about RedHats motives (being mainly a support
company now) for the difficulty of configuration and insulted me. In
my opinion, he picked that part as an insult to him because he knew his
software was for software devs rather than users or admins and I had
raised difficult problems he didn't want to answer and which only
applied to a small proportion of users. This situation is silly as a
default security stance is by definition overly permissive and all
security software should be completely transparent in it's permission
granting to be taken seriously.

Your task should be simple and final but unfortunately I have to wish
you good luck.

-- 
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'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)
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