Bug#796624: mdadm: Has init script in runlevel S but no matching service file

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

On 31 March 2016 at 20:12, Jes Sorensen <Jes.Sorensen at redhat.com> wrote:
> Felipe Sateler <fsateler at debian.org> writes:
>> Hello upstream mdadm.
>>
>> I'm adding you to CC to resolve the issue of an init script that
>> current debian uses, that might possibly be redundant. Please see my
>> below diagnosis
>>
>> On 24 December 2015 at 16:10, Felipe Sateler <fsateler at debian.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sat, 22 Aug 2015 22:32:00 -0300 fsateler at debian.org wrote:
>>> > Hi,
>>> >
>>> > Your package mdadm has an initscript that is enabled in runlevel S,
>>> > but it does not provide a corresponding systemd service unit.
>>>
>>> It seems that the mdadm-raid init script (which triggered this bug
>>> report) is not useful on a udev system (which all systemd systems
>>> are[1]). The file /lib/udev/rules.d/64-md-raid-assembly.rules assembles
>>> the arrays incrementally as devices are known to udev, and so running
>>> a separate assembly step should be superfluous. If this is not true,
>>> then maybe this should be reported upstream, as there is a systemd
>>> service missing.
>>
>> For reference, the init script in question can be seen in the souces
>> site[1]. On boot, it invokes mdadm --assemble and reports some status
>> messages for each md device.
>>
>> So, the questions are: is this init script redundant on a udev system?
>> If not, isn't an equivalent systemd unit missing upstream?
>
> I haven't looked at Debian's scripts here, but whatever Debian uses as
> init scripts to control mdadm startup is decided by the Debian mdadm
> maintainer. We do carry a set of system files for mdadm in the
> mdadm/systemd directory, so if something is missing, it may be that the
> Debian maintainer forgot to include it.
>

In Debian we have multiple configuration that we support:
* initramfs-tools based initrd without udev
* initramfs-tools based initrd with udev
* regular userspace with systemd
* regular userspace without systemd (sysv init based, with udev)

I believe some of the initscripts are specific to second & last cases,
and indeed quite debian (and debian derivatives) specific rather than
upstream worthy.
In the udev present and systemd available cases packaging is (or
should be trying to anyway) to follow upstream set of units/udev
rules.
But due to supporting the two extra cases listed above we have
initscripts without equivalent systemd unit, whichi imho should be
just fine. If there is a problem with that, I don't see a reason to
report it to mdadm upstream / linux-raid mailing list...

Apart from aesthetics, is there an actual problem with shipping extra
initscripts on debian?

-- 
Regards,

Dimitri.