Systemd 249 Released With New Option For Simple Whole-File-System A/B Updates

Systemd 249 brings plenty of changes as usual with new systemd releases. One of the notable changes is around being able to carry out whole-file-system A/B updates. As explained in the change-log, "When operating on disk images via the --image= switch of various tools (such as systemd-nspawn or systemd-dissect), or when udev finds no 'root=' parameter on the kernel command line, and multiple suitable root or /usr/ partitions exist in the image, then a simple comparison inspired by strverscmp() is done on the GPT partition label, and the newest partition is picked. This permits a simple and generic whole-file-system A/B update logic where new operating system versions are dropped into partitions whose label is then updated with a matching version identifier."
Some of the other systemd 249 highlights include:
- Systemd-sysusers and systemd-firstboot now supports querying information from the credential subsystems.
- The systemd-repart partition configurations have a new "MakeDirectories=" option to create arbitrary directories inside file-systems as they are created.
- The /etc/os-release file has new optional variables of IMAGE_VERSION= and IMAGE_ID= around operating system image information.
- A new udev hardware database for FireWire devices.
- The native Journal protocol is now properly documented.
- Various DHCP server improvements.
- systemd-detect-virt can now correctly identify Amazon EC2 environments.
More details on all of the systemd 249 changes and source downloads via GitHub.
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