Systemd 249 Has Another Chance For Testing Before Release

Another release candidate of systemd 249 is available for testing while the actual release appears imminent.

As previously noted the systemd 249 update is coming with many new features. Some of the 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.

- Changes to the --image= switch handling for the likes of systemd-nspawn and systemd-dissect to allow for "simple and generic whole-file-system A/B updates" where new operating system versions are dropped into partitions.

- 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.

Last week's RC2 also added the ConditionOSRelease directive. Now with systemd 249-rc3 there are a few more fixes in trying to button things up ahead of the official roll-out. In RC3 there are some updates around timezone handling, dropping an old workaround for XGI Z7/Z9 graphics cards, reverting of the new ExitType functionality, and other mostly small fixes.

Those wanting to help in testing systemd 249-rc3 can find the latest sources for this test candidate via GitHub.