#1039294 ola: ships sysv-init script without systemd unit

Package:
ola
Source:
ola
Description:
Open Lighting Architecture
Submitter:
Date:
2026-05-04 21:13:04 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1039294#5
Date:
2023-06-25 22:25:43 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer(s),

ola has been flagged by Lintian as shipping a sysv-init script
without a corresponding systemd unit file. The default init system in
Debian is systemd, and so far this worked because a transitional
sysv-init-to-unit generator was shipped by systemd. This is in the
process of being deprecated and will be removed by the time Trixie
ships, so the remaining packages that ship init scripts without
systemd units will stop working.

There are various advantages to using native units, for example the
legacy generator cannot tell the different between a oneshot service
and a long running daemon. Also, sanboxing and security features
become available for services. For more information, consult the
systemd documentation:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit.html

You can find the Lintian warning here:

https://lintian.debian.org/sources/ola

In case this is a false positive, please add a Lintian override to
silence it and then close this bug.

Thanks!

#1039294#10
Date:
2025-10-15 15:24:56 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer(s) of affected packages, these bugs have been open for
more than 2 years now. Policy was updated to make units mandatory for
system services. The removal of compat with sysv-init scripts from
systemd has been postponed from trixie to forky, but it is now
approaching. In approximately a month's time, this should hit
unstable, if everything goes well.

Therefore in order to ensure the remaining bugs do not fall through
the cracks I am raising severity again, as there is a very high chance
the affected packages will stop working as intended in about a month's
time in the default setup.

As already mentioned in the original bug report, if your package is
not intended to work as a systemd service or under systemd at all,
please feel free to downgrade or close+wontifx or anything else as you
see fit. The severity raising is not intended to make anyone support
scenarios they don't wish to support, but simply to ensure attention
is given to the issue, even if just to close+wontfix. Also the bugs
were opened based on Lintian reports, and it is possible that there
might be false positives.

Thanks for your work and understanding.

#1039294#21
Date:
2026-05-04 06:46:56 UTC
From:
To:
The following systemd unit should do the trick:
Install to /usr/lib/systemd/system/olad.service

```
[Unit]
Description=Open Lighting Architecture daemon
Documentation=man:olad(1)
Requires=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/olad --log-level 3 --config-dir /etc/ola
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
User=olad
Group=olad

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Alias=ola.service
```

Rationale:
- Syslog is not needed any more: olad logs to stderr by default and that will go into the journal automatically
- PID files and daemon mode: olad runs as a foreground service anyway, systemd will take care of everything
- User and Group are required: olad refuses to start as root
- /etc/default/olad is somewhat obsolete: If someone wants to configure log level and config dir, they can just override the systemd service file

I'm not sure about the $remote_fs dependency in the original init script. Is that still needed?
Same for the hard dependency on the network - this could be an After= instead of a Requires=.

#1039294#28
Date:
2026-05-04 21:11:24 UTC
From:
To:
I didn't realize that you had already committed a systemd unit:
https://salsa.debian.org/wouter/ola/-/commit/70f1e074866c246a8cab9c7b785e453112b69acc

Can I ask that you remove the --syslog parameter, or move it to /etc/default/ola instead?
If it's hardcoded in the unit file, there's no way to override it without replacing the unit.
I really don't think it makes sense to retain syslog when journal logging is available.