Running `systemd` in an interactive shell is not a good idea.  To
avoid this happening by accident, the /bin/systemd ->
/lib/systemd/systemd symlink should no longer be shipped.

Documentation such as [1] still suggests to use `init=/bin/systemd`
which would result in non-bootable systems.  (The initramfs might be
able to catch this and run /lib/systemd/systemd instead in most cases
as unbootable systems are not nice.)

Ansgar

  [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Configuring_for_testing

Hi Ansgar

Continuing to ship the symlink is kinda cheap and I'm indeed a bit
worried that this change might cause unbootable systems.
We could either add some maintscript code to abort the upgrade if a
installation is detected that uses init=/bin/systemd (e.g. by checking
/proc/cmdline).
But your initramfs idea might indeed by nicer. The initramfs should
probably output a big, fat warning if it is found that the old
/bin/systemd symlink is used, so people will migrate to the "new"
location eventually.

Could you file a bug report against initramfs-tools and block this one
with it? I guess attaching a working patch for initramfs-tools will
speed up the process :-)

Regards,
Michael

Dear initramfs maintainers,

would it be possible to add a fallback to try /lib/systemd/systemd if
the user provided init=/bin/systemd and the file no longer exists?

I would like systemd to stop shipping the /bin/systemd symlink as this
should not be run by users, however it was suggested to use
init=/bin/systemd for testing purposes in the past (see below).  So just
removing the symlink might make some systems unbootable.

Ansgar

Michael Biebl writes:

Done so now, also for dracut.