libvirt-bin.service does not read /etc/default/libvirt-bin

[Radek Zajic]

When libvirt-bin initscript was converted to systemd, it was seriously broken.

While the old initscript reads the contents of /etc/default/libvirt-bin in which I can specify additional command line parameters of libvirtd (such as --listen), the new /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/libvirt-bin.service contains only:
(...)
[Service]
Type=notify
Environment=LIBVIRTD_ARGS= KRB5_KTNAME=/etc/libvirt/libvirt.keytab
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/libvirtd $LIBVIRTD_ARGS
(...)
and is *overwritten after each update of the package*.

Please fix this issue by "sourcing" the contents of /etc/default/libvirt-bin so that the directives inside this config file affect at least command line parameters of libvirtd (btw, pre-systemd used libvirtd_opts, not LIBVIRTD_ARGS), or provide alternative way of configuring libvirtd command line parameters.

Thank you.

(Affected distribution: at least Ubuntu 15.10)

[Radek Zajic (radek-zajic)]

wrong project, sorry; fixed by this change

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

In the interest of backwards compatibility this needs to look something like

Environment=KRB5_KTNAME=/etc/libvirt/libvirt.keytab
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/libvirt-bin
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/libvirtd $LIBVIRTD_ARGS

(Assuming that LIBVIRTD_ARGS is specified in the default/ file).

Indeed this style is obsolete as a lot of packages implement that in a totally different way.

The better approach is to use a configuration file that is actually read by libvirt itself, instead of passing configuration on the command line. This of course needs to be supported upstream, but at least then it will work the same way everywhere and doesn't need to be documented (differently) by distros working around the lack of a proper config file.

As a fallback, one can create a drop-in which overrides/adds particular keys to the .service file, with "systemctl edit libvirt-bin", which is a convenience shortcut for creating a /etc/systemd/system/libvirt-bin.service.d/mysettings.conf . It's also conceivable to do that in the postinst during package upgrade.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

> The better approach is to use a configuration file that is actually read by libvirt itself

For example, the "-l" option can already be set in /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf in listen_tcp. Rather confusing to have *two* places to configure it..

[Radek Zajic (radek-zajic)]

While there really is a "listen_tcp" directive in /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf, it is ignored by the daemon (don't ask me why). I do have this option set to "listen_tcp = 1", unfortunately libvirtd does not listen on TCP unless I start the daemon with "-l" command line parameter. :-(
(Maybe a bug in libvirtd?)

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Thanks - Note that in xenial this will be fixed by the upcoming
merge from Debian, where we (it looks like) switch to the upstream
.service file which does include the defaults file.

Hoewver, listen_tcp being ignored is definately a bug. Would you
mind opening a new bug for that?

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Latest merge to libvirt-1.3.1 has been uploaded to Xenial. This should now read the config file.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.