The new Systemd 246 release comes bearing more features for this dominant Linux init system. It has an incredibly long list of new features, many of which have to do with support for encrypted and signed disk volumes.
Systemd provides a standard process for controlling what programs run when a Linux system boots up. While systemd is compatible with SysV and Linux Standard Base (LSB) init scripts, systemd is meant to be a drop-in replacement for these older ways of getting a Linux system running.
Systemd 246 has a lot of new functionality in time for making it into at least some of the autumn 2020 Linux distributions.
Systemd 246 Major Changes
- Systemd-journald now supports Zstd compression of journal files. Similarly, coredumps collected by systemd-coredump can now make use of Zstd compression.
- Tmpfs mounts automatically created by systemd such as for /tmp and /run whill now have a limit. 50% of RAM for /tmp and /dev/sdm while 10% of RAM for other mounts.
- The systemd-homed LUKS back-end can now automatically discard empty system blocks when a user logs out.
- Systemd-homed also now better protects against potential double data encryption scenarios. Systemd-homed can also support unlocking home directories using FIOD2 security tokens.
- Systemd-cryptsetup can now activate Microsoft BitLocker volumes during boot.
- The system hostname can now be set at boot time with the systemd.hostname= kernel option. There are also other new kernel command line options like systemd.swap= for toggling if SWAP is enabled
Detailed information for all changes can be found here.
