Subject: Re: bug#52533: guix deploy breaks SSH access with a PAM error

From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2022 10:19:17 -0500

Hi Ludovic,

Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

> sshd could also be started via socket activation; ‘sshd’ subprocesses
> corresponding to existing logins would be unaffected.
>
>> Also, it seems to me inetd can already do "socket activation", if this
>> was somehow useful.
>
> Yes, inetd can do that.  It would be nicer though to have it all
> integrated in the Shepherd.

I'm not sure.  The beauty of Shepherd, in my eyes, when compared to
other init systems, is that it is lean and clean.  Leveraging what's
already out there (and part of GNU) seems an obvious path to me, as it:

1. Means less code to write, document and maintain.
2. Creates more cohesion between various components of the GNU project.

> (Basically, it’s a choice we could make right away: do we move all
> network daemons, plus things like guix-daemon, dbus-daemon, etc. etc. to
> inetd services, or do we instead extend the Shepherd to support socket
> activation?  I’m rather in favor of the latter, but if in Guix System we
> build an abstraction that can equally well target inetd or a future
> Shepherd version, that’s even better.)

We could start with just targeting inetd, and build the abstraction
later, if the need arises, perhaps?  We may never need it.

Thanks,

Maxim