the intended behavior of EnvironmentFile

[lennart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Lennart Poettering)]

On Mi, 27.06.18 00:33, Igor Bukanov (igor at mir2.org) wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> the man page for systemd.exec tells that for EnvironmentFile:
> 
> The files listed with this directive will be read shortly before the
> process is executed (more specifically, after all processes from a
> previous unit state terminated. This means you can generate these
> files in one unit state, and read it with this option in the next).
> 
> Yet for a service unit with, for example,  several ExecStartPost
> commands the environment files are parsed before each invocation of
> ExecStartPost even if there is no change in the state of the unit and
> not all processes are terminated. I.e. when starting a service like:
> 
> [Service]
> Type=oneshot
> EnvironmentFile=-/run/foo.env
> ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo FOO=BAR > /run/foo.env'
> ExecStartPost=/bin/sh -c 'echo $FOO; echo FOO=BAR2 > /run/foo.env; sleep 5&'
> ExecStartPost=/bin/sh -c 'echo $FOO; echo FOO=BAR3 > /run/foo.env'
> ExecStartPost=/bin/sh -c 'echo $FOO'
> 
> the log contains BAR BAR2 BAR3 even if there no change of the state in
> the unit state between ExecStartPost and the last ExecStartPost runs
> when the sleep command still runs.
> 
> It is just poor wording in the documentation, isn't it? I.e. the
> intended behavior is that the environment file are parsed before
> executing any Exec* line irrespective of the unit state, right?

Yes, it's poor wording. Could you file a github issue about this
please, so that we can fix it? (even better: post a PR)

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat