When did systemd start managing passwords etc.
I booted up an Arch Linux device yesterday and saw lots of tempfs /run/credentials/systemd entries in df -h
Guess I never really paid much attention and never really noticed.
Maybe from there:
https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/428
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-May/msg00427.html
Source : https://unixdigest.com/articles/the-real-motivation-behind-systemd.html
It starts from here (2021):
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/5945640e2af1c5ebba0b8c1329f077baf90d31c9
This is explained in more detail here: https://systemd.io/CREDENTIALS
tl;dr it's an overspecialized mechanism for populating /run/my_daemon with a few bits of a data.
The tmux thing isn't really related to the credentials thing. It's basically about systemd (ab)using cgroups for process tracking so desktop environments don't have to fix their daemons to respect the standard process tracking mechanisms (sessions and POSIX process groups). When everything else that used the original mechanism gets broken, of course they go and ask them to special case systemd, adding another node of dependencies that makes it even more difficult for binary distros to meaningfully support multiple inits.
Thankfully the maintainer said no and the far better solution of a systemd-run -- tmux wrapper was adopted.
>"When did systemd start managing passwords etc."
Systemd does everything, apparently.
I wait in trepidation for systemd-ai-does-your-job