Handles the scandir for a given user. Designed to be either root or a branch of the supervision tree.
66-scandir [ -h ] [ -z ] [ -v verbosity ] [ -b ] [ -l live ] [ -d notif ][ -t rescan ] [ -L log_user ] [ -s skel ] [ -e environment ] [ -c | r | u ] owner
This program creates or starts the scandir (directory containing a collection of s6‑supervise processes) for the given owner depending on the provided options. Note that owner can be any valid user on the system. However, the given user must have sufficient permissions to create the necessary directories at its location. That is /run/66 by default or the resulting path provided by the ‑l option. If owner is not explicitely set then the user of the current process will be used instead.
-h : prints this help.
-z : use color.
-v verbosity : increases/decreases the verbosity of the command.
-b : create specific files for boot. Only the root user can use this option. It is not meant to be used directly even with root. 66-boot calls it during the boot process.
-l live : changes the supervision directory of service to live. By default this will be /run/66. The default can also be changed at compile time by passing the --livedir=live option to ./configure. An existing absolute path is expected and should be within a writable and executable filesystem - likely a RAM filesystem.
-d notif : notify readiness on file descriptor notif. When scandir is ready to accept commands from 66‑scanctl, it will write a newline to notif. notif cannot be lesser than 3. By default, no notification is sent. If -b is set, this option have no effects.
-t rescan : perform a scan every rescan milliseconds. If rescan is set to 0 (the default), automatic scans are never performed after the first one and s6‑svscan will only detect new services by issuing either 66‑scanctl reload or s6‑svscanctl -a. It is strongly discouraged to set rescan to a positive value under 500.
-s skel : an absolute path. Directory containing skeleton files. This option is not meant to be used directly even with root. 66‑boot calls it during the boot process. Default is /etc/66.
-L log_user : will run the catch-all logger as log_user. Default is s6log. The default can also be changed at compile-time by passing the ‑‑with‑s6‑log‑user=user option to ./configure.
-e environment : an absolute path. Merge the current environment variables of scandir with variables found in this directory. Any file in environment not beginning with a dot and not containing the = character will be read and parsed.
-c : create the neccessary directories at live. Must be executed once with this option before being able to use ‑u.
-r : remove the scandir directory at live. If it was already started with ‑u it must first be stopped sending a signal with 66‑scanctl quit or similar.
-u : start the scandir directory at live calling s6‑svscan.
When creating the scandir with the ‑c option various files and directories will be created at the live directory for the given owner.
If created with the user root, you will find the following in /run/66 (the directory created by default if ‑l is not passed and 0 being the corresponding UID for the root user):
/run/66/scandir/0 : stores all longrun proccesses (commonly known as daemons) started by root.
/run/66/tree/0 : stores any s6‑rc service database started by root.
/run/66/log/0 : stores the catch-all logger when the scandir is created for a boot procedure with the ‑b option.
/run/66/state/0 : stores internal 66 ecosystem files.
If the scandir was created with a regular user you will find the following in /run/66
(Default directories if ‑l is not passed and 1000 being the UID for the user):
/run/66/scandir/1000
/run/66/tree/1000
/run/66/state/1000
If a scandir already existed at the default location for the given user it will prevent its creation when calling 66‑scandir ‑c. If you wanted to create a different scandir for the same owner at the same live location you must delete it first with ‑r.
You can modify environment variables when starting the scandir with the ‑e option. This option expects to find a valid absolute path to a directory containing one or more files where the format is the classic key=value pair. Each file found will be read and parsed.
Any service launched on the scandir will inherit the environment variables of the scandir. A specific global key=value pair inherited by all service can be set using this option.
The mentioned environment directory can not exceed more than 100 files. Each file can not contain more than 4095 bytes or more than 50 key=value pairs.
When using the ‑r option to delete the scandir of a given user some directories of the scandir may not be removed if another user accesses them. In our previous example where we created a scandir for root with UID 0 and a regular user with the UID 1000 this would imply the following:
/run/66/scandir/0 # will be deleted
/run/66/tree/0 # will be deleted
/run/66/log/0 # will be deleted
/run/66/state/0 # will be deleted
The live directory of the root user (in this example and by default /run/66) will not be removed because another user (the one from our example) can still use it. In fact 66‑scandir will only remove the subdirectories of the corresponding UID of the owner while the live root directory is not touched. If live was created on a RAM filesystem as suggested the deletion happens on the next reboot.
Note: A running scandir can not be removed. It needs to be stopped first with 66-scanctl quit or similar to be able to remove it.
The -b and -s option are called by 66-boot. ‑b will create .s6‑svscan control files (see s6‑svscan interface documentation) specifically for stage1 (PID1 process). This special scandir is controlled by the safe wrappers halt, poweroff, reboot, shutdown provided with 66 tools. The 66-shutdownd daemon which controls the shutdown request will be created automatically at the correct location. Further this specific task needs to read the skeleton file init.conf containing the live directory location which is the purpose of the ‑s option.
The live directory for the boot process requires writable directories. In order to accommodate for read‑only root filesystems there needs to be a tmpfs mounted before s6‑svscan can be run.