Ah, I realize the script is complex, and has a dependency, so you probably wouldn't have installed and tried it.

Don't tell anybody else but I'm using systemd here so there may be some conflicts...

Done.

Actually, this tool will transform how I write my --help screens... who doesn't want an auto-generated man page?! Regardless of whatever happens with this systemdtl abomination, help2man is a definite positive thing I've learned.

Would you please file some bugs against the project on gitlab? Otherwise, I'll do it.

And, since you brought up lintian, is there some package I should be using for builds on a Devuan box, so that I don't get this error?

Now running lintian systemdtl_0.0.1-1+devuan_amd64.changes ...
Could not find a profile matching "{VENDOR}/main" for vendor devuan
	Lintian::Profile::_find_vendor_profile(Lintian::Profile=HASH(0x55d82ca5b490)) called at /usr/share/perl5/Lintian/Profile.pm line 140
	Lintian::Profile::new("Lintian::Profile", undef, ARRAY(0x55d82a4852d0), HASH(0x55d82a7ba3a0)) called at /usr/bin/lintian line 216
	dplint::load_profile(undef) called at /usr/share/lintian/commands/lintian.pm line 751
	eval {...} called at /usr/share/lintian/commands/lintian.pm line 751
	main::main() called at /usr/bin/lintian line 46
	eval {...} called at /usr/bin/lintian line 46
	main::__ANON__("/usr/share/lintian/commands/lintian.pm") called at /usr/bin/lintian line 115
	dplint::run_tool("/usr/bin/lintian", "lintian") called at /usr/bin/lintian line 291
	dplint::main() called at /usr/bin/lintian line 375

I already tried

$ apt-file search /usr/share/lintian/profiles/devuan
$

EDIT:
Huh, I found devuan-lintian-profile which adds such a directory. Let me guess, apt-file has a cache that needs to be updated just like apt-file?

systemdtl

Nice script! Guess you didn't need my "help" then

Is it simple to output the usage information with a --help option? That would allow you to create a man page with help2man and eliminate one of the Lintian warnings:

W: systemdtl: copyright-has-url-from-dh_make-boilerplate
W: systemdtl: copyright-without-copyright-notice
W: systemdtl: binary-without-manpage usr/sbin/systemctl

It's not important ofc but I do like to shut Lintian up when possible.

Im a firm believer of it must work for the intended operating system without too many indirection's, if not then well look elsewhere.

I guess version 0.0.2 will include a dummy hostnamectl and systemd-detect-virt based on my current notes for joining a devuan system to a freeipa domain. I guess the virt-what wasn't good enough for the systemd people, so they subsumed that task for themselves.

And after writing my own version, I learn that debian/Devuan packages the systemctl from the docker-systemctl-replacement, However, it appears to actually read the systemd-related files (as in unit files) so it does not do what I want it to do, so I needed to write my version anyway.

I realize this is a bizarre topic. Bear with me.

It's not bizarre at all. I think it's a good idea. I had the same idea about two years ago when I was learning how to set up a Debian server.

Phil

@HevyDevy, well, I really do want to be systemd-free, and if I have to write an interface to let things think they're just calling the systemctl command, I can live with that. I think it's rather pretentious of a package to hard-code in systemctl commands, but seeing as how FreeIPA is built by the Fedora/RHEL people, I can see why they don't bother to look beyond it.

For the longest while, to support my FreeIPA installs, I've just been making an empty systemctl script:

#!/bin/sh
true

But I feel like I can do better.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Join_FreeIPA

Something like this at /usr/local/bin/systemctl:

#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
   start) service "$2" start ;;
   stop) service "$2" stop ;;
esac

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/2 … a4.en.html

Does anyone have, or know of any, script that is designed to take commands like systemctl, and run the real commands? For example, if I run "systemctl start httpd" it will translate it to and execute, "service httpd start."

I think writing such a script, if none exists already, would be easier than trying to patch freeipa to use hard-coded "service httpd start" commands and similar. I started down that route, but some commands include things such as --now and condrestart, which I might need to write a script for, even if it's more basic than a real conditional restart (for which I will have to RTFM to know the condition it depends on).

If nobody has any pointers, I will get started on such a script. I think I'll call it the undiscoverable term "systemdtl," for System Desire to Live. However, I would love to build on somebody else's work should such a thing exist and be suitably licensed.