Call for testing: Upstart 1.4 in Ubuntu

[James Hunt]

Hi All,

We're looking to land Upstart 1.4 in Ubuntu Precise early January 2012. If you have an Ubuntu
Precise test system [1] and you'd like to help with testing these new features, read on...

= New Features =

 The two main new features are:

- new 'setuid' and 'setgid' stanzas

  Allows you to specify the user and group a job runs as
  (this should help minimize the intricate su/sudo/start-stop-daemon command-lines)

- Logging of job output for system jobs [2]

  Job logging is enabled by default in 1.4. Since this is the first version of Upstart
  that writes to *any* files, this is quite a big change. 3 new command-line options
  have been added to support this feature:

	'--no-log' (disable logging entirely)
	'--logdir=DIR' (specify alternate log directory)
	'--default-console=VALUE' (specify default value for 'console' stanza).

= How to Obtain the Upstart 1.4 Package =

 please add the following 'upstart-job-logging' PPA [3] to your system and give it a spin:

	sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jamesodhunt/upstart-job-logging

= Feedback =

Please provide feedback via a bug report:

	https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+filebug

= Further Details on Features =

Full details on these features can be found in the usual places:

- init(5)
- init(8)
- cookbook:
    http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#console-log
    http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#configuration
    http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#setuid
    http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#setgid


Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,

James.

[1] - Usual caveats apply: do *not* install this on any critical systems.

[2] - Two limitations to be aware of:
	- logging *only* currently applies to system jobs,
	- any job that produces output and ends *before* the disk becomes writeable
	  will not currently have output logged.
      Note: both limitations are currently being addressed.

[3] - https://launchpad.net/~jamesodhunt/+archive/upstart-job-logging

--
James Hunt
____________________________________
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/upstart_cookbook.pdf