In Bugzilla, it has been requested to add a preset to systemd so that if the thermald package is installed, its service will be enabled by default.
thermald
It passes all of the criteria currently defined at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:DefaultServices, however it raises a question as to whether there should be an additional criterion added.
This particular service effectively changes the default behavior chosen by the kernel team for how they manage thermal events. My perspective on this is that we should add the following criterion (which this request would fail):
"Installation of the package providing the unit auto-started by this preset may not change the behavior of any other service running on the system. Exceptions may be granted by FESCo on a case-by-case basis."
In other words, we allow presets that add functionality, but disallow presets that cause a change in functionality. Such changes should always require a conscious decision by the user to enable the service.
Tagging @labbott here too. Justin is in FESCo, but we should bring in everyone impacted to review.
I'm not sure it's really accurate to imply the kernel team has specifically chosen a manner to deal with thermal events. Justin and Laura can elaborate, but as far as I understand things it's just whatever the upstream kernel does.
While I don't think that thermald is a generally bad thing, its effectiveness varies greatly depending on the system. We did at one point make some decisions regarding thermal and power management, but this was when things upstream were in flux. That time has passed, and we are simply following upstream in this regard. As for this particular package, I would need to do a bit more research on the behavior with older systems where the hardware capabilities are more limited with regards to power and thermal management.
More generally, I would definitely agree that we should amend the criteria with "Installation of the package providing the unit auto-started by this preset may not change the behavior of any other service running on the system. Exceptions may be granted by FESCo on a case-by-case basis."
Metadata Update from @jforbes: - Issue tagged with: meeting
Is this ticket about granting an exception to thermald.service specifically or is this about the policy wording change to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:DefaultServices? (Or both?)
It's both. Under the current guidelines, we should just be waving this through because there is no rule against it. However, this didn't sit right with me because it could have wider effects on the system than just enabling a single service.
I felt there should be a rule in place that requires situations like this to always trigger a FESCo decision, so I opened a ticket to suggest that change and use this case as a representative example.
*agreed Append the Default Services criteria with "Installation of the package providing the unit auto-started by this preset may not change the behavior of any other service
*action sgallagh to draft the guideline change and add this to the Bugzilla template
*agreed thermald.service should not be enabled by default (+6,0,-0)
Removing the meeting tag, but will leave this open until the guideline change is in place.
Metadata Update from @jforbes: - Issue untagged with: meeting
https://pagure.io/packaging-committee/issue/683 is the ticket with the FPC.
Metadata Update from @sgallagh: - Issue close_status updated to: Fixed - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
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