SYSTEMD-DELTA(1)

💖 SYSTEMD-DELTA 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for systemd-delta — it's the little tool that sniffs out which config files are overriding other config files, and honestly? it's giving detective energy 🔍✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

systemd-delta [OPTIONS...] [PREFIX | PREFIX/SUFFIX | SUFFIX...]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the tea, bestie: systemd-delta helps you identify and compare configuration files that override other configuration files. Think of it like finding out who's the main character in a pile of same-named files.

The priority order is literally this, no cap:

• Files in /etc/ have highest priority
• Files in /run/ have the second highest priority
• ...and so on down the line
• Files in /usr/lib/ have lowest priority

If two directories have a file with the same name, the one in the higher-priority directory wins and overrides the lower-priority one. Periodt.

On top of that, some config files have ".d" directories — those hold "drop-in" files, which are lil configuration snippets that augment the main config file. And guess what? Drop-ins can get overridden too, the exact same way — by dropping a file with the same name into a higher-priority directory. BUT ⚠️ with drop-ins there's an extra rule: both the drop-in file name and the name of the containing directory must match (and that directory name corresponds to the name of the main configuration file). iykyk.

For a fuller explanation, go check out systemd.unit(5) — she explains everything 💅

Now, about that command line argument. It gets split into a prefix and a suffix, and either one is optional:

• The prefix has to be one of the directories that contains configuration files (/etc/, /run/, /usr/lib/, ...). If you give it, only overriding files inside that directory get shown. If you don't, all overriding files get shown.
• The suffix has to be the name of a subdirectory containing configuration files, like tmpfiles.d, sysctl.d or systemd/system. If you give it, only config files in that subdirectory (across all configuration paths, btw) get analyzed. If you don't, all configuration files get analyzed.
• And if you don't give a command line argument at all? Yep — all configuration files get analyzed. Simple as that ✨

There are some examples down below, keep scrolling 🫶

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

The following options are understood:

• -t, --type= — when it's listing the differences, only list the ones you asked for. The list itself is a comma-separated list of the difference types you want.

The recognized types are:

• masked — show masked files
• equivalent — show overridden files that, even though they're overridden, don't differ in content
• redirected — show files that are redirected to another one
• overridden — show overridden and changed files
• extended — show *.conf files in drop-in directories for units. Added in version 205.
• unchanged — show unmodified files too

• --diff= — when showing modified files, when a file is overridden, show a diff as well. This option takes a boolean argument. If you omit it, it defaults to true.
• -h, --help — print a short help text and exit 🫡
• --version — print a short version string and exit
• --no-pager — do not pipe output into a pager

---

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

Wanna see all local configuration? say less:

systemd-delta

Wanna see all runtime configuration?:

systemd-delta /run

Wanna see all system unit configuration changes?:

systemd-delta systemd/system

Wanna see all runtime "drop-in" changes for system units? (this one's the extended girlie):

systemd-delta --type=extended /run/systemd/system

---

🎀 EXIT STATUS 🎀

On success, 0 is returned. Otherwise you get a non-zero failure code 😭 (it's giving "something went wrong, bestie").

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

systemd(1), systemd.unit(5)

---

and that's the whole page, no notes 💖 this was systemd 262.1 dropping the SYSTEMD-DELTA(1) knowledge, mwah 🎀✨ bye bestie, go override something responsibly 💅🦋