Heh. This problem is really not that bad in the big scheme of things. I was hoping https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=27155 to be done first, obsoleting the need for this workaround here :( > >>>>> It doesn't make sense to have agetty itself depend on syslogd because > >>>>> agetty can be (and usually is) used for modems etc which have nothing > >>>>> to do with the local console. For completeness: It would also be possible to depend on syslogd by default and *also* have the modem agettys startup delayed until syslogd is there. But if you have a modem agetty service but NO syslogd shepherd service in your config, that would hang the boot with no remote access. So let's not do that. 27155 could maybe statically analyze whether there is a syslogd and an agetty in the config, and error out if not both or neither. > >>>> How about adding a ‘dependencies’ field to ? It’d > >>>> default to the empty list, and could be set to '(syslogd) in this case. Yeah, we have to default to '() in the interest of backward compatibility anyway. > >>>> Does that sound too obscure to you, or would it be OK? Yes, it should be ok. See bug# 53763 for a patchset.