[PLUG] Ubuntu 26.10 breaks init.d

[Walt Mankowski via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Hi all,

I wanted to give everyone a heads up that, starting with Ubuntu 26.10,
they've removed support for "legacy System V scripts".

That's the executive summary. Read on for the gory details.

This morning I decided to update my linode from Ubuntu 26.04 to
26.10. Usually these are quick and painless, and I thought this one
went smoothly too. But when I rebooted and logged back in, I
discovered that DNS wasn't working.

I went to #ubuntu on Libera IRC and learned that this version of
Ubuntu removed support for init.d scripts. I originally setup this
instance in 2017, and it uses ifupdown instead of the now-preferred
netplan.

To be fair, this change was in the release notes[1], but it's fairly
far down. I would have expected a change like this, which is likely to
break a lot of older systems going forward, would have been featured
much more prominently than it is.

So what to do now?

I opened a ticket with Linode about whether I can restore to 26.04
from my backups. I'm also researching how to convert ifupdown to
netplan.

In at attempt to limp along with what I have for now, I first tried this:

sudo resolvectl dns eth0 1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8

That worked for a while, but then when I checked later I saw that
`resolvectl status` was no longer showing it! Next I tried something a
bit more permanent. I added

DNS=1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8

to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf. That's working for now, but I wouldn't
be surprised if some process restores that file to its default and
erases my change.

Probably the best solution going forward is configure a new Linode
instance, but that's more work than I'm feeling up for just now.

To be completely honest, I'm agnostic about System V init vs
systemd. I just want something that works. But what really got me
upset was the attitude in the Ubuntu IRC channel that this was my
fault for not updating a system that had been working flawlessly for
nearly a decade, and not theirs for removing a key legacy support
feature with essentially no warning at all.

Sigh.

Walt

1. https://documentation.ubuntu.com/release-notes/26.10/#system-changes
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