Thanks! This is exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for.

So maybe this is too reductive, but basically:

- Tools for mutation of a running system

- Dealing with hard dependencies that don't cause errors when unavailable (like nfs in your example, or fan control, but also enumerating devices as I mentioned earlier, or for security, firewall rules since firewall starts entirely permissive)

- Standard packaging (edit: er, composability via standard packaging, or modularity with standard packaging for modules)

I think the logging stuff (datetimes, clearing, etc) is probably more the domain of a logger like journald, whose purpose seems is more concrete to me.