8 ms·

SystemBSD: Custom D-Bus daemons emulating systemd behavior on OpenBSD [pdf]

72 points by vezzy-fnord 11y ago

simoncion 11y ago
Is there a recording of the talk that -I assume- was given with these slides?
- brynet 11y ago
  This was a talk Ian gave back in May @ CDBUG (Capital District *BSD User Group) http://cdbug.org/?p=49 http://cdbug.org/?p=49
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  There is no recording, from what Sutton told me. I saw the talk overview on the CDBUG page, knew his IRC handle and said "Give me the slides and the right to freely redistribute, you asshole." So he reluctantly did. They were in MagicPoint format, so I had to convert them to PDF with a dubious third-party Python script, slightly modifying the MGP manifest in the process. That's probably why the formatting is so iffy. For those wondering, the systembsd sources are here: https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git;a=summary https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git...
- Snesker 11y ago
  [this post is humour but contains my true opinions] It's probably a classified leak, because nobody but the US government and its subsidiaries would want anything to do with the cancer that is systemdicks. Have a semi-related article, matey. https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/tso-and-linus-and-the-impotent-rage-against-systemd/ https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/tso-and-linus-and...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
generic_user 11y ago
From the pdf, "the overwhelmingly common use case for these daemons is for running gnome". There are native BSD desktop projects being worked on that are quite polished and require none of the Linux based SytemD+Gtk+Gnome dependency stack. Lumina is worth looking at (Qt based) and also runs on Linux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumina_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumina_Desktop From what I remember the author started this work before the nuclear meltdown which is commendable. But we are obviously in a post schism age.
byuu 11y ago
As long as it's optional for Gnome only as they say, that's fine. I just hope other DEs like Xfce don't simply rely on this being available like with Consolekit, HAL, D-bus, etc that I now have to run on FreeBSD as well. I'm perfectly content ignoring Gnome, but if every full desktop environment starts relying on this because it's available, then it's not really so optional anymore. (and of course, if the alternative is guaranteed to be no major DE running on BSD at all without this, then we similarly have our hand forced. It depends on who would flinch first.)
- generic_user 11y ago
  You should try Lumina Desktop they are dedicated to a native BSD desktop experience and BSD technology, but it is also portable to Linux.
- simoncion 11y ago
  I could be very, very, very wrong, but I remember hearing a while back that both Wayland and KDE had plans to become dependant on systemd for its "guaranteed-race-free" startup process.
  - navaati 11y ago
    Wayland is not a program, it's a protocol, so there is no way it could depend on systemd. Some compositors may choose to, some compositors may choose not to.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Compositors choose to, because they need a part of it, logind, to talk to polkit, to gain the proper access privileges to do what needs to be done. Basically, with Wayland the compositor/Window Manager/toolkit gets elevated to the same level as X11. Meaning that it has to do pretty much everything that X11 used to do for it. The alternative to using logind+polkit is to run the DE/WM/compositor as root. Not something often talked about, as wayland is supposed to be the secure choice vs X11. Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess, where stuff is being presented as one thing but is in essence something quite different for those in the know.
raphaelss 11y ago
The author mentions using OpenBSD in production. Do any of you also use it in production? I have no doubt that it is used with good results, but I have enjoyed it as a desktop OS and would love if more people could share their experience with it on a job.
- protomyth 11y ago
  I use it for servers except for home directories (FreeBSD with ZFS for that) and required applications (Red Hat, Windows, OS X, and an AS/400 (iSeries)). It works fine on bare metal and in VM on VSphere. Management is quite easy and the 6 months between major upgrades has been ok. Patching is build a set (I am all amd64) and deploy.
- meanjollies 11y ago
  I work for an ISP. We use it (CARP and relayd) heavily for HTTP and DNS load balancing in an IPv6-laden environment. Performance is better than that we saw a few years ago under Linux.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    CARP is sweet. There's an (as far as I can tell) IPv4-only implementation for Linux in ucarp. [0] I use it for failover on my home LAN. Question: Does OpenBSD CARP support "passwords" longer than 15 or 16 characters? [0] http://www.pureftpd.org/project/ucarp http://www.pureftpd.org/project/ucarp
  - brobinson 11y ago
    Did you also evaluate FreeBSD? If you did, I'm curious what the pros and cons were that ultimately affected your decision.
    - meanjollies 11y ago
      I did not. I was more familiar with OpenBSD to begin with, and like its slant toward security. Although we do use FreeBSD for a few other servers used as NAS controllers. HAST + ZFS + CARP is great.
geofft 11y ago
The systemd folks have been saying all along that it's just a standardized and stable interface and anyone else can implement that interface. I'm glad to see this, because it's testing the claim: if it's true, that means wonderful things for OpenBSD portability, and if it's not true, we should be more cautious about coding to systemd's APIs.
- nwmcsween 11y ago
  Read the slides he had a multitude of issues trying to copy the interfaces due to the tight integration of components.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    What's more, I expect that his will forever be an incomplete implementation due to to undocumented or poorly-documented behaviors, edge-case or otherwise.
    - generic_user 11y ago
      It was never even considered that this would be a complete implementation. The goal was always to just implement the minimum requirements to get Gnome working. And as far as I know they never even completed that work. They implemented some small subset of there original daemons because the project quickly blew up into a major amount of work.
    - the_why_of_y 11y ago
      Of course the implementation is going to be incomplete in some way, since OpenBSD kernel doesn't have the APIs necessary to actually implement multiple seats, so the implementation won't allow creating more than 1 seat.
- generic_user 11y ago
  The argument that XYZ has a portable interface therefor XYZ is portable is a bit of a head fake argument. OpenGL 4.5 is also a supposedly portable interface, so is the X Server protocol. To implement these takes years of work with large teams of full time engineers. Mesa has over 1.5 million lines of code and has been in constant development for over 10 years. At last count SystemD has over 40 "Interfaces". These are not publicly versioned standards. So there is no stable interface to even implement and there is no commitment that these "interfaces" will not change at any point in time. If the project estimate to actually implement XYZ interface takes years of full time engineers and millions of dollars to complete its basically out of the reach of any volunteer open source operating system project. I just find the argument disingenuous. Everyone making these claims knows that there is practically 0 chance that anyone but RedHat or another big Corporation like Google or Samsung has the resources to Implement something like this.
wereHamster 11y ago
Proper capitalization goes a long way in making a text readable. I had the impression that this presentation was written by a 10 year old script kiddie. Also: punctuation, consistent font sizing. Add a few colors to highlight the code blocks. Headings. Graphical bullet points. Those would make the presentation mch more trustworthy. If you are going to talk shit about somebody or something (without substantiating the points nonetheless) then at least do it with style.
- dalke 11y ago
  As vezzy-fnord points out in this thread, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176412 , the author did not post the slides, nor had final say on the presentation format. Instead, quoting vezzy-fnord: > They were in MagicPoint format, so I had to convert them to PDF with a dubious third-party Python script, slightly modifying the MGP manifest in the process. That's probably why the formatting is so iffy. You'll also note that the author "reluctantly" gave permission. For all we know, it was precisely because the author knew that people would criticize the paper over superficial format conversion issues than actual substance.
  - asveikau 11y ago
    I actually looked at the git repo and found the comments are written in a similar style. All lower case and with a slightly rambling feel. https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git;a=blob_plain;f=src/interfaces/hostnamed/hostnamed.c;hb=HEAD https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git... I find it a little hard to understand too. I am going to chalk this up to me starting to be an old man and complaining about not understanding the youths.
    - dalke 11y ago
      I enjoyed the research you did for the followup. I must be another one of those old folks. :) For what it's worth, I was a horrible writer when I was an undergraduate, and this was a GSOC project, so I'm willing to cut some slack. Might be because I'm a slacker.
JdeBP 11y ago
It's good to see that http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html#systemBSD http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/de... agrees with what Ian Sutton himself later reported about the relative difficulties and problems.

72 points by vezzy-fnord 11y ago

simoncion 11y ago

Is there a recording of the talk that -I assume- was given with these slides?

brynet 11y ago
This was a talk Ian gave back in May @ CDBUG (Capital District *BSD User Group) http://cdbug.org/?p=49 http://cdbug.org/?p=49
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
There is no recording, from what Sutton told me. I saw the talk overview on the CDBUG page, knew his IRC handle and said "Give me the slides and the right to freely redistribute, you asshole." So he reluctantly did. They were in MagicPoint format, so I had to convert them to PDF with a dubious third-party Python script, slightly modifying the MGP manifest in the process. That's probably why the formatting is so iffy. For those wondering, the systembsd sources are here: https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git;a=summary https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git...
Snesker 11y ago
[this post is humour but contains my true opinions] It's probably a classified leak, because nobody but the US government and its subsidiaries would want anything to do with the cancer that is systemdicks. Have a semi-related article, matey. https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/tso-and-linus-and-the-impotent-rage-against-systemd/ https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/tso-and-linus-and...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

generic_user 11y ago

From the pdf, "the overwhelmingly common use case for these daemons is for running gnome". There are native BSD desktop projects being worked on that are quite polished and require none of the Linux based SytemD+Gtk+Gnome dependency stack. Lumina is worth looking at (Qt based) and also runs on Linux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumina_Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumina_Desktop From what I remember the author started this work before the nuclear meltdown which is commendable. But we are obviously in a post schism age.

byuu 11y ago

As long as it's optional for Gnome only as they say, that's fine. I just hope other DEs like Xfce don't simply rely on this being available like with Consolekit, HAL, D-bus, etc that I now have to run on FreeBSD as well. I'm perfectly content ignoring Gnome, but if every full desktop environment starts relying on this because it's available, then it's not really so optional anymore. (and of course, if the alternative is guaranteed to be no major DE running on BSD at all without this, then we similarly have our hand forced. It depends on who would flinch first.)

generic_user 11y ago
You should try Lumina Desktop they are dedicated to a native BSD desktop experience and BSD technology, but it is also portable to Linux.
simoncion 11y ago
I could be very, very, very wrong, but I remember hearing a while back that both Wayland and KDE had plans to become dependant on systemd for its "guaranteed-race-free" startup process.
- navaati 11y ago
  Wayland is not a program, it's a protocol, so there is no way it could depend on systemd. Some compositors may choose to, some compositors may choose not to.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Compositors choose to, because they need a part of it, logind, to talk to polkit, to gain the proper access privileges to do what needs to be done. Basically, with Wayland the compositor/Window Manager/toolkit gets elevated to the same level as X11. Meaning that it has to do pretty much everything that X11 used to do for it. The alternative to using logind+polkit is to run the DE/WM/compositor as root. Not something often talked about, as wayland is supposed to be the secure choice vs X11. Frankly it feels like Linux is turning into some kind of marketing mess, where stuff is being presented as one thing but is in essence something quite different for those in the know.

raphaelss 11y ago

The author mentions using OpenBSD in production. Do any of you also use it in production? I have no doubt that it is used with good results, but I have enjoyed it as a desktop OS and would love if more people could share their experience with it on a job.

protomyth 11y ago
I use it for servers except for home directories (FreeBSD with ZFS for that) and required applications (Red Hat, Windows, OS X, and an AS/400 (iSeries)). It works fine on bare metal and in VM on VSphere. Management is quite easy and the 6 months between major upgrades has been ok. Patching is build a set (I am all amd64) and deploy.
meanjollies 11y ago
I work for an ISP. We use it (CARP and relayd) heavily for HTTP and DNS load balancing in an IPv6-laden environment. Performance is better than that we saw a few years ago under Linux.
- simoncion 11y ago
  CARP is sweet. There's an (as far as I can tell) IPv4-only implementation for Linux in ucarp. [0] I use it for failover on my home LAN. Question: Does OpenBSD CARP support "passwords" longer than 15 or 16 characters? [0] http://www.pureftpd.org/project/ucarp http://www.pureftpd.org/project/ucarp
- brobinson 11y ago
  Did you also evaluate FreeBSD? If you did, I'm curious what the pros and cons were that ultimately affected your decision.
  - meanjollies 11y ago
    I did not. I was more familiar with OpenBSD to begin with, and like its slant toward security. Although we do use FreeBSD for a few other servers used as NAS controllers. HAST + ZFS + CARP is great.

geofft 11y ago

The systemd folks have been saying all along that it's just a standardized and stable interface and anyone else can implement that interface. I'm glad to see this, because it's testing the claim: if it's true, that means wonderful things for OpenBSD portability, and if it's not true, we should be more cautious about coding to systemd's APIs.

nwmcsween 11y ago
Read the slides he had a multitude of issues trying to copy the interfaces due to the tight integration of components.
- simoncion 11y ago
  What's more, I expect that his will forever be an incomplete implementation due to to undocumented or poorly-documented behaviors, edge-case or otherwise.
  - generic_user 11y ago
    It was never even considered that this would be a complete implementation. The goal was always to just implement the minimum requirements to get Gnome working. And as far as I know they never even completed that work. They implemented some small subset of there original daemons because the project quickly blew up into a major amount of work.
  - the_why_of_y 11y ago
    Of course the implementation is going to be incomplete in some way, since OpenBSD kernel doesn't have the APIs necessary to actually implement multiple seats, so the implementation won't allow creating more than 1 seat.
generic_user 11y ago
The argument that XYZ has a portable interface therefor XYZ is portable is a bit of a head fake argument. OpenGL 4.5 is also a supposedly portable interface, so is the X Server protocol. To implement these takes years of work with large teams of full time engineers. Mesa has over 1.5 million lines of code and has been in constant development for over 10 years. At last count SystemD has over 40 "Interfaces". These are not publicly versioned standards. So there is no stable interface to even implement and there is no commitment that these "interfaces" will not change at any point in time. If the project estimate to actually implement XYZ interface takes years of full time engineers and millions of dollars to complete its basically out of the reach of any volunteer open source operating system project. I just find the argument disingenuous. Everyone making these claims knows that there is practically 0 chance that anyone but RedHat or another big Corporation like Google or Samsung has the resources to Implement something like this.

wereHamster 11y ago

Proper capitalization goes a long way in making a text readable. I had the impression that this presentation was written by a 10 year old script kiddie. Also: punctuation, consistent font sizing. Add a few colors to highlight the code blocks. Headings. Graphical bullet points. Those would make the presentation mch more trustworthy. If you are going to talk shit about somebody or something (without substantiating the points nonetheless) then at least do it with style.

dalke 11y ago
As vezzy-fnord points out in this thread, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176412 , the author did not post the slides, nor had final say on the presentation format. Instead, quoting vezzy-fnord: > They were in MagicPoint format, so I had to convert them to PDF with a dubious third-party Python script, slightly modifying the MGP manifest in the process. That's probably why the formatting is so iffy. You'll also note that the author "reluctantly" gave permission. For all we know, it was precisely because the author knew that people would criticize the paper over superficial format conversion issues than actual substance.
- asveikau 11y ago
  I actually looked at the git repo and found the comments are written in a similar style. All lower case and with a slightly rambling feel. https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git;a=blob_plain;f=src/interfaces/hostnamed/hostnamed.c;hb=HEAD https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git... I find it a little hard to understand too. I am going to chalk this up to me starting to be an old man and complaining about not understanding the youths.
  - dalke 11y ago
    I enjoyed the research you did for the followup. I must be another one of those old folks. :) For what it's worth, I was a horrible writer when I was an undergraduate, and this was a GSOC project, so I'm willing to cut some slack. Might be because I'm a slacker.

JdeBP 11y ago

It's good to see that http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html#systemBSD http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/de... agrees with what Ian Sutton himself later reported about the relative difficulties and problems.