5 ms·

Oh, well that's good! Maybe people are talking about his idea for replacing init (shell) scripts with C programs?

yarrel 10y ago
It uses binary logs, which is a common complaint. Its configuration is actually less bad than modern Gnome etc., but is still a great increase in complexity. A better init system was needed. A better init system is still needed. The trojan horse of systemd definitely wasn't needed. Hopefully it will spin off into its own OS at some point to compete with Ubuntu(sic)'s userland on top of Windows and leave GNU/Linux to develop something that is less of an annoyance.
- abstractbeliefs 10y ago
  So, one of the other things I hear people have issues with is the bloat of systemd, about how many other systems and services it has consumed and brought in under it's umbrella. With that in mind, what would a better init system look like for you? systemd-lite, with lots of the questionable feature creep removed and really brought back to it's PID1 beginnings? Something back to sysvinit with it's configuration-as-code, but with modern languages and a general freshen up? Or something else entirely? It's previously been very hard to get meaningful discussion about this (on both sides of the divide!) because each side is so highly polarised.
  - simoncion 10y ago
    > With that in mind, what would a better init system look like for you? I'm not the OP, but OpenRC is nice. I'm currently suffering from a round tuit shortage, so I haven't waded through the Debian Jessie discussion to find out why it wasn't a contender for their default init/rc system.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > I'm not the OP, but OpenRC is nice. I'm currently suffering from a round tuit shortage, so I haven't waded through the Debian Jessie discussion to find out why it wasn't a contender for their default init/rc system. It was a contender; it appeared on the Technical Committee ballot alongside sysvinit, upstart, and systemd. Seven of the eight members of the technical committee indicated a preference for OpenRC over sysvinit, just not over upstart or systemd. See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=6729;bug=727708 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=6729;bug=7... for the results of the vote.
      - simoncion 10y ago
        Ah! Thanks for that link and the clarification.
- jle17 10y ago
  How is replacing buggy shell scripts that all duplicate the same functionnality by a simple ini file per service "a great increase in configuration complexity" ?
  - simoncion 10y ago
    > How is replacing buggy shell scripts... Barrels of ink have been spilled on this point. You need to read the discussion surrounding this topic to understand that only the most ancient or poorly maintained RC systems were piles of redundant, buggy shell scripts. :)
    - anonbanker 10y ago
      whenever you read a pro-systemd post, you'll see things like "buggy shell scripts" or "just change the logger!" pop up a lot. keep track.
      - simoncion 10y ago
        I'll mentally add a ";)" to your closing sentence. :) Yeah, I'm quite familiar with the poorly-informed pro-systemd and anti-systemd arguments. I'm also fairly familiar with a variety of init and RC systems and have -thanks to vezzy-fnord and others- learned waaay too much about the history of <star>nix init/rc systems. (There's a lot of wacky stuff out there!) Cheers, man!
      - bkor 10y ago
        I'm a packager. Before systemd the init scripts were different across distributions. Now they're often upstream and you just package it. The buggy script problems: trusting the .pid file too much amongst other things.
    - jle17 10y ago
      In this case "the most poorly maintained" happens to be the most used. Only on BSD have I seen rc.d scripts that are not full of redundant boilerplate. Although of course I've not checked every distribution there is, but on those i've used and still use I find a lot of scripts that reinvent racy ways to deal with pidfiles and to let the environment of the shell from which you call the script leak into the service. I agree that it doesn't mean that rc scripts can't be written properly, but it is a rare occurence on many distributions. Some issues that I've had with SysV init scripts that disappear with systemd : * a service having different fd limits when started manually than when started at boot because ulimit values leak from the shell from which you call the init script to mysqld * a service suddenly having encoding problems because the person who restarted it used a different locale than the one who initially started it and the environment leaks * countless scripts that fail to properly kill the process * restart methods that randomly work because it tries to start the new process while the old one hasn't been killed And all of those on popular distributions. All of those problems go away with systemd. Not saying it's the ultimate solution to everything, it has it's faults and I'm open to considering other systems but SysV init had to go.
vaebiWoo 10y ago
As far as I remember, the drama didn't start in 2010. I'm not sure if it started with the epic Debian tech-ctte discussion in late 2013 or earlier than that, but probably not much earlier. The blog post that first introduced it might not be the best place to look for reasons for all that drama.
- jle17 10y ago
  The drama started very early. I've been seeing the same arguments over and over again since ArchLinux and Fedora adopted it, and the adoption by Debian just got people to repeat them.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  The drama started around the time of Poettering's hijacking of someone else's 27c3 speech, accusing people that don't use logind of "hating handicapped people"[0], and continued from there. 0. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0&t=23m00s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0&t=23m00s
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

It uses binary logs, which is a common complaint. Its configuration is actually less bad than modern Gnome etc., but is still a great increase in complexity. A better init system was needed. A better init system is still needed. The trojan horse of systemd definitely wasn't needed. Hopefully it will spin off into its own OS at some point to compete with Ubuntu(sic)'s userland on top of Windows and leave GNU/Linux to develop something that is less of an annoyance.

abstractbeliefs 10y ago
So, one of the other things I hear people have issues with is the bloat of systemd, about how many other systems and services it has consumed and brought in under it's umbrella. With that in mind, what would a better init system look like for you? systemd-lite, with lots of the questionable feature creep removed and really brought back to it's PID1 beginnings? Something back to sysvinit with it's configuration-as-code, but with modern languages and a general freshen up? Or something else entirely? It's previously been very hard to get meaningful discussion about this (on both sides of the divide!) because each side is so highly polarised.
- simoncion 10y ago
  > With that in mind, what would a better init system look like for you? I'm not the OP, but OpenRC is nice. I'm currently suffering from a round tuit shortage, so I haven't waded through the Debian Jessie discussion to find out why it wasn't a contender for their default init/rc system.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > I'm not the OP, but OpenRC is nice. I'm currently suffering from a round tuit shortage, so I haven't waded through the Debian Jessie discussion to find out why it wasn't a contender for their default init/rc system. It was a contender; it appeared on the Technical Committee ballot alongside sysvinit, upstart, and systemd. Seven of the eight members of the technical committee indicated a preference for OpenRC over sysvinit, just not over upstart or systemd. See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=6729;bug=727708 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=6729;bug=7... for the results of the vote.
    - simoncion 10y ago
      Ah! Thanks for that link and the clarification.
jle17 10y ago
How is replacing buggy shell scripts that all duplicate the same functionnality by a simple ini file per service "a great increase in configuration complexity" ?
- simoncion 10y ago
  > How is replacing buggy shell scripts... Barrels of ink have been spilled on this point. You need to read the discussion surrounding this topic to understand that only the most ancient or poorly maintained RC systems were piles of redundant, buggy shell scripts. :)
  - anonbanker 10y ago
    whenever you read a pro-systemd post, you'll see things like "buggy shell scripts" or "just change the logger!" pop up a lot. keep track.
    - simoncion 10y ago
      I'll mentally add a ";)" to your closing sentence. :) Yeah, I'm quite familiar with the poorly-informed pro-systemd and anti-systemd arguments. I'm also fairly familiar with a variety of init and RC systems and have -thanks to vezzy-fnord and others- learned waaay too much about the history of <star>nix init/rc systems. (There's a lot of wacky stuff out there!) Cheers, man!
    - bkor 10y ago
      I'm a packager. Before systemd the init scripts were different across distributions. Now they're often upstream and you just package it. The buggy script problems: trusting the .pid file too much amongst other things.
  - jle17 10y ago
    In this case "the most poorly maintained" happens to be the most used. Only on BSD have I seen rc.d scripts that are not full of redundant boilerplate. Although of course I've not checked every distribution there is, but on those i've used and still use I find a lot of scripts that reinvent racy ways to deal with pidfiles and to let the environment of the shell from which you call the script leak into the service. I agree that it doesn't mean that rc scripts can't be written properly, but it is a rare occurence on many distributions. Some issues that I've had with SysV init scripts that disappear with systemd : * a service having different fd limits when started manually than when started at boot because ulimit values leak from the shell from which you call the init script to mysqld * a service suddenly having encoding problems because the person who restarted it used a different locale than the one who initially started it and the environment leaks * countless scripts that fail to properly kill the process * restart methods that randomly work because it tries to start the new process while the old one hasn't been killed And all of those on popular distributions. All of those problems go away with systemd. Not saying it's the ultimate solution to everything, it has it's faults and I'm open to considering other systems but SysV init had to go.

vaebiWoo 10y ago

As far as I remember, the drama didn't start in 2010. I'm not sure if it started with the epic Debian tech-ctte discussion in late 2013 or earlier than that, but probably not much earlier. The blog post that first introduced it might not be the best place to look for reasons for all that drama.

jle17 10y ago
The drama started very early. I've been seeing the same arguments over and over again since ArchLinux and Fedora adopted it, and the adoption by Debian just got people to repeat them.
anonbanker 10y ago
The drama started around the time of Poettering's hijacking of someone else's 27c3 speech, accusing people that don't use logind of "hating handicapped people"[0], and continued from there. 0. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0&t=23m00s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0&t=23m00s
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]