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On your Linux system, type: man -k systemd There is extensive and well written documentation for all aspects of systemd so I'm going to call BS on your post.

by SEJeff 11y ago

On your Linux system, type: man -k systemd There is extensive and well written documentation for all aspects of systemd so I'm going to call BS on your post. Also, the syntax is consistent and documented. It is infinitely simpler than sysvinit. Either you're trolling, or know very little about systemd. Note that I'm a fan, but far from an apologist.

ktRolster 11y ago
Here's the documentation for systemd-random-seed: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-random-seed.service.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-ran... What are the command-line options that are available to that tool? Without looking in the source code. >Note that I'm a fan, but far from an apologist. An apologist is merely someone who offers a defense of something. It comes from the greek word ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense". Thus you are an apologist, even though you're not dogmatic.
- SEJeff 11y ago
  Ok I'll give you that. Also up vote for the pedantic retort. Well written, and I don't know Greek, so I learned something new. Look at the docs for something like systemd-service or -exec or -tmpfiles, etc. You found one that as bad. I'm sure you can find a few more. Now find docs for some random 1000 line shell scripts that aren't the code. At least there is a very obvious and consistent way to set the ulimit for my services, even if they don't support pam_limits via systemd, or an obvious way to extend the start script without hacking up the init file, etc. Please allow me to rephrase and say the documentation overall is so far ahead of th documentation for any implementation of init scripts and sysvinit it isn't funny. And this is coming from someone who spent most of his career as a UNIX / Linux SysAdmin.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    Also up vote for the pedantic retort. Nah, it wasn't meant as a retort. It was merely an aside that I thought you might find interesting. And apparently you did :)
- kbenson 11y ago
  > What are the command-line options that are available to that tool? Without looking in the source code. While not the greatest example of documentation, it's not completely horrible. It accepts a single parameter which is the seed (yes, I looked at the source). I imagine it was an oversight for a very simple program with a singular purpose and which isn't meant to be called manually. It's not great, but it doesn't carry the same weight with me as if there were multiple possible or required arguments, or even a single optional one. Perhaps there are examples like that, I don't know. It's hard for me to get worked up about the level of documentation of systemd compared to SysVinit, when things like OpenBSD exist that achieve such a high level of quality that they are both utterly shamed, and appear relatively similar in their mediocrity.
  - reddytowns 11y ago
    Accepting something as cryptographicly significant as a rng seed as a command line argument makes my security whiskers bristle. Especially since the ultimate destination for that value is a root owned 600 perm file.
    - ktRolster 11y ago
      It doesn't do that, the gp post misread the source code. It reads the data from a file defined at compile time.
      - majewsky 11y ago
        As can be checked easily with `systemctl cat`: $ systemctl cat systemd-random-seed # /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-random-seed.service [...] ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed load ExecStop=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed save [...] Note how the executable is not even installed to /usr/bin, because it's explicitly not supposed to be called by a user.
      - kbenson 11y ago
        Yes, I skimmed the file far too quickly. I was working off some assumptions from the portion I saw that errored if argc != 2, with an error along the lines of "There must be only one argument".
- JdeBP 11y ago
  Note that it's not just systemd that has mystery programs. * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13566 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13566 * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13565 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13565 * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13564 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13564 * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13563 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13563 On the subject of systemd doco: * http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/systemd-documentation-errata.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy...
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  >It comes from the greek word ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense". I just want to point out here that just because an English word comes from some Greek word, that doesn't mean the English word actually means that today. You are correct about "apologist" (according to Wiktionary at any rate), it just means someone who speaks in defense of something, but there are other words where the meaning has changed over time. English is a language that is defined by its popular usage, and this can change over time so a word may not mean the same thing today as it did just 100 years ago. A good example is the word "pathetic". According to Wiktionary, it comes from Greek: 'παθητικός ‎(pathētikós, “subject to feeling, capable of feeling, impassioned”), from παθητός ‎(pathētós, “one who has suffered, subject to suffering”), from πάσχω ‎(páskhō, “to suffer”).' Obviously, those don't bear that much resemblance to the current popular meaning, which is: '1.Arousing pity, sympathy, or compassion.' or '2.Arousing scornful pity or contempt, often due to miserable inadequacy.' In fact, other European languages like German have this same word (I believe this is called a "cognate"; I am not a linguist), from the same root, but their meaning is entirely different and they get confused when they learn English and encounter this word since we use it in such a different manner. TL;DR: Greek or Latin roots are interesting from a historical and linguistic perspective, but they're no guarantee of the current definition of an English word.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    Indeed, the word apologize actually does mean apologize
  - tremon 11y ago
    I believe this is called a "cognate" A cognate is simply a pair of words from the same stem (origin); it doesn't matter if their meaning is still the same. The opposite term is "false cognate", which refers to words that sound alike and mean something similar but stem from different roots. Regardless of origin (so cognate or not), if two words in different languages sound alike but have different meaning, they're called false friends. </pedant>
JdeBP 11y ago
> There is extensive and well written documentation for all aspects of systemd so I'm going to call BS on your post. As long as you are prepared for the rest of the world to call BS on what you say here, as well. (-: It's only "extensive and well written" if one sets the bar for those two quite low, and has very lax standards for doco. Unfortunately, people often do set the bar low in the Linux world. But to those from other worlds the words that come to mind are "acceptable" and "mediocre". As someone else has already mentioned here, and as people have pointed out passim over the years, the expected as the norm quality of doco for the BSD world is noticeably a higher standard than in the Linux world. But it's not the BSD world alone where the norm is higher. The norm for the commercial Unices is and was higher, too. A case in point: I wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11629824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11629824 a little while ago. Checking my recollection, I referred to several manual pages for the rlogin command. The HP-UX and Solaris manual pages for rlogin actually had whole subsections about escape sequences, beginning with the general notion then proceeding to specifics of the various individual sequences. The HP-UX manual even proceeds to discuss how to send the escape character onwards, and how to send escape sequences across a daisy-chain of rlogin sessions -- something that still applies to SSH today. The Linux rlogin manual has 1 paragraph, doesn't mention that there's actually a general concept behind the specifics that it lists, doesn't discuss how to escape the escape character, and doesn't discuss daisy-chaining. If you're just about to point to your Linux ssh manual as a counterexample and observe the treatment that it gives escape characters, as good as that of the HP-UX doco, then scroll to the bottom of the page and enjoy the fact that you're reading BSD doco written by BSD people. (-:
- jononor 11y ago
  What aspects of systemd is not well documented? I am sure it exists, but if you're calling BS, better to be explicit.

by SEJeff 11y ago

ktRolster 11y ago

Here's the documentation for systemd-random-seed: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-random-seed.service.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-ran... What are the command-line options that are available to that tool? Without looking in the source code. >Note that I'm a fan, but far from an apologist. An apologist is merely someone who offers a defense of something. It comes from the greek word ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense". Thus you are an apologist, even though you're not dogmatic.

SEJeff 11y ago
Ok I'll give you that. Also up vote for the pedantic retort. Well written, and I don't know Greek, so I learned something new. Look at the docs for something like systemd-service or -exec or -tmpfiles, etc. You found one that as bad. I'm sure you can find a few more. Now find docs for some random 1000 line shell scripts that aren't the code. At least there is a very obvious and consistent way to set the ulimit for my services, even if they don't support pam_limits via systemd, or an obvious way to extend the start script without hacking up the init file, etc. Please allow me to rephrase and say the documentation overall is so far ahead of th documentation for any implementation of init scripts and sysvinit it isn't funny. And this is coming from someone who spent most of his career as a UNIX / Linux SysAdmin.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  Also up vote for the pedantic retort. Nah, it wasn't meant as a retort. It was merely an aside that I thought you might find interesting. And apparently you did :)
kbenson 11y ago
> What are the command-line options that are available to that tool? Without looking in the source code. While not the greatest example of documentation, it's not completely horrible. It accepts a single parameter which is the seed (yes, I looked at the source). I imagine it was an oversight for a very simple program with a singular purpose and which isn't meant to be called manually. It's not great, but it doesn't carry the same weight with me as if there were multiple possible or required arguments, or even a single optional one. Perhaps there are examples like that, I don't know. It's hard for me to get worked up about the level of documentation of systemd compared to SysVinit, when things like OpenBSD exist that achieve such a high level of quality that they are both utterly shamed, and appear relatively similar in their mediocrity.
- reddytowns 11y ago
  Accepting something as cryptographicly significant as a rng seed as a command line argument makes my security whiskers bristle. Especially since the ultimate destination for that value is a root owned 600 perm file.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    It doesn't do that, the gp post misread the source code. It reads the data from a file defined at compile time.
    - majewsky 11y ago
      As can be checked easily with `systemctl cat`: $ systemctl cat systemd-random-seed # /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-random-seed.service [...] ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed load ExecStop=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-random-seed save [...] Note how the executable is not even installed to /usr/bin, because it's explicitly not supposed to be called by a user.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      Yes, I skimmed the file far too quickly. I was working off some assumptions from the portion I saw that errored if argc != 2, with an error along the lines of "There must be only one argument".
JdeBP 11y ago
Note that it's not just systemd that has mystery programs. * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13566 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13566 * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13565 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13565 * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13564 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13564 * https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13563 https://bugs.pcbsd.org/issues/13563 On the subject of systemd doco: * http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/systemd-documentation-errata.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy...
Grishnakh 11y ago
>It comes from the greek word ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense". I just want to point out here that just because an English word comes from some Greek word, that doesn't mean the English word actually means that today. You are correct about "apologist" (according to Wiktionary at any rate), it just means someone who speaks in defense of something, but there are other words where the meaning has changed over time. English is a language that is defined by its popular usage, and this can change over time so a word may not mean the same thing today as it did just 100 years ago. A good example is the word "pathetic". According to Wiktionary, it comes from Greek: 'παθητικός ‎(pathētikós, “subject to feeling, capable of feeling, impassioned”), from παθητός ‎(pathētós, “one who has suffered, subject to suffering”), from πάσχω ‎(páskhō, “to suffer”).' Obviously, those don't bear that much resemblance to the current popular meaning, which is: '1.Arousing pity, sympathy, or compassion.' or '2.Arousing scornful pity or contempt, often due to miserable inadequacy.' In fact, other European languages like German have this same word (I believe this is called a "cognate"; I am not a linguist), from the same root, but their meaning is entirely different and they get confused when they learn English and encounter this word since we use it in such a different manner. TL;DR: Greek or Latin roots are interesting from a historical and linguistic perspective, but they're no guarantee of the current definition of an English word.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  Indeed, the word apologize actually does mean apologize
- tremon 11y ago
  I believe this is called a "cognate" A cognate is simply a pair of words from the same stem (origin); it doesn't matter if their meaning is still the same. The opposite term is "false cognate", which refers to words that sound alike and mean something similar but stem from different roots. Regardless of origin (so cognate or not), if two words in different languages sound alike but have different meaning, they're called false friends. </pedant>

JdeBP 11y ago

> There is extensive and well written documentation for all aspects of systemd so I'm going to call BS on your post. As long as you are prepared for the rest of the world to call BS on what you say here, as well. (-: It's only "extensive and well written" if one sets the bar for those two quite low, and has very lax standards for doco. Unfortunately, people often do set the bar low in the Linux world. But to those from other worlds the words that come to mind are "acceptable" and "mediocre". As someone else has already mentioned here, and as people have pointed out passim over the years, the expected as the norm quality of doco for the BSD world is noticeably a higher standard than in the Linux world. But it's not the BSD world alone where the norm is higher. The norm for the commercial Unices is and was higher, too. A case in point: I wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11629824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11629824 a little while ago. Checking my recollection, I referred to several manual pages for the rlogin command. The HP-UX and Solaris manual pages for rlogin actually had whole subsections about escape sequences, beginning with the general notion then proceeding to specifics of the various individual sequences. The HP-UX manual even proceeds to discuss how to send the escape character onwards, and how to send escape sequences across a daisy-chain of rlogin sessions -- something that still applies to SSH today. The Linux rlogin manual has 1 paragraph, doesn't mention that there's actually a general concept behind the specifics that it lists, doesn't discuss how to escape the escape character, and doesn't discuss daisy-chaining. If you're just about to point to your Linux ssh manual as a counterexample and observe the treatment that it gives escape characters, as good as that of the HP-UX doco, then scroll to the bottom of the page and enjoy the fact that you're reading BSD doco written by BSD people. (-:

jononor 11y ago
What aspects of systemd is not well documented? I am sure it exists, but if you're calling BS, better to be explicit.