13 ms·

I'm a big fan of the tool-centric Unix Philosophy but I think that the init system is closer to OS than to apps. As another writer mentioned systemd unit files

by usgroup 10y ago

I'm a big fan of the tool-centric Unix Philosophy but I think that the init system is closer to OS than to apps. As another writer mentioned systemd unit files take so much pain out of dependency management, and life-cycle management: all stuff you'd otherwise have to write in code or script. I think it's an elegant and necessary complexity to save us from much uglier and greater complexity.

Esau 10y ago
I disagree. But then again, I want a good version of Unix, and not a free competitor to Windows.
- baldfat 10y ago
  Everything you said was emotional thinking.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    So? All statements of the form "I want .. " are emotional. It's the only sensible way to reason about what you want. There's no "rational" set of preferences that people are obliged to have.
    - baldfat 10y ago
      I want a rational technology based reason why systemd has caused Linux harm. That is not emotional that is a state request from fact based statement.
      - parrellel 10y ago
        It is unfortunately a political problem being actively prosecuted with technology. Red Hat would like SystemD to be the init system of record and have - for years now - been subsuming other utilities, daemons, logging, su, etc. in order to make it the obligate choice. Any technical gains from the integrations seem secondary to the control this gives them over the direction of Linux as a whole. This is obvious dirty pool. If they'd gotten where they were on the merits, I think people would be a lot quieter. Beyond the political stupidity, systemd has made itself a single massive and opaque point of failure, especially since it ate logging.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
new299 10y ago
My laptop boots to a text console. I use a wpa_supplicant script to connect to wifi. What kind of complex init system do you think I need? Honestly, what kind of complex init system do most /servers/ need? But the issue is actually that systemd is not just an init system it's steadily increasing in scope to incorporate more and more services.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  The init system itself is more or less the same as it was a couple years ago. They have, however, written other daemons which are maintained in the same repository. All except two of them are optional. For example, systemd-timesyncd (controlled with timedatectl) is an excellent NTP system, and after it's been stable for a few years I'll use it with public NTP servers. It takes just one command to get up and running and it keeps your clocks synchronized, what's not to like?
  - qb45 10y ago
    OpenNTPD is an extremely easy to use time client that has been around for years. And considering systemd's vs OpenBSD's track record I suppose it's also less likely to get you owned or set your time to Jan 1st 1970 because of some bullshit like "who could have predicted that in 2016 networks are still so bad that UDP can deliver packets out of order". And, btw, why should an init system come bundled with a time client or a time client bundled with an init system? When can I expect systemd-solitaire?
    - microcolonel 10y ago
      > And, btw, why should an init system come bundled with a time client or a time client bundled with an init system? That's entirely up to distribution packagers. 39k bytes and you get a dead-simple working ntp client daemon (no server) which requires literally no setup. If the distro packagers want to split it out or not include it at all, they can do that and the build system is set up to make that easy. So it really depends on how you mean "bundled", it's good and there's basically no reason not to include it in the package. I also figure it's a bit of a straw man to hypothesize a bug which hasn't occurred. NTP, as far as I'm aware, is mostly static structures on the wire. If there's a problem with the client, it's most likely your clock will just be wrong; bad as that is.
pjmlp 10y ago
Real UNIXes have long moved to systemd like stacks. The preach of UNIX culture in GNU/Linux sounds to me like emigrants keeping long gone traditions alive from something grandparents used to speak about.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  "Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl." -- Rob Pike (in 2004, no less) [1] [1] https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pike-responds https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-p...
  - burke 10y ago
    This is partially true but a little disingenuous, I think. Though it hasn't been true for a very long time that all components of a system "do one thing, and do it well", systemd introduces a large component that is very difficult to replace in a piecemeal fashion. For me, the UNIX philosophy has not been about the tools, but about replaceability. Systemd has made itself nigh on impossible to replace.
    - CaptSpify 10y ago
      systemd may be convenient for now, but what about long-term? If it stops being convenient, tearing it out is going to be a long and horrible process. But nobody is thinking about that because "init-scripts sucked". Yes, they did, but that ignores the long-term issues that systemd brings to the table.
      - kbenson 10y ago
        > If it stops being convenient, tearing it out is going to be a long and horrible process. The SysV init system stopped being convenient for some number of people, so they replaced it, and it has been a long and horrible process. It will happen again if it needs to. > But nobody is thinking about that because "init-scripts sucked". Well, now they're thinking about it, and talking about it every time they bring up problems with systemd. Those problems and discussions are something that will be brought up when any potential future init system is being designed or advocated for.

by usgroup 10y ago

Esau 10y ago

I disagree. But then again, I want a good version of Unix, and not a free competitor to Windows.

baldfat 10y ago
Everything you said was emotional thinking.
- pjc50 10y ago
  So? All statements of the form "I want .. " are emotional. It's the only sensible way to reason about what you want. There's no "rational" set of preferences that people are obliged to have.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I want a rational technology based reason why systemd has caused Linux harm. That is not emotional that is a state request from fact based statement.
    - parrellel 10y ago
      It is unfortunately a political problem being actively prosecuted with technology. Red Hat would like SystemD to be the init system of record and have - for years now - been subsuming other utilities, daemons, logging, su, etc. in order to make it the obligate choice. Any technical gains from the integrations seem secondary to the control this gives them over the direction of Linux as a whole. This is obvious dirty pool. If they'd gotten where they were on the merits, I think people would be a lot quieter. Beyond the political stupidity, systemd has made itself a single massive and opaque point of failure, especially since it ate logging.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

new299 10y ago

My laptop boots to a text console. I use a wpa_supplicant script to connect to wifi. What kind of complex init system do you think I need? Honestly, what kind of complex init system do most /servers/ need? But the issue is actually that systemd is not just an init system it's steadily increasing in scope to incorporate more and more services.

microcolonel 10y ago
The init system itself is more or less the same as it was a couple years ago. They have, however, written other daemons which are maintained in the same repository. All except two of them are optional. For example, systemd-timesyncd (controlled with timedatectl) is an excellent NTP system, and after it's been stable for a few years I'll use it with public NTP servers. It takes just one command to get up and running and it keeps your clocks synchronized, what's not to like?
- qb45 10y ago
  OpenNTPD is an extremely easy to use time client that has been around for years. And considering systemd's vs OpenBSD's track record I suppose it's also less likely to get you owned or set your time to Jan 1st 1970 because of some bullshit like "who could have predicted that in 2016 networks are still so bad that UDP can deliver packets out of order". And, btw, why should an init system come bundled with a time client or a time client bundled with an init system? When can I expect systemd-solitaire?
  - microcolonel 10y ago
    > And, btw, why should an init system come bundled with a time client or a time client bundled with an init system? That's entirely up to distribution packagers. 39k bytes and you get a dead-simple working ntp client daemon (no server) which requires literally no setup. If the distro packagers want to split it out or not include it at all, they can do that and the build system is set up to make that easy. So it really depends on how you mean "bundled", it's good and there's basically no reason not to include it in the package. I also figure it's a bit of a straw man to hypothesize a bug which hasn't occurred. NTP, as far as I'm aware, is mostly static structures on the wire. If there's a problem with the client, it's most likely your clock will just be wrong; bad as that is.

pjmlp 10y ago

Real UNIXes have long moved to systemd like stacks. The preach of UNIX culture in GNU/Linux sounds to me like emigrants keeping long gone traditions alive from something grandparents used to speak about.

0xcde4c3db 10y ago
"Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl." -- Rob Pike (in 2004, no less) [1] [1] https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pike-responds https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-p...
- burke 10y ago
  This is partially true but a little disingenuous, I think. Though it hasn't been true for a very long time that all components of a system "do one thing, and do it well", systemd introduces a large component that is very difficult to replace in a piecemeal fashion. For me, the UNIX philosophy has not been about the tools, but about replaceability. Systemd has made itself nigh on impossible to replace.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    systemd may be convenient for now, but what about long-term? If it stops being convenient, tearing it out is going to be a long and horrible process. But nobody is thinking about that because "init-scripts sucked". Yes, they did, but that ignores the long-term issues that systemd brings to the table.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > If it stops being convenient, tearing it out is going to be a long and horrible process. The SysV init system stopped being convenient for some number of people, so they replaced it, and it has been a long and horrible process. It will happen again if it needs to. > But nobody is thinking about that because "init-scripts sucked". Well, now they're thinking about it, and talking about it every time they bring up problems with systemd. Those problems and discussions are something that will be brought up when any potential future init system is being designed or advocated for.