4 ms·

> Debian is already one of the few distributions that goes out of its way to provide support for non-systemd init systems. How does this manifest itself in pra

by rxlim 9y ago

> Debian is already one of the few distributions that goes out of its way to provide support for non-systemd init systems. How does this manifest itself in practice? I don't want to use systemd in Debian 9, what has been done so I can easily change to another init like runit? In practice it's not possible because of so many (unecessary) dependencies on systemd.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
It means that you can install sysvinit or any sysvinit-compatible init, and all daemon packages still provide init scripts, as painful as that is. And Debian still supports installing systemd-shim instead of systemd, so you can have a desktop system with a non-systemd init and it'll still function. > In practice it's not possible because of so many (unecessary) dependencies on systemd. Such as? As far as I can tell, almost nothing depends on systemd. A handful of things depend on libpam-systemd (for session management), which functions with systemd-shim.
- rxlim 9y ago
  The amount of work that goes into Devuan for pulling out systemd of Debian Jessie is clear evidence that what you are saying is not easily possible.
  - JoshTriplett 9y ago
    As I understand it, much of that work goes into removing any trace of even innocuous things like libsystemd, which is used by applications that want to support systemd if available. All the necessary work to support a non-systemd init is already in Debian, making Devuan fairly pointless in practice.
    - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
      That's correct. Debian ships sysvinit as well as systemd and daemons have initscripts/confs for both. A lot of people still use sysvinit and it just works.
      - rxlim 9y ago
        If this is really true, I might have to eat my own words.
        JoshTriplett 9y ago
        If you do run into cases where something doesn't work as expected with sysvinit instead of systemd, please do file a bug. For that matter, if this is a use case you care about, systemd-shim could use a maintainer or maintenance team: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=832508 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=832508
        agwa 9y ago
        Yes, it's true. To replace PID 1 with sysvinit, run: apt-get install sysvinit-core systemd-sysv- reboot To prevent it from coming back, create the file /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-systemd.pref containing: Package: systemd-sysv Pin: origin * Pin-Priority: -1 This works great on servers and lightweight desktops. As others have noted, if you want GNOME you also need to install systemd-shim. I have no experience with this, but I have no reason to doubt that it works.
        sjukfan 9y ago
        I'm running openRC on all my systems and the problem is usually dependencies. As an example, both Brasero and K3b depends on something that depends on systemd. I can understand if a program uses the systemd library but these need systemd as pid 1 because reasons.
  - tobias12345 9y ago
    Devuan is evidence that stupid people have stupid priorities. Devuan spends a lot of time and energy to remove libsystemd, a library that is introduced so that software can function properly with or without systemd. Not necessary for Devuan, true, but why not remove critical services shipped by systemd first? They still ship systemd-free.

by rxlim 9y ago

JoshTriplett 9y ago

It means that you can install sysvinit or any sysvinit-compatible init, and all daemon packages still provide init scripts, as painful as that is. And Debian still supports installing systemd-shim instead of systemd, so you can have a desktop system with a non-systemd init and it'll still function. > In practice it's not possible because of so many (unecessary) dependencies on systemd. Such as? As far as I can tell, almost nothing depends on systemd. A handful of things depend on libpam-systemd (for session management), which functions with systemd-shim.

rxlim 9y ago
The amount of work that goes into Devuan for pulling out systemd of Debian Jessie is clear evidence that what you are saying is not easily possible.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  As I understand it, much of that work goes into removing any trace of even innocuous things like libsystemd, which is used by applications that want to support systemd if available. All the necessary work to support a non-systemd init is already in Debian, making Devuan fairly pointless in practice.
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    That's correct. Debian ships sysvinit as well as systemd and daemons have initscripts/confs for both. A lot of people still use sysvinit and it just works.
    - rxlim 9y ago
      If this is really true, I might have to eat my own words.
      - JoshTriplett 9y ago
        If you do run into cases where something doesn't work as expected with sysvinit instead of systemd, please do file a bug. For that matter, if this is a use case you care about, systemd-shim could use a maintainer or maintenance team: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=832508 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=832508
      - agwa 9y ago
        Yes, it's true. To replace PID 1 with sysvinit, run: apt-get install sysvinit-core systemd-sysv- reboot To prevent it from coming back, create the file /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-systemd.pref containing: Package: systemd-sysv Pin: origin * Pin-Priority: -1 This works great on servers and lightweight desktops. As others have noted, if you want GNOME you also need to install systemd-shim. I have no experience with this, but I have no reason to doubt that it works.
      - sjukfan 9y ago
        I'm running openRC on all my systems and the problem is usually dependencies. As an example, both Brasero and K3b depends on something that depends on systemd. I can understand if a program uses the systemd library but these need systemd as pid 1 because reasons.
- tobias12345 9y ago
  Devuan is evidence that stupid people have stupid priorities. Devuan spends a lot of time and energy to remove libsystemd, a library that is introduced so that software can function properly with or without systemd. Not necessary for Devuan, true, but why not remove critical services shipped by systemd first? They still ship systemd-free.