6 ms·

Systemd Is Approaching 1.3M Lines

38 points by watchdogtimer 7y ago

jeffrallen 7y ago
That's about 1.3 million too many.
- m4r35n357 7y ago
  Gravitational collapse in 3, 2, 1 . . . Well, hopefully soon.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    It's already happened. Systemd is a black hole that absorbs everything.
    - sverige 7y ago
      Can't wait to see what happens when systemd-homed becomes entrenched across all distros. What's left after that? Systemd-gccd?
      - k_sze 7y ago
        I used to joke with my colleagues that eventually everything will converge and become systemd running jupyterhub (now jupyterlab) running "apps" that are actually notebooks on some kind of Node.js kernel.
      - bitwize 7y ago
        This: https://wizardofbits.tumblr.com/post/96856361060/rethinking-the-primacy-of-linux-in-a-linux-system https://wizardofbits.tumblr.com/post/96856361060/rethinking-...
phoronixrly 7y ago
With the amount of systemd-related articles on Phoronix lately, I'd wager systemd clickbait/trollbait is responsible for a large part of their ad revenue...
- MegaDeKay 7y ago
  They published 14 articles tagged with systemd in the last half of 2019. You are overstating this, and the fact that your "phoronixrly" username was created a few minutes before your comment suggests that you know it. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_topic&q=systemd https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_topic&q=systemd
  - phoronixrly 7y ago
    This is >2 articles per month with one a week in December alone. Here's a better overview: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=systemd https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=systemd
    - MegaDeKay 7y ago
      Michael typically publishes around eight or nine articles a day, every day. So something like two articles a month would be a long way from being a major part of the content on that site. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=recent https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=recent
jandeboevrie 7y ago
I hate that systemd refuses to work in a chroot. With all those extra services in systemd like dns, it's impossible to run in a container or chroot... And the developers blatantly refuse to fix that.
- superboum 7y ago
  dns, network and ntp services are run in separate processes. These processes are sandboxed in a more effective manner than chroot (namespaces, capabilities, etc.). Moreover, systemd itself relies heavily on Linux sandboxing tools (like cgroups).
- mariusor 7y ago
  Isn't systemd-nspawn useful for this case? It was specifically designed to replace the need for chroot on systemd systems.
kzrdude 7y ago
What does binary size look like, and has it grown to match?
- MegaDeKay 7y ago
  Kinda rough and probably missing some stuff, but... [megadekay@ryzen ~]$ du -h /usr/bin/systemd* 1.5M /usr/bin/systemd-analyze 16K /usr/bin/systemd-ask-password 20K /usr/bin/systemd-cat 20K /usr/bin/systemd-cgls 36K /usr/bin/systemd-cgtop 24K /usr/bin/systemd-delta 20K /usr/bin/systemd-detect-virt 20K /usr/bin/systemd-escape 40K /usr/bin/systemd-firstboot 16K /usr/bin/systemd-hwdb 20K /usr/bin/systemd-id128 20K /usr/bin/systemd-inhibit 24K /usr/bin/systemd-machine-id-setup 48K /usr/bin/systemd-mount 20K /usr/bin/systemd-notify 312K /usr/bin/systemd-nspawn 20K /usr/bin/systemd-path 0 /usr/bin/systemd-resolve 56K /usr/bin/systemd-run 28K /usr/bin/systemd-socket-activate 20K /usr/bin/systemd-stdio-bridge 52K /usr/bin/systemd-sysusers 84K /usr/bin/systemd-tmpfiles 28K /usr/bin/systemd-tty-ask-password-agent 0 /usr/bin/systemd-umount
  - majewsky 7y ago
    You're missing the most significant one, PID 1 itself: $ du -hs /usr/lib/systemd/systemd 1,5M /usr/lib/systemd/systemd And there's plenty more in /usr/lib/systemd (basically all the binaries that are not supposed to be in $PATH).
  - tpmx 7y ago
    To add to the list: What shared libraries (.so) do these executables require? When trying to minimize the footprint of something, I often find that this is where the bulk is hiding.
ape4 7y ago
It replaces a lot of lines too. Like every service that has to demonize itself, buggy init scripts, etc
- UserIsUnused 7y ago
  runit also takes care of all that and it is much simpler.
archseer 7y ago
Can't reproduce the findings. I think this is counting all lines ever added across all commits. The current source tree is at 500k lines of C: $ tokei C: 492003, C Header: 58547 Total line count at 889658, "code" count at 716316, but 202314 of that is plain text which could signify documentation. It's still a lot, but not even nearly close the headline.
- ming13 7y ago
  Interesting. cloc counted even less — 360K of C code, 35K of headers — on the current master. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 937 106426 22822 362913 XML 308 12090 455 63485 C/C++ Header 636 10009 13197 35346 Python 26 1409 6695 16629 PO File 29 3842 4158 11713
  - Denvercoder9 7y ago
    If you add blank+comment+code, you get remarkably close to the results of the parent comment.
- phoronixrly 7y ago
  I've noticed a trend on Phoronix -- most articles and especially articles on controversial topics (systemd, BSDs, pulseaudio, etc.) are very low effort. Like literally pasting a few images from GitStats (like this case), quoting a mailing list entry with no context, or running your standard desktop test suite and issuing a performance verdict based on it... Seems to me like the main purpose for such articles is not to inform, but to generate clicks by having a controversial project in its title...
  - archseer 7y ago
    It's bad journalism. /r/linux for example has a blanket ban on Phoronix articles and classifies them as blog spam. Most of the "announcement" type articles are mailing list quotes without context that don't link to the original source, but link to even more Phoronix articles.
hwj 7y ago
Putting this into perspective with other init systems, e.g. SysVinit, OpenRC or Dinit would probably be much more meaningful...
hetspookjee 7y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that Systemd was a relatively simple service that just manages services on a cpu. I had the mental model of systemd as a cronjob on boot with status management. What else does it do besides that, that warrants such an enormous complexity? I'm sure i'm missing out on a ton of features with this simple model but I haven't seen anyone else use it otherwise in the wild than a service manager.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  Systemd doesn't just troll through a directory of symlinks to shell scripts and fire them off. It's parsing a DSL for the .service scripts, building dependency graphs, making lists, checking them twice, and so forth.
  - hetspookjee 7y ago
    I see, thanks for the explanation.
- Denvercoder9 7y ago
  The systemd project develops a lot more than that. One component is udev, which manages (among other things) /dev and firmware loading. For this purpose it includes a database of all supported hardware, which alone counts in at 271K lines of "code" (it's really just structured plain text). I wouldn't be surprised if the core service manager comes in at only ~20K lines of code.
- blihp 7y ago
  That's been the ongoing issue/debate re: systemd. If it were just a simple service manager, there probably wouldn't be nearly so much debate around it. Instead, it's both a service manager and a collection of bundled services. It often isn't trivial (both due to dependencies and packaging) to substitute a single service systemd provides with an alternative implementation.
jcadam 7y ago
Blech. Somebody get docker working on *BSD so I can drop Linux.
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  Bsd has jails that are arguably better in most ways.
  - jcadam 7y ago
    Yea, and Beta was technically superior to VHS.
    - mst 7y ago
      I'm very well aware that this isn't really what you were asking for, but it's interesting to note that it appears to be possible to throw a debian VM into bhyve and use docker CLI tools from the FreeBSD host system to launch docker images inside the VM. Having seen the vast amount of pain Joyent went through with their LX flavour zones trying to get the syscall emulation right, and Windows having gone "sod this" and switched to an embedded linux kernel for WSL2, I do rather wonder if this isn't as good as it's going to get without an engineering effort by FreeBSD that could likely get better ROI focused elsewhere.
ryuukk_ 7y ago
who cares, linux is a giant pile of shit people expect linux to do nothing, so they can host their app somewhere for cheap the more linux people add, the worse it becomes because linux people have a weird bloated non UX friendly mindset, they are selfish, and messy

38 points by watchdogtimer 7y ago

jeffrallen 7y ago

That's about 1.3 million too many.

m4r35n357 7y ago
Gravitational collapse in 3, 2, 1 . . . Well, hopefully soon.
- bitwize 7y ago
  It's already happened. Systemd is a black hole that absorbs everything.
  - sverige 7y ago
    Can't wait to see what happens when systemd-homed becomes entrenched across all distros. What's left after that? Systemd-gccd?
    - k_sze 7y ago
      I used to joke with my colleagues that eventually everything will converge and become systemd running jupyterhub (now jupyterlab) running "apps" that are actually notebooks on some kind of Node.js kernel.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      This: https://wizardofbits.tumblr.com/post/96856361060/rethinking-the-primacy-of-linux-in-a-linux-system https://wizardofbits.tumblr.com/post/96856361060/rethinking-...

phoronixrly 7y ago

With the amount of systemd-related articles on Phoronix lately, I'd wager systemd clickbait/trollbait is responsible for a large part of their ad revenue...

MegaDeKay 7y ago
They published 14 articles tagged with systemd in the last half of 2019. You are overstating this, and the fact that your "phoronixrly" username was created a few minutes before your comment suggests that you know it. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_topic&q=systemd https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_topic&q=systemd
- phoronixrly 7y ago
  This is >2 articles per month with one a week in December alone. Here's a better overview: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=systemd https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=systemd
  - MegaDeKay 7y ago
    Michael typically publishes around eight or nine articles a day, every day. So something like two articles a month would be a long way from being a major part of the content on that site. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=recent https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=recent

jandeboevrie 7y ago

I hate that systemd refuses to work in a chroot. With all those extra services in systemd like dns, it's impossible to run in a container or chroot... And the developers blatantly refuse to fix that.

superboum 7y ago
dns, network and ntp services are run in separate processes. These processes are sandboxed in a more effective manner than chroot (namespaces, capabilities, etc.). Moreover, systemd itself relies heavily on Linux sandboxing tools (like cgroups).
mariusor 7y ago
Isn't systemd-nspawn useful for this case? It was specifically designed to replace the need for chroot on systemd systems.

kzrdude 7y ago

What does binary size look like, and has it grown to match?

MegaDeKay 7y ago
Kinda rough and probably missing some stuff, but... [megadekay@ryzen ~]$ du -h /usr/bin/systemd* 1.5M /usr/bin/systemd-analyze 16K /usr/bin/systemd-ask-password 20K /usr/bin/systemd-cat 20K /usr/bin/systemd-cgls 36K /usr/bin/systemd-cgtop 24K /usr/bin/systemd-delta 20K /usr/bin/systemd-detect-virt 20K /usr/bin/systemd-escape 40K /usr/bin/systemd-firstboot 16K /usr/bin/systemd-hwdb 20K /usr/bin/systemd-id128 20K /usr/bin/systemd-inhibit 24K /usr/bin/systemd-machine-id-setup 48K /usr/bin/systemd-mount 20K /usr/bin/systemd-notify 312K /usr/bin/systemd-nspawn 20K /usr/bin/systemd-path 0 /usr/bin/systemd-resolve 56K /usr/bin/systemd-run 28K /usr/bin/systemd-socket-activate 20K /usr/bin/systemd-stdio-bridge 52K /usr/bin/systemd-sysusers 84K /usr/bin/systemd-tmpfiles 28K /usr/bin/systemd-tty-ask-password-agent 0 /usr/bin/systemd-umount
- majewsky 7y ago
  You're missing the most significant one, PID 1 itself: $ du -hs /usr/lib/systemd/systemd 1,5M /usr/lib/systemd/systemd And there's plenty more in /usr/lib/systemd (basically all the binaries that are not supposed to be in $PATH).
- tpmx 7y ago
  To add to the list: What shared libraries (.so) do these executables require? When trying to minimize the footprint of something, I often find that this is where the bulk is hiding.

ape4 7y ago

It replaces a lot of lines too. Like every service that has to demonize itself, buggy init scripts, etc

UserIsUnused 7y ago
runit also takes care of all that and it is much simpler.

archseer 7y ago

Can't reproduce the findings. I think this is counting all lines ever added across all commits. The current source tree is at 500k lines of C: $ tokei C: 492003, C Header: 58547 Total line count at 889658, "code" count at 716316, but 202314 of that is plain text which could signify documentation. It's still a lot, but not even nearly close the headline.

ming13 7y ago
Interesting. cloc counted even less — 360K of C code, 35K of headers — on the current master. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 937 106426 22822 362913 XML 308 12090 455 63485 C/C++ Header 636 10009 13197 35346 Python 26 1409 6695 16629 PO File 29 3842 4158 11713
- Denvercoder9 7y ago
  If you add blank+comment+code, you get remarkably close to the results of the parent comment.
phoronixrly 7y ago
I've noticed a trend on Phoronix -- most articles and especially articles on controversial topics (systemd, BSDs, pulseaudio, etc.) are very low effort. Like literally pasting a few images from GitStats (like this case), quoting a mailing list entry with no context, or running your standard desktop test suite and issuing a performance verdict based on it... Seems to me like the main purpose for such articles is not to inform, but to generate clicks by having a controversial project in its title...
- archseer 7y ago
  It's bad journalism. /r/linux for example has a blanket ban on Phoronix articles and classifies them as blog spam. Most of the "announcement" type articles are mailing list quotes without context that don't link to the original source, but link to even more Phoronix articles.

hwj 7y ago

Putting this into perspective with other init systems, e.g. SysVinit, OpenRC or Dinit would probably be much more meaningful...

hetspookjee 7y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that Systemd was a relatively simple service that just manages services on a cpu. I had the mental model of systemd as a cronjob on boot with status management. What else does it do besides that, that warrants such an enormous complexity? I'm sure i'm missing out on a ton of features with this simple model but I haven't seen anyone else use it otherwise in the wild than a service manager.

smitty1e 7y ago
Systemd doesn't just troll through a directory of symlinks to shell scripts and fire them off. It's parsing a DSL for the .service scripts, building dependency graphs, making lists, checking them twice, and so forth.
- hetspookjee 7y ago
  I see, thanks for the explanation.
Denvercoder9 7y ago
The systemd project develops a lot more than that. One component is udev, which manages (among other things) /dev and firmware loading. For this purpose it includes a database of all supported hardware, which alone counts in at 271K lines of "code" (it's really just structured plain text). I wouldn't be surprised if the core service manager comes in at only ~20K lines of code.
blihp 7y ago
That's been the ongoing issue/debate re: systemd. If it were just a simple service manager, there probably wouldn't be nearly so much debate around it. Instead, it's both a service manager and a collection of bundled services. It often isn't trivial (both due to dependencies and packaging) to substitute a single service systemd provides with an alternative implementation.

jcadam 7y ago

Blech. Somebody get docker working on *BSD so I can drop Linux.

jimktrains2 7y ago
Bsd has jails that are arguably better in most ways.
- jcadam 7y ago
  Yea, and Beta was technically superior to VHS.
  - mst 7y ago
    I'm very well aware that this isn't really what you were asking for, but it's interesting to note that it appears to be possible to throw a debian VM into bhyve and use docker CLI tools from the FreeBSD host system to launch docker images inside the VM. Having seen the vast amount of pain Joyent went through with their LX flavour zones trying to get the syscall emulation right, and Windows having gone "sod this" and switched to an embedded linux kernel for WSL2, I do rather wonder if this isn't as good as it's going to get without an engineering effort by FreeBSD that could likely get better ROI focused elsewhere.

ryuukk_ 7y ago

who cares, linux is a giant pile of shit people expect linux to do nothing, so they can host their app somewhere for cheap the more linux people add, the worse it becomes because linux people have a weird bloated non UX friendly mindset, they are selfish, and messy