3 ms·

I guess users have been sufficiently beaten into submission that many of them will put up with software randomly quitting on them, but the idea that daemons sho

by _jal 7y ago

I guess users have been sufficiently beaten into submission that many of them will put up with software randomly quitting on them, but the idea that daemons should be snaps is doubly crazy. "Oh, Tomcat just updated itself, that's why we were down." I really have no idea what people are thinking sometimes.

theossuary 7y ago
I always resisted running Ubuntu in production, even when it was much easier to install the necessary software. When you pick a distro, you're picking their packaging and maintainer culture. I've always prefered CentOS for that reason. Even the little things, like installing a new package won't start/enable the services (because you should have a chance to configure it first) always came off as more pragmatic for system administration.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  I run Debian on my workstation and laptops but still prefer to use CentOS/RHEL on my servers. The automatic startup of newly installed services (before you even have the opportunity to configure them) on Debian (and derivatives) has always bothered me and is a (small) factor in my decision. Fortunately, there are a few "workarounds" to prevent newly installed services from being automatically started! First, there's the brute-force / heavy-handed approach -- override the systemd presets [0] to set all services to disabled by default: $ cat /etc/systemd/system-preset/00-disable-all-services.preset disable * Alternatively, as a one-time thing, you can "mask" the service before installing the package but this requires you to manually create the symlink (instead of using "systemctl mask") -- and requires you to know the name of the service unit beforehand: $ ln -s /dev/null /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service $ apt install nginx # ... configure nginx as desired ... $ systemctl enable nginx $ systemctl start nginx Finally, there's the old, "sloppy" (IMO) method of "hacking" the /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d script to immediately exit with a status code of 101 ("action forbidden") [1]. (I'd recommend avoiding the latter entirely and going with whichever of the first two options better suits your needs.) --- EDIT: Just remembered another method but I'm not sure if it still works: $ RUNLEVEL=1 apt install nginx --- [0]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.preset.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.pre... [1]: https://people.debian.org/~hmh/invokerc.d-policyrc.d-specification.txt https://people.debian.org/~hmh/invokerc.d-policyrc.d-specifi...
monadic2 7y ago
> I guess users have been sufficiently beaten into submission that many of them will put up with software randomly quitting on them A cultural acceptance of WIP software seems common, in free software communities, in my experience.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  > A cultural acceptance of WIP software seems common, in free software communities, in my experience. On the one hand, yeah it's harder to complain when something is only built in someone's spare time for free. On the other hand... is non-FOSS really any better? Has Windows yet managed to re-merge the old and new control panels?
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    And the middle one from Win 7?
  - lokedhs 7y ago
    The rumour is that the old control panel will be removed in the next version of Windows 10, so I'd hope so?
- _jal 7y ago
  There's a difference between bugs and software developers who cares less about the user than software being up-to-date. The first is a fact of life. The second is bad judgement.

by _jal 7y ago

theossuary 7y ago

I always resisted running Ubuntu in production, even when it was much easier to install the necessary software. When you pick a distro, you're picking their packaging and maintainer culture. I've always prefered CentOS for that reason. Even the little things, like installing a new package won't start/enable the services (because you should have a chance to configure it first) always came off as more pragmatic for system administration.

jlgaddis 7y ago
I run Debian on my workstation and laptops but still prefer to use CentOS/RHEL on my servers. The automatic startup of newly installed services (before you even have the opportunity to configure them) on Debian (and derivatives) has always bothered me and is a (small) factor in my decision. Fortunately, there are a few "workarounds" to prevent newly installed services from being automatically started! First, there's the brute-force / heavy-handed approach -- override the systemd presets [0] to set all services to disabled by default: $ cat /etc/systemd/system-preset/00-disable-all-services.preset disable * Alternatively, as a one-time thing, you can "mask" the service before installing the package but this requires you to manually create the symlink (instead of using "systemctl mask") -- and requires you to know the name of the service unit beforehand: $ ln -s /dev/null /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service $ apt install nginx # ... configure nginx as desired ... $ systemctl enable nginx $ systemctl start nginx Finally, there's the old, "sloppy" (IMO) method of "hacking" the /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d script to immediately exit with a status code of 101 ("action forbidden") [1]. (I'd recommend avoiding the latter entirely and going with whichever of the first two options better suits your needs.) --- EDIT: Just remembered another method but I'm not sure if it still works: $ RUNLEVEL=1 apt install nginx --- [0]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.preset.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.pre... [1]: https://people.debian.org/~hmh/invokerc.d-policyrc.d-specification.txt https://people.debian.org/~hmh/invokerc.d-policyrc.d-specifi...

monadic2 7y ago

> I guess users have been sufficiently beaten into submission that many of them will put up with software randomly quitting on them A cultural acceptance of WIP software seems common, in free software communities, in my experience.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> A cultural acceptance of WIP software seems common, in free software communities, in my experience. On the one hand, yeah it's harder to complain when something is only built in someone's spare time for free. On the other hand... is non-FOSS really any better? Has Windows yet managed to re-merge the old and new control panels?
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  And the middle one from Win 7?
- lokedhs 7y ago
  The rumour is that the old control panel will be removed in the next version of Windows 10, so I'd hope so?
_jal 7y ago
There's a difference between bugs and software developers who cares less about the user than software being up-to-date. The first is a fact of life. The second is bad judgement.