4 ms·

Wouldn’t have to be systemd, macOS has launchd for init, FreeBSD could come up with its own thing. This is a good talk I saw recently (by a FreeBSD contributor)

Wouldn’t have to be systemd, macOS has launchd for init, FreeBSD could come up with its own thing. This is a good talk I saw recently (by a FreeBSD contributor) on why these sorts of systems have become more common, and why they seem so sweeping in scope. https://youtu.be/o_AIw9bGogo https://youtu.be/o_AIw9bGogo (In fact systemd and launchd are so tailored to their respective operating systems that FreeBSD likely would have to do their own init replacement if they cared to.)

tal8d 6y ago
> This is a good talk That is not a good talk unless you already advocate for abandoning standards, and celebrate Linux's growing power to dictate how the shrinking number of remaining OSes design things. You might easily miss it if you're already onboard with systemd, but in his point by point address of systemd's shortcomings - he repeatedly handwaves and redirects. Systemd is a mess, which is an amazing accomplishment considering the fact that it is supposed to be this great unifying/simplifying layer. So awful that the DoD held out for the longest time in formalizing any kind of baseline security audit procedures that address it. Compare that to something like Solaris SMF. I've never had a problem with the rc system that made me blame the underlying design, but if I did - systemd would be at the bottom of a very long list of my potential solutions, right under 'Set the machine on fire and pickup a copy of "Industrial Society and Its Future"'. I really like the guy running the OpenZFS project, but it is painfully obvious that it is only going to increasingly cater to Linux - and coincidentally a lot of the really annoying aspects of the project are a result of that. For example: that Rube Goldberg build system, with massive amounts of code duplication... that wouldn't be there if not for autotools and gnu export symbol games.
- oblio 6y ago
  Sys V init was not a standard. Is it in POSIX? I can't find it.
  - tal8d 6y ago
    One of these init systems is run by a guy that is openly hostile to POSIX, the other can be found on several different operating systems and has been around forever. hmmm...
    - mapgrep 6y ago
      Honestly, what do we need POSIX for in 2020? As discussed in the talk, it traces to the age of the Unix wars, when there was a panoply of processors and Unix variants. POSIX is great if you’re concerned with recompiling some C so it works on SPARC and Alpha and POWER, on Solaris, Tru64, and AIX. That world is gone. Yes, I’m for abandoning pointless standards. There are concrete benefits to systemd - faster boot, comprehensive service management, power savings, memory savings, a consistent interface to changing system state. What is the benefit to sticking with an rc script architecture designed to run a handful of processes on a pdp?
      - tal8d 6y ago
        > Honestly, what do we need POSIX for in 2020? You've never written portable software, have you? You can't write portable software without a common interface. Have you ever looked at what autotools vomits out? You'll see shell scripts containing the likes of "echo $1 | sed 's/^x//'" in order to just get things to where they have a chance of sharing enough commonality to compile. Imagine how much worse it would be without POSIX. Nothing would run on anything that the developers didn't account for, this includes OS (plus version), environment, and hardware architecture. That is the world you are asking for, not the one we presently live in. > What is the benefit to sticking with an rc script architecture designed to run a handful of processes on a pdp? Freedom, for not only the end user but all the way up to distro packager. Systemd is designed to be non-portable, and force a network-effect pressure. I was similarly suspicious about WSL designing toward a linux API instead of POSIX... an effort to reduce the potential for alternatives emerging in the future, where your choices are windows or linux.
        oblio 6y ago
        > That is the world you are asking for, not the one we presently live in. So, like mobile? Which is 70%+ of computing these days? :-) > Freedom, for not only the end user but all the way up to distro packager. Systemd is designed to be non-portable, and force a network-effect pressure. I was similarly suspicious about WSL designing toward a linux API instead of POSIX... an effort to reduce the potential for alternatives emerging in the future, where your choices are windows or linux. Freedom to do what? Init systems should be a solved problem, done and done. Innovation should happen higher up the stack, the init system should be uniform, hopefully flexible and universally adopted, and ideally standardized fully (as in ECMA & co.).
- znpy 6y ago
  Standards can become outdated you know? And by the way standards aren't really the word of some kind of god that you should follow blindly and never question. Many standards are ratified just to settle the status quo regarding various solutions to a common problem. At this point, one might even argue that the next "standard" for init systems should just be based off systemd.
  - tal8d 6y ago
    lol, the Internet Explorer school of thought. Sure, form a work group for an open init standard with systemd as the basis - chaired by people both inside and outside the systemd project. But before that, rent a home in Malibu and wire it for reality TV, because that would be the most entertaining WG ever.
petre 6y ago
Have you even used launchd? It's an XML based init system with inconsistent launchdctl directives. I'd even use systemd any day in place of it.

tal8d 6y ago

> This is a good talk That is not a good talk unless you already advocate for abandoning standards, and celebrate Linux's growing power to dictate how the shrinking number of remaining OSes design things. You might easily miss it if you're already onboard with systemd, but in his point by point address of systemd's shortcomings - he repeatedly handwaves and redirects. Systemd is a mess, which is an amazing accomplishment considering the fact that it is supposed to be this great unifying/simplifying layer. So awful that the DoD held out for the longest time in formalizing any kind of baseline security audit procedures that address it. Compare that to something like Solaris SMF. I've never had a problem with the rc system that made me blame the underlying design, but if I did - systemd would be at the bottom of a very long list of my potential solutions, right under 'Set the machine on fire and pickup a copy of "Industrial Society and Its Future"'. I really like the guy running the OpenZFS project, but it is painfully obvious that it is only going to increasingly cater to Linux - and coincidentally a lot of the really annoying aspects of the project are a result of that. For example: that Rube Goldberg build system, with massive amounts of code duplication... that wouldn't be there if not for autotools and gnu export symbol games.

oblio 6y ago
Sys V init was not a standard. Is it in POSIX? I can't find it.
- tal8d 6y ago
  One of these init systems is run by a guy that is openly hostile to POSIX, the other can be found on several different operating systems and has been around forever. hmmm...
  - mapgrep 6y ago
    Honestly, what do we need POSIX for in 2020? As discussed in the talk, it traces to the age of the Unix wars, when there was a panoply of processors and Unix variants. POSIX is great if you’re concerned with recompiling some C so it works on SPARC and Alpha and POWER, on Solaris, Tru64, and AIX. That world is gone. Yes, I’m for abandoning pointless standards. There are concrete benefits to systemd - faster boot, comprehensive service management, power savings, memory savings, a consistent interface to changing system state. What is the benefit to sticking with an rc script architecture designed to run a handful of processes on a pdp?
    - tal8d 6y ago
      > Honestly, what do we need POSIX for in 2020? You've never written portable software, have you? You can't write portable software without a common interface. Have you ever looked at what autotools vomits out? You'll see shell scripts containing the likes of "echo $1 | sed 's/^x//'" in order to just get things to where they have a chance of sharing enough commonality to compile. Imagine how much worse it would be without POSIX. Nothing would run on anything that the developers didn't account for, this includes OS (plus version), environment, and hardware architecture. That is the world you are asking for, not the one we presently live in. > What is the benefit to sticking with an rc script architecture designed to run a handful of processes on a pdp? Freedom, for not only the end user but all the way up to distro packager. Systemd is designed to be non-portable, and force a network-effect pressure. I was similarly suspicious about WSL designing toward a linux API instead of POSIX... an effort to reduce the potential for alternatives emerging in the future, where your choices are windows or linux.
      - oblio 6y ago
        > That is the world you are asking for, not the one we presently live in. So, like mobile? Which is 70%+ of computing these days? :-) > Freedom, for not only the end user but all the way up to distro packager. Systemd is designed to be non-portable, and force a network-effect pressure. I was similarly suspicious about WSL designing toward a linux API instead of POSIX... an effort to reduce the potential for alternatives emerging in the future, where your choices are windows or linux. Freedom to do what? Init systems should be a solved problem, done and done. Innovation should happen higher up the stack, the init system should be uniform, hopefully flexible and universally adopted, and ideally standardized fully (as in ECMA & co.).
znpy 6y ago
Standards can become outdated you know? And by the way standards aren't really the word of some kind of god that you should follow blindly and never question. Many standards are ratified just to settle the status quo regarding various solutions to a common problem. At this point, one might even argue that the next "standard" for init systems should just be based off systemd.
- tal8d 6y ago
  lol, the Internet Explorer school of thought. Sure, form a work group for an open init standard with systemd as the basis - chaired by people both inside and outside the systemd project. But before that, rent a home in Malibu and wire it for reality TV, because that would be the most entertaining WG ever.

petre 6y ago

Have you even used launchd? It's an XML based init system with inconsistent launchdctl directives. I'd even use systemd any day in place of it.