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I noticed that, too: the author doesn't mention the many-splendored versions of *BSD. My personal favorite is FreeBSD. I like Linux, but I have mixed feelings

I noticed that, too: the author doesn't mention the many-splendored versions of *BSD. My personal favorite is FreeBSD. I like Linux, but I have mixed feelings about systemd, especially when I discovered that systemd runs its own DNS server, which prevents the DNS server I wrote from binding to port 53 using INADDR_ANY. Instead, I had to write code to enumerate the interfaces & corresponding IP addresses & bind to each one separately. Systemd's decision to run their own DNS server is a bit of overreach, IMHO.

LukeShu 6y ago
You don't have to use systemd-resolved. Most distros have been using systemd but not systemd-resolved for years. Fedora only just started using systemd-resolved by default in the most recent release. It's like, yeah, that's a funny thing to also live in systemd.git, but systemd-resolved is functionally a separate product from systemd.
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  Yup. My recent Fedora upgrade broke my internet access due to this change. That was eye-opening, kinda turned me off from Fedora.
magila 6y ago
You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right?
- nikisweeting 6y ago
  But why does it need to exist in the first place when my system has exactly 0 change in behavior when it's disabled?
  - magila 6y ago
    The functionality provided by the stub resolver is documented in the man page[0]. You may not be using it, but other people are. [0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-resolved.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-res...
- jamiesonbecker 6y ago
  Then.. why does it exist? More importantly, why is it enabled by default? Does systemd want to be an init system? A logging system? a dnsmasq replacement?
  - nine_k 6y ago
    Systemd is a replacement for Unix. Folks at Red Hat noticed that the Linux userland architecture is not convenient for what they would like to build. So they are building systems which replace the traditional mechanisms: first DBus, then systemd, which is an umbrella of many services: init + service monitoring + containers, logging, interactive login, some networking, etc. I suppose that in 10 years a linux kernel + systemd could be a complete system, with little need for other userland.
    - jamiesonbecker 6y ago
      > Systemd is a replacement for Unix... I suppose that in 10 years a linux kernel + systemd could be a complete system, with little need for other userland. 'Doing many things, none of them well' is actually the opposite of UNIX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
      - nine_k 6y ago
        Sometimes you want a different balance — say, in embedded systems. If you think about busybox, it does something similar, only doing a better job at looking like the traditional userland. There is nothing bad about it. What I find bad is forcing everyone to jump on the same bandwagon, no matter which bandwagon. If I wanted choices made for me, I'd buy a Mac.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        tal8d 6y ago
        ugh, I was so excited when my POWER9 arrived... and then I started looking at the OpenBMC stack.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Or disabling and stop systemd-resolved should do the same thing.
- Caligatio 6y ago
  I recently discovered that systemd supports drop-in config files so I'd recommend putting the changed settings into something like /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/disable-stub.conf. That way your package manager isn't upset that files it controls are modified. I wrote a personal blog post about this (https://www.turek.dev/posts/disable-systemd-resolved-cleanly/ https://www.turek.dev/posts/disable-systemd-resolved-cleanly...) to try to help people out.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  > You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right? I suppose you could do that. although I prefer: systemctl disable systemd-resolved systemctl mask systemd-resolved Then it's dead and will stay that way.
- brian_cunnie 6y ago
  Thanks for the tip. It wasn't quite the solution I was looking for. I wanted my DNS server to "just work" for people who downloaded it—I didn't want to force them to re-configure systemd to accommodate my software. Tweaking my software to accommodate systemd.resolved took ~4 hours. It was an enjoyable dive, but I'd rather not have had to do it on the first place. I continue to think it's a bit of an overreach for Fedora to include a DNS server by default.
horlux 6y ago
you'd probably like voidlinux
- Qub3d 6y ago
  For people who use Arch, Artix is a fork that offers a choice of init systems. You still get the AUR and rolling release, but you can use runit (void's init system) instead of systemd. Worth a shot! https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artix https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artix
axaxs 6y ago
This is where I sit. I like systemd as an init system. I find its syslog replacement unneeded overreach, and its DNS server absolute insanity. So when asked if I like systemd, it's a loaded question. It's great but absolutely sucks, both.
- dTal 6y ago
  systemd isn't an init system and doesn't pretend to be one [note] - it's OS middleware with ambitions to becoming a distro unto itself. The systemd project assumes responsibility for numerous aspects of the system that have no technical justification for being under the same project umbrella. You might like systemd-homed, for instance, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the functions of init. Calling it an "init system" is like calling KDE a "window manager". [note] It describes itself as "a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system" - although in my opinion that implies more modularity than it posesses.
  - willismichael 6y ago
    Honest question, if nobody likes systemd, then why is it still around and why is it so difficult for me to find a distro that hasn't adopted it?
    - axaxs 6y ago
      Running a distro is a ton of work. Writing your own one off init scripts per package is even more work. The short answer is...Red Hat has money and threw it behind systemd. Like them or hate them, they are in many ways the deciding fate of Linux systems. So, other distros fall in line. Ubuntu is a contender, but gave in and followed suit too. Void and Solus are both good distros that don't use systemd. I'd go as far as to call Solus the best out of the box distro ive ever used.
      - dTal 6y ago
        You're half right, but writing init scripts is by far the easiest part of not running systemd. As a sibling comment lightly puts it - "various shims exist".
Spivak 6y ago
I swear at this point there is not a soul that really understand the low level pieces of a Linux distro fit together. systemd-resolved is a separate project from systemd whose only relation is that it’s in the same repo. It’s up to your distro builder to decide if they want to use it. And also up to your distro if they want to use the stub resolver. It’s not necessary for systemd-resolved to work. The reason they have the stub listener is because on Linux every application is supposed to use glibc nss to resolve names but there are real-world applications that try, incorrectly, to parse resolv.conf and do dns queries themselves. This breaks things if your assumption is that all dns queries are going through systemd-resolved. And this project isn’t the first. Ubuntu and others have used dnsmasq as the stub resolver for the same reason. Using just the dns nss module and resolv.conf is fundamentally broken and at this point unfixable when you are connected to multiple networks or with separate dns or split tunnel VPNing. You have to provide your own, smarter, nss module and/or use a stub resolver to cover these use-cases.
- dTal 6y ago
  Why does it use the same repo, exactly?
  - mariusor 6y ago
    Because it's built by the same people that built systmed and uses some of the low-level internal libraries from systemd (input parsing, configuration, etc) ? This is not that difficult of a conclusion to get to honestly.
znpy 6y ago
Fair things about DNS, you can make systemd not work without systemd-resolved, btw. The nice thing about systemd-resolved is that it make enabling split-tunnel vpns a breeze.
- 1_player 6y ago
  And provides out of the box DNS caching, like any modern operating system. Do Linux users really want their year on the desktop, or will they keep complaining at any change to get there?

LukeShu 6y ago

You don't have to use systemd-resolved. Most distros have been using systemd but not systemd-resolved for years. Fedora only just started using systemd-resolved by default in the most recent release. It's like, yeah, that's a funny thing to also live in systemd.git, but systemd-resolved is functionally a separate product from systemd.

gautamcgoel 6y ago
Yup. My recent Fedora upgrade broke my internet access due to this change. That was eye-opening, kinda turned me off from Fedora.

magila 6y ago

You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right?

nikisweeting 6y ago
But why does it need to exist in the first place when my system has exactly 0 change in behavior when it's disabled?
- magila 6y ago
  The functionality provided by the stub resolver is documented in the man page[0]. You may not be using it, but other people are. [0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-resolved.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-res...
jamiesonbecker 6y ago
Then.. why does it exist? More importantly, why is it enabled by default? Does systemd want to be an init system? A logging system? a dnsmasq replacement?
- nine_k 6y ago
  Systemd is a replacement for Unix. Folks at Red Hat noticed that the Linux userland architecture is not convenient for what they would like to build. So they are building systems which replace the traditional mechanisms: first DBus, then systemd, which is an umbrella of many services: init + service monitoring + containers, logging, interactive login, some networking, etc. I suppose that in 10 years a linux kernel + systemd could be a complete system, with little need for other userland.
  - jamiesonbecker 6y ago
    > Systemd is a replacement for Unix... I suppose that in 10 years a linux kernel + systemd could be a complete system, with little need for other userland. 'Doing many things, none of them well' is actually the opposite of UNIX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
    - nine_k 6y ago
      Sometimes you want a different balance — say, in embedded systems. If you think about busybox, it does something similar, only doing a better job at looking like the traditional userland. There is nothing bad about it. What I find bad is forcing everyone to jump on the same bandwagon, no matter which bandwagon. If I wanted choices made for me, I'd buy a Mac.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - tal8d 6y ago
        ugh, I was so excited when my POWER9 arrived... and then I started looking at the OpenBMC stack.
viraptor 6y ago
Or disabling and stop systemd-resolved should do the same thing.
Caligatio 6y ago
I recently discovered that systemd supports drop-in config files so I'd recommend putting the changed settings into something like /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/disable-stub.conf. That way your package manager isn't upset that files it controls are modified. I wrote a personal blog post about this (https://www.turek.dev/posts/disable-systemd-resolved-cleanly/ https://www.turek.dev/posts/disable-systemd-resolved-cleanly...) to try to help people out.
nobody9999 6y ago
> You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right? I suppose you could do that. although I prefer: systemctl disable systemd-resolved systemctl mask systemd-resolved Then it's dead and will stay that way.
brian_cunnie 6y ago
Thanks for the tip. It wasn't quite the solution I was looking for. I wanted my DNS server to "just work" for people who downloaded it—I didn't want to force them to re-configure systemd to accommodate my software. Tweaking my software to accommodate systemd.resolved took ~4 hours. It was an enjoyable dive, but I'd rather not have had to do it on the first place. I continue to think it's a bit of an overreach for Fedora to include a DNS server by default.

horlux 6y ago

you'd probably like voidlinux

Qub3d 6y ago
For people who use Arch, Artix is a fork that offers a choice of init systems. You still get the AUR and rolling release, but you can use runit (void's init system) instead of systemd. Worth a shot! https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artix https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=artix

axaxs 6y ago

This is where I sit. I like systemd as an init system. I find its syslog replacement unneeded overreach, and its DNS server absolute insanity. So when asked if I like systemd, it's a loaded question. It's great but absolutely sucks, both.

dTal 6y ago
systemd isn't an init system and doesn't pretend to be one [note] - it's OS middleware with ambitions to becoming a distro unto itself. The systemd project assumes responsibility for numerous aspects of the system that have no technical justification for being under the same project umbrella. You might like systemd-homed, for instance, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the functions of init. Calling it an "init system" is like calling KDE a "window manager". [note] It describes itself as "a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system" - although in my opinion that implies more modularity than it posesses.
- willismichael 6y ago
  Honest question, if nobody likes systemd, then why is it still around and why is it so difficult for me to find a distro that hasn't adopted it?
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Running a distro is a ton of work. Writing your own one off init scripts per package is even more work. The short answer is...Red Hat has money and threw it behind systemd. Like them or hate them, they are in many ways the deciding fate of Linux systems. So, other distros fall in line. Ubuntu is a contender, but gave in and followed suit too. Void and Solus are both good distros that don't use systemd. I'd go as far as to call Solus the best out of the box distro ive ever used.
    - dTal 6y ago
      You're half right, but writing init scripts is by far the easiest part of not running systemd. As a sibling comment lightly puts it - "various shims exist".

Spivak 6y ago

I swear at this point there is not a soul that really understand the low level pieces of a Linux distro fit together. systemd-resolved is a separate project from systemd whose only relation is that it’s in the same repo. It’s up to your distro builder to decide if they want to use it. And also up to your distro if they want to use the stub resolver. It’s not necessary for systemd-resolved to work. The reason they have the stub listener is because on Linux every application is supposed to use glibc nss to resolve names but there are real-world applications that try, incorrectly, to parse resolv.conf and do dns queries themselves. This breaks things if your assumption is that all dns queries are going through systemd-resolved. And this project isn’t the first. Ubuntu and others have used dnsmasq as the stub resolver for the same reason. Using just the dns nss module and resolv.conf is fundamentally broken and at this point unfixable when you are connected to multiple networks or with separate dns or split tunnel VPNing. You have to provide your own, smarter, nss module and/or use a stub resolver to cover these use-cases.

dTal 6y ago
Why does it use the same repo, exactly?
- mariusor 6y ago
  Because it's built by the same people that built systmed and uses some of the low-level internal libraries from systemd (input parsing, configuration, etc) ? This is not that difficult of a conclusion to get to honestly.

znpy 6y ago

Fair things about DNS, you can make systemd not work without systemd-resolved, btw. The nice thing about systemd-resolved is that it make enabling split-tunnel vpns a breeze.

1_player 6y ago
And provides out of the box DNS caching, like any modern operating system. Do Linux users really want their year on the desktop, or will they keep complaining at any change to get there?