7 ms·

When I was a teenager adventuring through the GNU/Linux userland and all its interchangeable components (including on Gentoo!), OpenRC was awesome compared to w

by pxc 3y ago

When I was a teenager adventuring through the GNU/Linux userland and all its interchangeable components (including on Gentoo!), OpenRC was awesome compared to what I was used to (SysV). Beautiful colorized output, fast startup with parallel execution of jobs... all before Upstart (RIP, though I don't miss it) and Systemd. I'm pretty happy with Systemd these days, and in some ways I don't mind the way it has 'standardized' (read: dominated) Linux stacks. But I'm glad that people are still doing the work to keep OpenRC viable and integrating it into a full-featured, long-lived, relatively popular distro.

alerighi 3y ago
I also remember it, first time I installed Gentoo for it, it was very nice compared to the alternatives. Also very configurable, easy, and did also have an interactive boot mode to debug a system that didn't start.
skldjfhskdfgh 3y ago
i was fine with systemd for a few years, even truly enjoying getting rid of hacky docker workflows in place of machined. then i start to find out it is full of rando backdoors intended for VMs, which will run just the same on your bare metal. For example, just to list the very last one, you can inject smbios data that will be parsed to create files in your system. very convenient to drop passwords and keyfiles around a vm... unless it is the firmware on your actual bios doing the same. And we know how common persistence via bios is. sigh. but as you mention correctly, it have crushed and dominated linux. so i guess i just waste a week or some working around those things later, as usual.
- dv_dt 3y ago
  It may shift to a different community balance seeing how RedHat employs a lot of the main contributors to systemd and more recently are showing signs of acting in a more closed manner.
  - gary_0 3y ago
    The main systemd guy, Lennart Poettering, recently left Red Hat to go work for Microsoft. Hmm...
    - dv_dt 3y ago
      Oh I didn't realize that. Maybe similar teeth, different dragon. I'm cautious about Microsoft, but recently I'd have to say they've been a reasonable Linux community member - though if there are fewer larger balancing orgs - who knows.
      - inetknght 3y ago
        > about Microsoft, but recently I'd have to say they've been a reasonable Linux community member All it takes is to look around at what Microsoft is doing to gestures vaguely to see the writing on the wall for how Microsoft sees Linux. Advertisements on the home screen? Advertisements on the every screen? Login darkpatterns? Configuration resets on updates? Forceful browser choices? Forced updates? UEFI shenanigans? Boot manager shenanigans?
        dv_dt 3y ago
        Yup, the windows OS (as opposed to Linux) is where they have no counterbalancing reason to not pursue darker patterns. So it's a window into unchecked tendencies.
        pjmlp 3y ago
        It looks like....Android. As proven by OEM distributions on by gone netbooks, and Android flavours, OEMs will always do what they do best. In what concerns Windows, unfortunately it appears only Azure, Office and XBox matter now.
        kaba0 3y ago
        Or you know, Microsoft is a giga-company with no singular goal (besides increasing revenue). Improving and “destroying” linux may be simultaneously goals to separate areas of the same company, and due to bureaucracy I really can’t take this conteos seriously.
- Eduard 3y ago
  > then i start to find out it is full of rando backdoors intended for VMs, Do you have some links to share?
  - egberts1 3y ago
    Got hit by a Bitcoin hacker via a seldomly-used systemd unit file. Now working on a replacement to systemd-tmpfiled for OpenRC. Run these sysvinit, OpenRC and maintain systemd as well at this shop.
- Asooka 3y ago
  The unit and service file formats are honestly fine, it should be possible to have a second implementation. We have several varieties of SysV init already.
  - bandrami 3y ago
    The unit file format is what I don't like about it. A giant spaghetti code mess where dependencies can be literally anywhere and the final imperative result is completely opaque. An init system, ultimately, does a bunch of one time actions to bring the system up; it really does just work better as an imperative script.
    - esarbe 3y ago
      How are Systemd's unit files any worse than unconstrained init scripts written in a Turing complete language with even basic stuff - like PID files - managed manually?
      - bandrami 3y ago
        Because they are opaquely translated into an imperative sequence but you never get to see it. Also who are these people who have complicated sysv scripts? I've heard this for years and never really understood it. One script per service with a stop and start command (and maybe a status if you want to get fancy) and runlevel definitions that start and stop them. It's not rocket surgery, and it's a hell or a lot easier to debug than a declarative system definition.
        kaba0 3y ago
        > Because they are opaquely translated into an imperative sequence but you never get to see it Into correct imperative sequence. That’s the whole point of declarative things. You can’t feasibly write it correctly otherwise. You are writing programming languages over assembly for largely this same reason.
        pjmlp 3y ago
avhception 3y ago
Gentoo was the first distro that lead to me really understanding what was going on. So OpenRC was "normal" for me, and when the systemd debate came around I didn't think about the fact that OpenRC wasn't the norm and folks hat been using SysV init all that time. I'm still a Gentoo user these days (although not as heavily, the laptops are running Fedora nowadays), but running systemd. The unitfile format is really great.
gerdesj 3y ago
I ran Gentoo on a fair few systems from around 2002 to 2016ish. For me the killer part of OpenRC was "net" - https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:X86/Full/Networking https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:X86/Full/Networking I remember being stuck in a holiday let in the arse end of Somerset, whilst waiting for a house purchase to grind through to a conclusion. Around 2009. I got pppd to use both of our mobiles via bluetooth to get some sort of rather sad internet connection together so we could browse rather slowly and email etc. All of that was done in /etc/conf.d/net - one file! You can also put a firewall together with it and generate routing tables and all sorts of things. I have no idea why netplan needed inventing, when net already did it all without the bloody YAML! OK - slap YAML on net. Job done. I don't miss Miguel van S's sysvinit scripts and all the peculiarities in the various ways of doing them by distro. I did try to write OpenRC initscripts but they are still too complicated for a simple sysadmin like me. I have used git to get an elderly Gentoo box from 2007 to 2022 - so can attest to the sheer robustness of the distro. It did take some doing. I think that the greatest gift that Gentoo gives to its adherents is this: No matter how broken a Linux box is, provided the storage is operational, the CPU can crunch stuff and RAM is mostly functional and there are not too many holes in your files, you will repair it. Oh and it has always had the best looking terminal in all modes, bar none, for decades. Cheers: Uberlord. [EDIT] Took me a while: https://web.archive.org/web/20211120235128/https://roy.marples.name/archives/dhcpcd-discuss/0003457.html https://web.archive.org/web/20211120235128/https://roy.marpl... also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26449179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26449179
- earth2jason 3y ago
  In breaking init news, I was sitting at the bar inside Guthrie's of Somerset (wet county now) the exact moment I read this comment. Tried to login for the first time in a decade to reply at the time but the mobile app doesn't have the account recovery that I could find. Thought that was petty exciting. On this note, I think I will finally overcome my anxieties and make July the month I finally install Gentoo!
  - gerdesj 3y ago
    "July the month I finally install Gentoo!" Go for it - it really is rather satisfying. Your lap will get rather warm if its a laptop! Stick to the manual and don't get too hung up on minutiae until you have to. I do recommend ~amd64 (the ~ is very significant). Although ~ means something like "beta" you tend to get much more modern software. Make sure you have another route to the internet to find out how to fix breakage because it is inevitable with Gentoo. I leave the compiler output to fairly verbose and found it hypnotic and very satisfying to watch. I could tell what was being compiled just by the shape of the output. The wiki and forums are superb. You might consider running it in a VM at first to get the hang of it and make use of snapshots/checkpoints to back out failed experiments. You could turn that into a stage 4 and recover to bare metal (if you dare!) Cheers from Yeovil.
kaba0 3y ago
> read: dominated Through being voted on/carefully chosen based on merit.
- pxc 3y ago
  Lots of domination involves democratic politics and/or expertise as well as careful deliberation. I don't think there's a logical contradiction in what you've quoted and what you've written.
cykros 3y ago
SysV isn't so much the problem; the old Debian/Redhat standard init scripts for it were the absolute mess. Slackware's implementation of SysV is something I've never had a complaint about. That said, OpenRC also looks to be a nice system that does its job well without function creep, which is more than I can say for systemd.

by pxc 3y ago

alerighi 3y ago

I also remember it, first time I installed Gentoo for it, it was very nice compared to the alternatives. Also very configurable, easy, and did also have an interactive boot mode to debug a system that didn't start.

skldjfhskdfgh 3y ago

i was fine with systemd for a few years, even truly enjoying getting rid of hacky docker workflows in place of machined. then i start to find out it is full of rando backdoors intended for VMs, which will run just the same on your bare metal. For example, just to list the very last one, you can inject smbios data that will be parsed to create files in your system. very convenient to drop passwords and keyfiles around a vm... unless it is the firmware on your actual bios doing the same. And we know how common persistence via bios is. sigh. but as you mention correctly, it have crushed and dominated linux. so i guess i just waste a week or some working around those things later, as usual.

dv_dt 3y ago
It may shift to a different community balance seeing how RedHat employs a lot of the main contributors to systemd and more recently are showing signs of acting in a more closed manner.
- gary_0 3y ago
  The main systemd guy, Lennart Poettering, recently left Red Hat to go work for Microsoft. Hmm...
  - dv_dt 3y ago
    Oh I didn't realize that. Maybe similar teeth, different dragon. I'm cautious about Microsoft, but recently I'd have to say they've been a reasonable Linux community member - though if there are fewer larger balancing orgs - who knows.
    - inetknght 3y ago
      > about Microsoft, but recently I'd have to say they've been a reasonable Linux community member All it takes is to look around at what Microsoft is doing to gestures vaguely to see the writing on the wall for how Microsoft sees Linux. Advertisements on the home screen? Advertisements on the every screen? Login darkpatterns? Configuration resets on updates? Forceful browser choices? Forced updates? UEFI shenanigans? Boot manager shenanigans?
      - dv_dt 3y ago
        Yup, the windows OS (as opposed to Linux) is where they have no counterbalancing reason to not pursue darker patterns. So it's a window into unchecked tendencies.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        It looks like....Android. As proven by OEM distributions on by gone netbooks, and Android flavours, OEMs will always do what they do best. In what concerns Windows, unfortunately it appears only Azure, Office and XBox matter now.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        Or you know, Microsoft is a giga-company with no singular goal (besides increasing revenue). Improving and “destroying” linux may be simultaneously goals to separate areas of the same company, and due to bureaucracy I really can’t take this conteos seriously.
Eduard 3y ago
> then i start to find out it is full of rando backdoors intended for VMs, Do you have some links to share?
- egberts1 3y ago
  Got hit by a Bitcoin hacker via a seldomly-used systemd unit file. Now working on a replacement to systemd-tmpfiled for OpenRC. Run these sysvinit, OpenRC and maintain systemd as well at this shop.
Asooka 3y ago
The unit and service file formats are honestly fine, it should be possible to have a second implementation. We have several varieties of SysV init already.
- bandrami 3y ago
  The unit file format is what I don't like about it. A giant spaghetti code mess where dependencies can be literally anywhere and the final imperative result is completely opaque. An init system, ultimately, does a bunch of one time actions to bring the system up; it really does just work better as an imperative script.
  - esarbe 3y ago
    How are Systemd's unit files any worse than unconstrained init scripts written in a Turing complete language with even basic stuff - like PID files - managed manually?
    - bandrami 3y ago
      Because they are opaquely translated into an imperative sequence but you never get to see it. Also who are these people who have complicated sysv scripts? I've heard this for years and never really understood it. One script per service with a stop and start command (and maybe a status if you want to get fancy) and runlevel definitions that start and stop them. It's not rocket surgery, and it's a hell or a lot easier to debug than a declarative system definition.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        > Because they are opaquely translated into an imperative sequence but you never get to see it Into correct imperative sequence. That’s the whole point of declarative things. You can’t feasibly write it correctly otherwise. You are writing programming languages over assembly for largely this same reason.
      - pjmlp 3y ago

avhception 3y ago

Gentoo was the first distro that lead to me really understanding what was going on. So OpenRC was "normal" for me, and when the systemd debate came around I didn't think about the fact that OpenRC wasn't the norm and folks hat been using SysV init all that time. I'm still a Gentoo user these days (although not as heavily, the laptops are running Fedora nowadays), but running systemd. The unitfile format is really great.

gerdesj 3y ago

I ran Gentoo on a fair few systems from around 2002 to 2016ish. For me the killer part of OpenRC was "net" - https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:X86/Full/Networking https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:X86/Full/Networking I remember being stuck in a holiday let in the arse end of Somerset, whilst waiting for a house purchase to grind through to a conclusion. Around 2009. I got pppd to use both of our mobiles via bluetooth to get some sort of rather sad internet connection together so we could browse rather slowly and email etc. All of that was done in /etc/conf.d/net - one file! You can also put a firewall together with it and generate routing tables and all sorts of things. I have no idea why netplan needed inventing, when net already did it all without the bloody YAML! OK - slap YAML on net. Job done. I don't miss Miguel van S's sysvinit scripts and all the peculiarities in the various ways of doing them by distro. I did try to write OpenRC initscripts but they are still too complicated for a simple sysadmin like me. I have used git to get an elderly Gentoo box from 2007 to 2022 - so can attest to the sheer robustness of the distro. It did take some doing. I think that the greatest gift that Gentoo gives to its adherents is this: No matter how broken a Linux box is, provided the storage is operational, the CPU can crunch stuff and RAM is mostly functional and there are not too many holes in your files, you will repair it. Oh and it has always had the best looking terminal in all modes, bar none, for decades. Cheers: Uberlord. [EDIT] Took me a while: https://web.archive.org/web/20211120235128/https://roy.marples.name/archives/dhcpcd-discuss/0003457.html https://web.archive.org/web/20211120235128/https://roy.marpl... also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26449179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26449179

earth2jason 3y ago
In breaking init news, I was sitting at the bar inside Guthrie's of Somerset (wet county now) the exact moment I read this comment. Tried to login for the first time in a decade to reply at the time but the mobile app doesn't have the account recovery that I could find. Thought that was petty exciting. On this note, I think I will finally overcome my anxieties and make July the month I finally install Gentoo!
- gerdesj 3y ago
  "July the month I finally install Gentoo!" Go for it - it really is rather satisfying. Your lap will get rather warm if its a laptop! Stick to the manual and don't get too hung up on minutiae until you have to. I do recommend ~amd64 (the ~ is very significant). Although ~ means something like "beta" you tend to get much more modern software. Make sure you have another route to the internet to find out how to fix breakage because it is inevitable with Gentoo. I leave the compiler output to fairly verbose and found it hypnotic and very satisfying to watch. I could tell what was being compiled just by the shape of the output. The wiki and forums are superb. You might consider running it in a VM at first to get the hang of it and make use of snapshots/checkpoints to back out failed experiments. You could turn that into a stage 4 and recover to bare metal (if you dare!) Cheers from Yeovil.

kaba0 3y ago

> read: dominated Through being voted on/carefully chosen based on merit.

pxc 3y ago
Lots of domination involves democratic politics and/or expertise as well as careful deliberation. I don't think there's a logical contradiction in what you've quoted and what you've written.

cykros 3y ago

SysV isn't so much the problem; the old Debian/Redhat standard init scripts for it were the absolute mess. Slackware's implementation of SysV is something I've never had a complaint about. That said, OpenRC also looks to be a nice system that does its job well without function creep, which is more than I can say for systemd.