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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/Net

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.
mid-kid 3y ago
It's probably been a while since you've last used OpenRC, and I don't know how it was back then, but these days, service scripts are really trivial to write[1]. You just need to provide the command= and command_arguments= to use, and depending on whether the daemon backgrounds itself or not, configure the pidfile location or set command_background=true. It really couldn't be easier. Personally I just wish it had any notion of logging stdout/stderr, or a way to manage daemons as a user. [1]: https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/service-script-guide.md https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/service-script-...
- gerdesj 3y ago
  I migrated to systemd, wholesale. You have piqued my interest and I will spin up a VM at work and have another look at the state of the art on Gentoo. I absolutely loved it back in the day. Every few months or so a major change would arrive and make life better. Sets - @world etc - smashing. User patching - drop a patch in a suitable directory and effectively you could fix snags yourself without having to write your own ebuild. Do your own ebuilds - again drop your override into the right directory and your personal ebuild is seamlessly part of the distro. No doubt much more has happened in the roughly five years when I have used it in anger. Ironically enough I have two systems at work that do run Gentoo but are woefully "legacy". Today I emerged a couple of packages to fix something on one of them and it is still hanging on in there. It is quite a delicate dance on a rather crucial system. I will get rid of it eventually but one step at a time 8)

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.

mid-kid 3y ago

It's probably been a while since you've last used OpenRC, and I don't know how it was back then, but these days, service scripts are really trivial to write[1]. You just need to provide the command= and command_arguments= to use, and depending on whether the daemon backgrounds itself or not, configure the pidfile location or set command_background=true. It really couldn't be easier. Personally I just wish it had any notion of logging stdout/stderr, or a way to manage daemons as a user. [1]: https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/service-script-guide.md https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/service-script-...

gerdesj 3y ago
I migrated to systemd, wholesale. You have piqued my interest and I will spin up a VM at work and have another look at the state of the art on Gentoo. I absolutely loved it back in the day. Every few months or so a major change would arrive and make life better. Sets - @world etc - smashing. User patching - drop a patch in a suitable directory and effectively you could fix snags yourself without having to write your own ebuild. Do your own ebuilds - again drop your override into the right directory and your personal ebuild is seamlessly part of the distro. No doubt much more has happened in the roughly five years when I have used it in anger. Ironically enough I have two systems at work that do run Gentoo but are woefully "legacy". Today I emerged a couple of packages to fix something on one of them and it is still hanging on in there. It is quite a delicate dance on a rather crucial system. I will get rid of it eventually but one step at a time 8)