4 ms·

Which brings to mind the latest push for systemd as an init replacement. :/

by Corrado 12y ago

shaurz 12y ago
Of course systemd theoretically allow systems to boot without any shell installed.
lambda 12y ago
One thing to recall is that much of the complexity in systemd comes from replacing a whole bunch of dodgy, special purpose code written in shell scripts (init scripts) and in the daemons it manages (daemonization code, various kinds of racy startup dependencies, etc). Just saying "systemd is complex" is fairly sloppy thinking; the question is, is it more or less complex than re-implementing that functionality poorly and incompatibly several dozen other times in various other daemons and startup scripts?
- vertex-four 12y ago
  There's significantly less complex ways to do this sort of thing, though. One that I've been looking at implementing into a distro lately is nosh[0] (and execline[1]). Every bit of code is implemented as a separate, independent utility that can be chained together through the nosh/execlineb "shell", which does no parsing and only a tiny bit of lexing. This way, it's easy to pick and choose what features and complexity each script needs, and the features that you don't use can't affect you. Nothing is running on your system that you don't know about, and there's no complex "magic" anywhere unless you explicitly ran a command which does magic things. [0] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwar... [1] http://skarnet.org/software/execline/ http://skarnet.org/software/execline/
  - pmahoney 12y ago
    Execline is a little mindbending at first, but a really nice way to write scripts for launching other programs.
zorked 12y ago
You will be shocked to learn that the Linux kernel is actually much bigger :/
- SixSigma 12y ago
  Which, in itself, is another disaster.
  - vhost- 12y ago
    Erm what? Can you elaborate a bit on this?
    - SixSigma 12y ago
      Massive kernel, loads of code. Impossible to read and understand.
- jude- 12y ago
  You seem to be committing Systemd Logical Fallacy #12: "The Linux kernel is complex, and you use the Linux kernel, therefore you are okay with systemd being complex too" Full list of fallacies: http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fall...
illumen 12y ago
We should put pulseaudio in the init too. That never crashes.

Which brings to mind the latest push for systemd as an init replacement. :/

by Corrado 12y ago

Which brings to mind the latest push for systemd as an init replacement. :/

shaurz 12y ago

Of course systemd theoretically allow systems to boot without any shell installed.

lambda 12y ago

One thing to recall is that much of the complexity in systemd comes from replacing a whole bunch of dodgy, special purpose code written in shell scripts (init scripts) and in the daemons it manages (daemonization code, various kinds of racy startup dependencies, etc). Just saying "systemd is complex" is fairly sloppy thinking; the question is, is it more or less complex than re-implementing that functionality poorly and incompatibly several dozen other times in various other daemons and startup scripts?

vertex-four 12y ago
There's significantly less complex ways to do this sort of thing, though. One that I've been looking at implementing into a distro lately is nosh[0] (and execline[1]). Every bit of code is implemented as a separate, independent utility that can be chained together through the nosh/execlineb "shell", which does no parsing and only a tiny bit of lexing. This way, it's easy to pick and choose what features and complexity each script needs, and the features that you don't use can't affect you. Nothing is running on your system that you don't know about, and there's no complex "magic" anywhere unless you explicitly ran a command which does magic things. [0] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwar... [1] http://skarnet.org/software/execline/ http://skarnet.org/software/execline/
- pmahoney 12y ago
  Execline is a little mindbending at first, but a really nice way to write scripts for launching other programs.

zorked 12y ago

You will be shocked to learn that the Linux kernel is actually much bigger :/

SixSigma 12y ago
Which, in itself, is another disaster.
- vhost- 12y ago
  Erm what? Can you elaborate a bit on this?
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    Massive kernel, loads of code. Impossible to read and understand.
jude- 12y ago
You seem to be committing Systemd Logical Fallacy #12: "The Linux kernel is complex, and you use the Linux kernel, therefore you are okay with systemd being complex too" Full list of fallacies: http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fall...

illumen 12y ago

We should put pulseaudio in the init too. That never crashes.