3 ms·

systemd provides a lot more than spawning processes at boot. It aims to provide all essential operating system deamons and a common userspace interface for them

systemd provides a lot more than spawning processes at boot. It aims to provide all essential operating system deamons and a common userspace interface for them.

vertex-four 12y ago
Is systemd eventually going to contain Wayland, then? SSHd? PAM? Samba? How far does this go? Is it going to end up that if I want configurable logins (a la PAM), or to access a SMB file server, I need to use systemd as my init system, log management system, and whatever else?
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >Is systemd eventually going to contain Wayland, then? SSHd? PAM? Samba? How far does this go? Farther than that, I bet. It's pretty safe to assume that all of those things are already written on a few informal systemd roadmaps.
  - Shish2k 12y ago
    I really hope that that's a joke that didn't translate well into text, as taking it literally, I would suggest seeing a doctor about that paranoia :S
- Xylakant 12y ago
  If at some point that is considered as "essential" as in "I can't boot a system without", then maybe. However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. All that systemd does is offer a service. It seems to pay off for gnome and kde to rely on that.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    I can already boot a fully functioning system without half the stuff in systemd (and in fact, there's entire distros and the entire world of embedded devices which do so). GNOME and KDE did work just fine without systemd until they didn't. udev did as well. Samba, PAM, OpenSSH, and most of the rest of the services on my system, work just fine without it. I rather doubt that'll be the case five years down the line.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    Write a better init system than systemd. Done many times. ...Oh, wait. You mean to tell me that systemd isn't just an init system? And that it includes, but is not limited to, and I quote [1]: "init system, journal logging, login management, device management, temporary and volatile file management, binary format registration, backlight save/restore, rfkill save/restore, bootchart, readahead, encrypted storage setup, EFI/GPT partition discovery, virtual machine/container registration, minimal container management, hostname management, locale management, time management, random seed management, sysctl variable management, console managment, . . ." They are working on: "network management, Local DNS cache, mDNS responder, LLMNR responder, DNSSEC verification, IPC in the kernel, time synchronisation with NTP, stateless systems, factory reset, OS/container/app image format, sandboxing of services and apps..." [1] http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf So what people really mean by "Write a better init system." is "Write a second, competing hulking mammoth like systemd."
    - EmanueleAina 12y ago
      One only need to re-implement the interfaces actually used by the DEs. IIRC GNOME had a page listing those interfaces on their wiki and systemd has remarkably good documentation about its public interfaces. Also consider that until now many of the things you listed were done by shell scripts that every distro reimplemented differently, so if you're happy with such ugliness you can pick it up as-is. ;)
  - JdeBP 12y ago
    > However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. The latter is the easier approach. However, it's still hard. The major problem is logind, and no-one has yet tackled writing a logind that layers on top of Debian-without-systemd. See: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/de...
VLM 12y ago
Which is oppositional to the unix philosophy. There will be only one permitted http server and one permitted database server, all that is not permitted will be forbidden and all that it not forbidden will be mandatory.
mverwijs 12y ago
> systemd provides a lot more than spawning processes at boot. And that is exactly what I think is the most irritating thing about it. I just want it to init my system. I'll do the rest, or decide which piece of software should. NOT the systemd developers.
- Xylakant 12y ago
  The systemd developers don't decide that. They offer capabilities. Obviously the value proposition is attractive to other developers, thus they're using it. It's not like they're forcing others at gunpoint to adopt their tech. If you don't want to use it, don't. Pick software that doesn't rely on systemd capabilities. Or advocate that that software gets written and maintained. Or write it yourself. Or stop complaining. Just don't tell somebody to not offer a capability.
  - therealidiot 12y ago
    > If you don't want to use it, don't. Pick software that doesn't rely on systemd capabilities. Doesn't this becomes more difficult though, when things people are used to like KDE/Gnome are depending on systemd? What happens if more tools start depending on systemd? Will people just have to keep finding alternatives?
    - Shish2k 12y ago
      > What happens if more tools start depending on systemd? Will people just have to keep finding alternatives? Linux becomes the new OSX (Slick, integrated, everything works great as long as you are doing the things that the system designers expect you to do); FreeBSD becomes the new Linux (Weird and confusing out of the box, but can be customised however you want it)
krylon 12y ago
> It aims to provide all essential operating system deamons and a common userspace interface for them. I think that is the reason so many people dislike it. Replacing init - and nothing else - is something many of those people would be totally fine with. Starting services in parallel, and watching them when running, restarting them if they crash, that is something a lot of people would like very much, I am certain. But the systemd developers did not stop there and are trying - it seems - to have systemd replace everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. I am not even saying that this is a bad (or a good idea). But doing so just rubs many people the wrong way, if only because it means the systemd people are attempting to change an important aspect of the architecture of the system without having a proper discussion about it first.
- EmanueleAina 12y ago
  To be fair it mostly replace lots of stuff that every distribution had reimplemented in a incompatible way. Desktop environments now have an actively-maintained cross-distro interface that they can target to simplify their life (from setting the hostname to secure multi-seat handling), so it's not a surprise that they make use of it.

systemd provides a lot more than spawning processes at boot. It aims to provide all essential operating system deamons and a common userspace interface for them.

vertex-four 12y ago

Is systemd eventually going to contain Wayland, then? SSHd? PAM? Samba? How far does this go? Is it going to end up that if I want configurable logins (a la PAM), or to access a SMB file server, I need to use systemd as my init system, log management system, and whatever else?

pessimizer 12y ago
>Is systemd eventually going to contain Wayland, then? SSHd? PAM? Samba? How far does this go? Farther than that, I bet. It's pretty safe to assume that all of those things are already written on a few informal systemd roadmaps.
- Shish2k 12y ago
  I really hope that that's a joke that didn't translate well into text, as taking it literally, I would suggest seeing a doctor about that paranoia :S
Xylakant 12y ago
If at some point that is considered as "essential" as in "I can't boot a system without", then maybe. However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. All that systemd does is offer a service. It seems to pay off for gnome and kde to rely on that.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  I can already boot a fully functioning system without half the stuff in systemd (and in fact, there's entire distros and the entire world of embedded devices which do so). GNOME and KDE did work just fine without systemd until they didn't. udev did as well. Samba, PAM, OpenSSH, and most of the rest of the services on my system, work just fine without it. I rather doubt that'll be the case five years down the line.
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Write a better init system than systemd. Done many times. ...Oh, wait. You mean to tell me that systemd isn't just an init system? And that it includes, but is not limited to, and I quote [1]: "init system, journal logging, login management, device management, temporary and volatile file management, binary format registration, backlight save/restore, rfkill save/restore, bootchart, readahead, encrypted storage setup, EFI/GPT partition discovery, virtual machine/container registration, minimal container management, hostname management, locale management, time management, random seed management, sysctl variable management, console managment, . . ." They are working on: "network management, Local DNS cache, mDNS responder, LLMNR responder, DNSSEC verification, IPC in the kernel, time synchronisation with NTP, stateless systems, factory reset, OS/container/app image format, sandboxing of services and apps..." [1] http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf So what people really mean by "Write a better init system." is "Write a second, competing hulking mammoth like systemd."
  - EmanueleAina 12y ago
    One only need to re-implement the interfaces actually used by the DEs. IIRC GNOME had a page listing those interfaces on their wiki and systemd has remarkably good documentation about its public interfaces. Also consider that until now many of the things you listed were done by shell scripts that every distro reimplemented differently, so if you're happy with such ugliness you can pick it up as-is. ;)
- JdeBP 12y ago
  > However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. The latter is the easier approach. However, it's still hard. The major problem is logind, and no-one has yet tackled writing a logind that layers on top of Debian-without-systemd. See: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/de...

VLM 12y ago

Which is oppositional to the unix philosophy. There will be only one permitted http server and one permitted database server, all that is not permitted will be forbidden and all that it not forbidden will be mandatory.

mverwijs 12y ago

> systemd provides a lot more than spawning processes at boot. And that is exactly what I think is the most irritating thing about it. I just want it to init my system. I'll do the rest, or decide which piece of software should. NOT the systemd developers.

Xylakant 12y ago
The systemd developers don't decide that. They offer capabilities. Obviously the value proposition is attractive to other developers, thus they're using it. It's not like they're forcing others at gunpoint to adopt their tech. If you don't want to use it, don't. Pick software that doesn't rely on systemd capabilities. Or advocate that that software gets written and maintained. Or write it yourself. Or stop complaining. Just don't tell somebody to not offer a capability.
- therealidiot 12y ago
  > If you don't want to use it, don't. Pick software that doesn't rely on systemd capabilities. Doesn't this becomes more difficult though, when things people are used to like KDE/Gnome are depending on systemd? What happens if more tools start depending on systemd? Will people just have to keep finding alternatives?
  - Shish2k 12y ago
    > What happens if more tools start depending on systemd? Will people just have to keep finding alternatives? Linux becomes the new OSX (Slick, integrated, everything works great as long as you are doing the things that the system designers expect you to do); FreeBSD becomes the new Linux (Weird and confusing out of the box, but can be customised however you want it)

krylon 12y ago

> It aims to provide all essential operating system deamons and a common userspace interface for them. I think that is the reason so many people dislike it. Replacing init - and nothing else - is something many of those people would be totally fine with. Starting services in parallel, and watching them when running, restarting them if they crash, that is something a lot of people would like very much, I am certain. But the systemd developers did not stop there and are trying - it seems - to have systemd replace everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. I am not even saying that this is a bad (or a good idea). But doing so just rubs many people the wrong way, if only because it means the systemd people are attempting to change an important aspect of the architecture of the system without having a proper discussion about it first.

EmanueleAina 12y ago
To be fair it mostly replace lots of stuff that every distribution had reimplemented in a incompatible way. Desktop environments now have an actively-maintained cross-distro interface that they can target to simplify their life (from setting the hostname to secure multi-seat handling), so it's not a surprise that they make use of it.