8 ms·

And Poettering has closed the issue with a dismissive comment after utterly missing the point. I, for one, am shocked.

by Lazare 11y ago

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
The implication that systemd is not a product strikes me as odd given that a core aspect of systemd's marketing and leverage was precisely that it supplied a ton of policy decisions as to how distributions should operate, as opposed to simply mechanism. Lennart is controversial, but he usually provides more-or-less decent reasons for technical trade-offs. Here though? Complete copout.
- bjourne 11y ago
  You are comparing apples to oranges. systemd takes policy decisions but it doesn't provide infrastructure and a set of ntp servers is infrastructure. Likewise, a web server encodes a lot policies (most of which aren't set in stone by any standard) on how http requests should be handled but it doesn't come with a default cdn.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    but it doesn't provide infrastructure ...How does it not? That's the point of systemd: provide a GNU/Linux middleware with lots of policy decisions on the structure of distros to supposedly bring integration and uniformity benefits. The fact that it's core infrastructure but heavily delves outside of mechanism is what makes it so controversial.
    - bjourne 11y ago
      I meant physical server infrastructure. Not the allegorical infrastructure formed by Linux packages communicating. Yes, I know the infrastructure word is horribly overloaded.
0xCMP 11y ago
Yea that was kind of crazy. Especially with a really straight forward fix already there. Now CoreOS is jumping in to possibly get the vendor registration for systemd so they can use pool.ntp.org correctly.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Is there a good reason for systemd to not use those pool servers? What happens if distros don't change the default away from *.systemd.pool.ntp.org?
  - Merovius 11y ago
    > Is there a good reason for systemd to not use those pool servers? Because they forbid using the non-vendored pools as defaults and Lennart doesn't want systemd to be a vendor or product. > What happens if distros don't change the default away from .systemd.pool.ntp.org? Lennarts argument is not, that this might break, but that he doesn't want .systemd.pool.ntp.org to exist, because that would imply some kind of responsibility of systemd.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - wang_li 11y ago
      >imply some kind of responsibility of systemd. He's like the anti-Spider Man. With great power comes no responsibility.
      - Merovius 11y ago
        I find it utterly reasonable, to avoid being made responsible for something, that is essentially a test-domain. Imagine, for example, that some domain server in .systemd.ntp.org would stop responding (for pretty much any* reason, including a cut cable in someones basement). Imagine some User™ gets an error message, saying, that 0.systemd.ntp.org wasn't reachable, googles systemd and creates bugreports against systemd for a broken ntp-server that a) isn't run by the systemd-folks, b) was never supposed to be used by anything else than the systemd test-suite, c) was registered by some third-party (CoreOS) and d) not one of the systemd-maintainers wanted. I find it a reasonable position, that he wants to avoid such a situation.
oldsj 11y ago
He just recently provided more info
- cnvogel 11y ago
  I really don't get his points. > Even if the google servers dont provide time that > is correct, its good enough to run testcases again. > Products however of course shouldnt use it. So, it seems that he wants to run out-of-the-box with some timeservers so that the developer/compile/testing machine doesn't have to specify them manually for tests. On the other hand he wants to require vendors to add a custom configuration so that they abide by the rules of, e.g. pool.ntp.org, by registering a vendor pool and configure systemd. The only sane approach for me seems to be to discover the correct ntp-server in the scripts running the testcases, and leave the ntp-client in systemd unconfigured and untested if that's not possible. Forcing developers to have a properly configured system is a much saner approach, because it affects way less people than potentially millions of users to whom a broken/wrong timesyncd.conf leaks caused by some snafu during configuration of the systemd timesyncd when packaging. EDIT: Typos, wording.
  - bitJericho 11y ago
    Systemd is anything but sane. http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1408.1/02496.html http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1408.1/02496.html
    - Anderkent 11y ago
      I love how in one sentence he accuses Poettering of being "convinced he has all the answers for everyone", and in another he states anyone who approves of systemd must be "naive or lazy or just plain clueless developers" lured by "the promise of making their lives easier". Pot, meet kettle.
    - geographomics 11y ago
      Surely that message must be a parody of the overzealous Linux user? I find it hard to believe that the author is serious there.
narsil 11y ago
He's elaborated further here: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-117433188 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-1...
pilif 11y ago
He has added further clarification which makes sense to me. Just like other pieces of NTP clients don't register for a vendor name in the pool (there's no chrony.pool.ntp.org), systems also doesn't need to. However, they should IMHO still get rid of the Google default and instead blow up on compilation or start up if the NTP server is not set. Blowing up is better than silently running with wrong data, much less with unauthorized use of resources.
- reagency 11y ago
  It appears that LP has an incomplete grasp of English (no insult, it is not his native language) and is simply misunderstanding both NTP.org and Google's instructions regarding how to use their systems. NTP welcomes usage, Google does not, and LP misunderstood them both backwards.
  - Merovius 11y ago
    I speak the same native language as Lennart and apparently I have the same misunderstandings of the language. I agree with his reading, that NTP welcomes usage (as a default in your open source project) iff you apply as a vendor. Can you point me to a better clarification on why this reading is wrong?
    - toyg 11y ago
      To me it reads like a soft rule, especially amenable to something as big as systemd. Any decent project leader honestly looking for a solution in such a situation, would reach out to ntp.org and explain the problem. If he cared, of course.
      - Merovius 11y ago
        The maintainer of the NTP pool agreed with Lennarts Reasoning for not registering a vendor pool in the linked bugreport.
        11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
linuxydave 11y ago
Colour me shocked as well...
Merovius 11y ago
I think a) the snark is unnecessary and b) you are mistaking disagreement with ignorance. From what I read in that issue, he did understand the point pretty well (from a technical standpoint), he just disagrees with the proposed solution (from a mainly political standpoint). You should be able to disagree with people without claiming malice or ignorance.
- laumars 11y ago
  The former poster didn't say Poettering was ignorant nor malicious. "missing the point" can equally be attributed to someone who disagrees (ie he disagreed that systemd is a vendor while missing pool.ntp.org's point that open source project's are welcome to register vendor IDs without themselves being vendors. That doesn't mean that Poettering is ignorant nor malicious. Just that his political standpoint isn't relevant (in the OPs opinion) to the point that the NTP pool maintainers make about the usage of their time servers.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Merovius 11y ago
    > "missing the point" can equally be attributed to someone who disagrees I disagree. In regards to the rest of your comment: Note that the main maintainer of the NTP pool agreed with Lennarts reasoning: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-117423000 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-1...
    - thekingofspain 11y ago
      Ah you're just missing the point. I kid.
dschulz 11y ago
That was anything but "dismissive". He clearly explains his reasoning.
- laumars 11y ago
  That doesn't mean he wasn't still dismissive. For one not to be considered "dismissive", one would have at least considered anothers arguments - even if the one sticks to his original conclusion. Poettering was anything but receptive to other opinions - he's already decided his method was the best regardless of the T&C's of the services he's using nor the feedback from the community. But this has been pretty much his approach to systemd from the very start; which is why it's polarised the community so much.
cuillevel3 11y ago
And rightly so. It's a non issue.

And Poettering has closed the issue with a dismissive comment after utterly missing the point. I, for one, am shocked.

by Lazare 11y ago

And Poettering has closed the issue with a dismissive comment after utterly missing the point. I, for one, am shocked.

The implication that systemd is not a product strikes me as odd given that a core aspect of systemd's marketing and leverage was precisely that it supplied a ton of policy decisions as to how distributions should operate, as opposed to simply mechanism. Lennart is controversial, but he usually provides more-or-less decent reasons for technical trade-offs. Here though? Complete copout.

bjourne 11y ago
You are comparing apples to oranges. systemd takes policy decisions but it doesn't provide infrastructure and a set of ntp servers is infrastructure. Likewise, a web server encodes a lot policies (most of which aren't set in stone by any standard) on how http requests should be handled but it doesn't come with a default cdn.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  but it doesn't provide infrastructure ...How does it not? That's the point of systemd: provide a GNU/Linux middleware with lots of policy decisions on the structure of distros to supposedly bring integration and uniformity benefits. The fact that it's core infrastructure but heavily delves outside of mechanism is what makes it so controversial.
  - bjourne 11y ago
    I meant physical server infrastructure. Not the allegorical infrastructure formed by Linux packages communicating. Yes, I know the infrastructure word is horribly overloaded.

0xCMP 11y ago

Yea that was kind of crazy. Especially with a really straight forward fix already there. Now CoreOS is jumping in to possibly get the vendor registration for systemd so they can use pool.ntp.org correctly.

DanBC 11y ago
Is there a good reason for systemd to not use those pool servers? What happens if distros don't change the default away from *.systemd.pool.ntp.org?
- Merovius 11y ago
  > Is there a good reason for systemd to not use those pool servers? Because they forbid using the non-vendored pools as defaults and Lennart doesn't want systemd to be a vendor or product. > What happens if distros don't change the default away from .systemd.pool.ntp.org? Lennarts argument is not, that this might break, but that he doesn't want .systemd.pool.ntp.org to exist, because that would imply some kind of responsibility of systemd.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - wang_li 11y ago
    >imply some kind of responsibility of systemd. He's like the anti-Spider Man. With great power comes no responsibility.
    - Merovius 11y ago
      I find it utterly reasonable, to avoid being made responsible for something, that is essentially a test-domain. Imagine, for example, that some domain server in .systemd.ntp.org would stop responding (for pretty much any* reason, including a cut cable in someones basement). Imagine some User™ gets an error message, saying, that 0.systemd.ntp.org wasn't reachable, googles systemd and creates bugreports against systemd for a broken ntp-server that a) isn't run by the systemd-folks, b) was never supposed to be used by anything else than the systemd test-suite, c) was registered by some third-party (CoreOS) and d) not one of the systemd-maintainers wanted. I find it a reasonable position, that he wants to avoid such a situation.

oldsj 11y ago

He just recently provided more info

cnvogel 11y ago
I really don't get his points. > Even if the google servers dont provide time that > is correct, its good enough to run testcases again. > Products however of course shouldnt use it. So, it seems that he wants to run out-of-the-box with some timeservers so that the developer/compile/testing machine doesn't have to specify them manually for tests. On the other hand he wants to require vendors to add a custom configuration so that they abide by the rules of, e.g. pool.ntp.org, by registering a vendor pool and configure systemd. The only sane approach for me seems to be to discover the correct ntp-server in the scripts running the testcases, and leave the ntp-client in systemd unconfigured and untested if that's not possible. Forcing developers to have a properly configured system is a much saner approach, because it affects way less people than potentially millions of users to whom a broken/wrong timesyncd.conf leaks caused by some snafu during configuration of the systemd timesyncd when packaging. EDIT: Typos, wording.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  Systemd is anything but sane. http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1408.1/02496.html http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1408.1/02496.html
  - Anderkent 11y ago
    I love how in one sentence he accuses Poettering of being "convinced he has all the answers for everyone", and in another he states anyone who approves of systemd must be "naive or lazy or just plain clueless developers" lured by "the promise of making their lives easier". Pot, meet kettle.
  - geographomics 11y ago
    Surely that message must be a parody of the overzealous Linux user? I find it hard to believe that the author is serious there.

narsil 11y ago

He's elaborated further here: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-117433188 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-1...

pilif 11y ago

He has added further clarification which makes sense to me. Just like other pieces of NTP clients don't register for a vendor name in the pool (there's no chrony.pool.ntp.org), systems also doesn't need to. However, they should IMHO still get rid of the Google default and instead blow up on compilation or start up if the NTP server is not set. Blowing up is better than silently running with wrong data, much less with unauthorized use of resources.

reagency 11y ago
It appears that LP has an incomplete grasp of English (no insult, it is not his native language) and is simply misunderstanding both NTP.org and Google's instructions regarding how to use their systems. NTP welcomes usage, Google does not, and LP misunderstood them both backwards.
- Merovius 11y ago
  I speak the same native language as Lennart and apparently I have the same misunderstandings of the language. I agree with his reading, that NTP welcomes usage (as a default in your open source project) iff you apply as a vendor. Can you point me to a better clarification on why this reading is wrong?
  - toyg 11y ago
    To me it reads like a soft rule, especially amenable to something as big as systemd. Any decent project leader honestly looking for a solution in such a situation, would reach out to ntp.org and explain the problem. If he cared, of course.
    - Merovius 11y ago
      The maintainer of the NTP pool agreed with Lennarts Reasoning for not registering a vendor pool in the linked bugreport.
      - 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

linuxydave 11y ago

Colour me shocked as well...

Merovius 11y ago

I think a) the snark is unnecessary and b) you are mistaking disagreement with ignorance. From what I read in that issue, he did understand the point pretty well (from a technical standpoint), he just disagrees with the proposed solution (from a mainly political standpoint). You should be able to disagree with people without claiming malice or ignorance.

laumars 11y ago
The former poster didn't say Poettering was ignorant nor malicious. "missing the point" can equally be attributed to someone who disagrees (ie he disagreed that systemd is a vendor while missing pool.ntp.org's point that open source project's are welcome to register vendor IDs without themselves being vendors. That doesn't mean that Poettering is ignorant nor malicious. Just that his political standpoint isn't relevant (in the OPs opinion) to the point that the NTP pool maintainers make about the usage of their time servers.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Merovius 11y ago
  > "missing the point" can equally be attributed to someone who disagrees I disagree. In regards to the rest of your comment: Note that the main maintainer of the NTP pool agreed with Lennarts reasoning: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-117423000 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/437#issuecomment-1...
  - thekingofspain 11y ago
    Ah you're just missing the point. I kid.

dschulz 11y ago

That was anything but "dismissive". He clearly explains his reasoning.

laumars 11y ago
That doesn't mean he wasn't still dismissive. For one not to be considered "dismissive", one would have at least considered anothers arguments - even if the one sticks to his original conclusion. Poettering was anything but receptive to other opinions - he's already decided his method was the best regardless of the T&C's of the services he's using nor the feedback from the community. But this has been pretty much his approach to systemd from the very start; which is why it's polarised the community so much.

cuillevel3 11y ago

And rightly so. It's a non issue.