Live data from Hacker News

Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

naftuli.wtf

251–260 of 272 posts

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#251
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shell and bash are actually excellent at this, but people don't like writing shell scripts. This is just process chaining. Take a look at DJB's or the more modern runit for init toolkits that compose. https://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html http://smarden.org/runit/ Here is a bash function that retries N times: retry() { local n=$1 shift for i in $(seq $n); do "$@" done } retry 5 echo hi Then you can compose with a timeout…

I guess it's a bit like advanced perl5, you need to be taught the "right way" otherwise you pile up overlapping imperative code.

Thanks for the suggestion -- I expanded on this idea in a blog post:

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/01/13.html

Feedback appreciated!

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to try to use "the logic perspective" and be hostile for the sake of being hostile, at least have the decency of running your own post through that filter. "Everything - most = small" is a mathematically nonsensical statement. Of course, you could also tone the hostility down before reading my post. Maybe that'd have helped you catch the fact that a flaw in systemd does not necessarily equal an argume…

The first phrase of the first comment you offered on this thread was about how annoying in their ignorance you thought the comments of the people you were replying to were, so you should probably not lecture people on civility at length.

I was talking about hostility, not civility. Not that it matters, my original comment was neither hostile nor uncivil. Harsh I'll give you, though if you're going to go around a systemd thread spreading thinly-veiled attacks I expect you to have a thick enough skin to be called out on it.

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#253
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's a bit like advanced perl5, you need to be taught the "right way" otherwise you pile up overlapping imperative code.

Thanks for the suggestion -- I expanded on this idea in a blog post: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/01/13.html Feedback appreciated!

You forgot rtprio, idprio, chrt, and numactl; the s6, perp, daemontools-encore, and nosh toolsets; and execline.

* http://wiki.tcl.tk/15088

Then of course there are TCL and the Thompson shell.

* http://v6shell.org/

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#254
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're plainly wrong. 1) You write "Most (MOST, not all) of the arguments against systemd are in fact bullshit". 2) And yet you (wrongly) write "there is plenty wrong with systemd" To be in line with your 1) statement you should write 'it is only small things with systemd which are wrong. Because everything - MOST = small, and not 'plenty'. Yet you dont do, and you write 'plenty'. Why? Because you know, the moment yo…

If you're going to try to use "the logic perspective" and be hostile for the sake of being hostile, at least have the decency of running your own post through that filter. "Everything - most = small" is a mathematically nonsensical statement. Of course, you could also tone the hostility down before reading my post. Maybe that'd have helped you catch the fact that a flaw in systemd does not necessarily equal an argume…

Let's summarize your post: 1. ad hominem (6 yrs) - completly irrelevant to discussion 2. you don't see difference between disagreement and hostility - is it english, or ego, I dont know 3. you accuses interlocutor who disagrees with you (being me) with hostility - disagreement is not hostility. In fact anybody who thinks that is unable to openly and politely discuss topics. 4. you decdided to skip main argument (while I assume you understand what I meant) and 80% of your post is about attacking me as a person (or math) instead of discussing the essence.

Try to discuss the essence, and don't wrongly accuse people who disagrees with you with 'hostility' plus your ad hominem. Still, take a rest and have a great 2017, I value your contributions to open source.

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#255
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to try to use "the logic perspective" and be hostile for the sake of being hostile, at least have the decency of running your own post through that filter. "Everything - most = small" is a mathematically nonsensical statement. Of course, you could also tone the hostility down before reading my post. Maybe that'd have helped you catch the fact that a flaw in systemd does not necessarily equal an argume…

Let's summarize your post: 1. ad hominem (6 yrs) - completly irrelevant to discussion 2. you don't see difference between disagreement and hostility - is it english, or ego, I dont know 3. you accuses interlocutor who disagrees with you (being me) with hostility - disagreement is not hostility. In fact anybody who thinks that is unable to openly and politely discuss topics. 4. you decdided to skip main argument (whil…

> you don't see difference between disagreement and hostility

Yeah I do though. Consider that maybe you don't see why your post was extremely hostile.

I have very little patience for comments that refuse to do any charitable interpretation and instead end up being "but your post is wrong if taken literally!".

I have even less patience when such a poorly chosen tactic is applied incorrectly.

I've given you the benefit of the doubt and did reply to you (you've again disregarded it). I'll repeat it for clarity: a flaw in x does not necessarily equal an argument against x, and vice versa. Furthermore, "Everything - most = small" is a mathematically nonsensical statement.

Ad for my "6 years" comment, that was not an ad hominem, it was an observation. If you were a fresh account, I would have dismissed your comment as a troll. If you were a fairly new account, I would have thought that maybe you're not used to discussing things on an online social platform. But you have been here, communicating with others for six years; so when you write with such a confrontational tone, you get a confrontational tone back.

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#256
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a users point of view there is little difference between software that crashes because its garbage and software that crashes because it is in early stage of development but otherwise a good solution. Lennart should write more robust software and maintainers should do more QA when doing this type of system-wide changes.

I agree very much with the points that you are making. It would also help if small parts of a system would be replaced at a time. Replacing daemon/process supervision, login handling, logging, network configuration, etc. all at the same time in distributions that are used by millions of users is quite risky.

Sadly the best you will get out of the systemd camp is "tough luck, should have joined from the start to avoid the pain".

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#257
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also in the middle ground, but I have moved from the opposite direction. I used to like systemd a lot, especially for its simple unit files (compared to ugly System V shell scripts) and the fact that it could properly track processes and restart them on failure. I have become a bit more skeptical, because most of the problems that I recently had seemed to be related to systemd. Including some networking problems…

Generally agreed. I know that my priorities for what should be done in systemd are not going to match someone else's but there are also some clearly problematic things that just seem to go unaddressed no matter the scale (e.g. rebooting nspawn containers [1], problems with DNS/resolved [2]). systemd can do a lot of really useful things but when I can't reliably reboot machines or struggle with resolving things using…

The whole systemd for containers thing seems like a massive cause of "because we can". Also allowed them a better pitch towards devops and RHEL than "faster boot"...

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#258
post #117

At the risk of sounding heretical, I kind of find myself in the middle ground regarding systemd - I was initially highly skeptical of it, and I still think it's problematic that it is so Linux-centric and will cause problems maintaining software to run both on Linux/systemd and on *BSD. The way it was pushed on distros was problematic, in my opinion. But having used a couple of Linux systems running systemd - Raspian…

> The way it was pushed on distros was problematic, in my opinion. The technical term for this is "precommitment", and it comes from Tom Schelling. It's actually quite advantageous: once you're precommitted to a particular direction, you're emotionally invested in getting the most out of it. By precommitting you to systemd, the distros hope to get the community to leverage systemd's benefits.

Sounds like a restatement of Thatcher's TINA (There Is No Alternative)...

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#259
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 10 lines of shell code to do it badly . Poor Man's Dæmon Supervisors written as shell scripts are inevitably flawed in one way or another. It is, however, easy to do with one of the many toolsets that have been around since the 1990s for doing this. * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/daemontools-family.html One of the exhibits in the systemd House of Horror results from people taking multiple Poor Man's Dæmon Supervisors wr…

You certainly have a point re bad shell scripts. But imho advocating a wholesale service manager monolith like systemd isn't the answer (fallacy of the excluded middle and all). Unix admins must come to learn what they're doing somehow. The way they learn it is by going one step after another, beginning with simplistic shell scripts controlling isolated functionalities, then improving it etc. Do one thing, and do it…

> Systemd and its ilk is not how you get responsible and competent Unix admins that take pride in their work.

I other words perfect fodder for Red Hat support contracts (anyone getting flashbacks of MSCEs?)...

Re: Systemd Sucks, Long Live Systemd

#260
post #245
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does log the standard error stream. The default value of StandardError= is inherit, which will cause stderr to go to the same place that stdout goes, which by defaults to journal. This is documented in systemd.exec(5). If not overriden in an individual service's unit file, perhaps you have set DefaultStandardError= in /etc/systemd/system.conf?

The problem is that it doesn't store "unit" meta-data for stderr, so you can not see stderr logs with journalctl -u nameOfUnit or systemctl status nameOfUnit

I do not find this to be the case. Right now I'm looking at the journal and observing the existence of _SYSTEMD_UNIT fields for messages that have been written to a process's standard error stream.
Post reply on HN