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Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

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Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#31

Post by lomnakkus »

clarry wrote: post #27
geofft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super interested in rehashing the flamewar, so this is anecdata: from the perspective of sysadmin of thousands of physical machines, systemd has been a godsend. It gives me a standard way to supervise, gather log output from, and restart long-running-processes with dependencies on other processes. It's replaced a number of "sleep 10"s and "sleep 60"s that our infrastructure has grown over the years in shell s…

This is just a personal anecdote, but so far systemd is the only init system ever to fail to reboot by first stopping all services it could (including sshd!) and then get infinitely stuck waiting on one problematic service. In the 12 years I've used Linux and OpenBSD, no other init systme ever did something like that. What a nightmare that was to debug and fix. I'll be happy to go with a system with fewer moving part…

Just curious, but was it really infinite? I think there's a weird default of waiting something like 5 minutes for certain services to stop...?

(You could have also hit the infamous NFS unmount bug which is basically just a kernel fuck-up.)

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#32

Post by Koshkin »

lomnakkus wrote: post #30
petre wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance apache not restarting properly on openSuSE 13.2 when ServerName doesn't resolve properly for some reason.

Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!". That is the real value of standardization. EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be…

> value of standardization

But the Linux community has always prided itself on freedom and diversity. Otherwise we might as well be all using one "standard" Linux distribution.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#33

Post by eikenberry »

helb wrote: post #3

"Devuan Jessie 1.0 RC" on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447 For those who forgot what Devuan was, like i did – basically a Debian fork without systemd.

Not really a fork, more of a child/derivative distribution. Hard to call them a fork when >99.9% of their packages are straight from Debian.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#34

Post by throw2016 »

lomnakkus wrote: post #30
petre wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance apache not restarting properly on openSuSE 13.2 when ServerName doesn't resolve properly for some reason.

Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!". That is the real value of standardization. EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be…

We have all these 'words' like standardization, fragmentation, duplication that sound good but seem unworkable in open source without creating a monolith.

There is a real risk this approach ends up concentrating power and influence and destroying dynamism. I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'.

For proper standardization the design and development has to be done openly with the collaboration of major open source vendors and inputs of users to prevent one entity gaining control rather than now of trying to push vendor controlled projects as standards which looks too self serving.

If the project is already done the vendor should be willing to give up control to a 'standards body'. 'Standards' can't be controlled by a single vendor. It's not a standard then.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#35

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

clarry wrote: post #27
geofft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super interested in rehashing the flamewar, so this is anecdata: from the perspective of sysadmin of thousands of physical machines, systemd has been a godsend. It gives me a standard way to supervise, gather log output from, and restart long-running-processes with dependencies on other processes. It's replaced a number of "sleep 10"s and "sleep 60"s that our infrastructure has grown over the years in shell s…

This is just a personal anecdote, but so far systemd is the only init system ever to fail to reboot by first stopping all services it could (including sshd!) and then get infinitely stuck waiting on one problematic service. In the 12 years I've used Linux and OpenBSD, no other init systme ever did something like that. What a nightmare that was to debug and fix. I'll be happy to go with a system with fewer moving part…

While I don't think this was related to the init system, I have had a Linux box completely hang while trying to reboot it because an NFS server that it was connected to went away. I'm pretty sure this was an infinite hang as it sat like that for over five days before I could physically get to it to hit the power button.

Hanging during reboot is something that, IMO, should never happen.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#36

Post by lomnakkus »

Koshkin wrote: post #32
lomnakkus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!". That is the real value of standardization. EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be…

> value of standardization But the Linux community has always prided itself on freedom and diversity. Otherwise we might as well be all using one "standard" Linux distribution.

There are things that are worth diversifying on. Basic subsystems that only serve to keep the OS running is not one of them -- the benefits of standardization far outweigh the costs of lack-of-diversity. (Of course this is just my opinion, yours may differ.)

As to freedom: I'm not sure what you're driving at here. Can you expound?

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#37

Post by lomnakkus »

throw2016 wrote: post #34
lomnakkus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!". That is the real value of standardization. EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be…

We have all these 'words' like standardization, fragmentation, duplication that sound good but seem unworkable in open source without creating a monolith. There is a real risk this approach ends up concentrating power and influence and destroying dynamism. I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'. For proper standardization the design and development has to be done openly with the collabor…

See my other reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174674

> I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'.

Uh, Linus? ... and distros, in general? There are very few people who decide to fork their own distro because, ultimately, good enough is good enough.

You're portraying this as some of cabal of nefarious shady characters trying to do back-handed deals... it really was just a case of the other non-RH distros realizing that systemd was actually good enough.

This is still all Free/Libre software, so if things go awry there's always the option of forking.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#38

Post by lomnakkus »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #35
clarry wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a personal anecdote, but so far systemd is the only init system ever to fail to reboot by first stopping all services it could (including sshd!) and then get infinitely stuck waiting on one problematic service. In the 12 years I've used Linux and OpenBSD, no other init systme ever did something like that. What a nightmare that was to debug and fix. I'll be happy to go with a system with fewer moving part…

While I don't think this was related to the init system, I have had a Linux box completely hang while trying to reboot it because an NFS server that it was connected to went away. I'm pretty sure this was an infinite hang as it sat like that for over five days before I could physically get to it to hit the power button. Hanging during reboot is something that, IMO, should never happen.

Yup, I'm guessing NFS too (see my sibling reply).

In my anecdotal experience that's the _only_ case where systemd has failed to reboot, and it's not exactly systemd's fault that the kernel just hangs indefinitely.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

#40

Post by throw2016 »

lomnakkus wrote: post #37
throw2016 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have all these 'words' like standardization, fragmentation, duplication that sound good but seem unworkable in open source without creating a monolith. There is a real risk this approach ends up concentrating power and influence and destroying dynamism. I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'. For proper standardization the design and development has to be done openly with the collabor…

See my other reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174674 > I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'. Uh, Linus? ... and distros, in general? There are very few people who decide to fork their own distro because, ultimately, good enough is good enough. You're portraying this as some of cabal of nefarious shady characters trying to do back-handed deals... it really was just a c…

I was actually talking about standardization. If Systemd seeks to be a standard then Redhat would have to give up control to a 'independent standards body' where others can influence the design, development and direction of the 'standard' outside the influence of Redhat and its employees.

That seems to be the only credible way to create workable standards. Open source ecosystems clearly do not yet have the thinking and infrastructure around standardization so it may take concerted effort and time to develop the right processes.

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