191–200 of 329 posts
DESCRIPTION: something like 'apt-get deps ' returning a list of all deps for a package. This would be super duper when trying to install a standalone package file on a system where the deps aren't already present.
DESCRIPTION: Personally I'd like something like 'apt-get update --local' which pulled down a remote copy of every repo. That's be super handy for something like a build machine, and it'd reduce the need to install & maintain an Aptly repo.
HEADLINE: Easy way to use multiple screens with different DPI DESCRIPTION: Many laptops (e.g. Macbook Pro) come with retina screens, but most of us use 'regular' monitors. Even after setting org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor and playing with xrandr, it can be difficult or impossible to get a single external non-retina display set up in the right position and without one screen containing tiny text (or huge t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the OP, but: - It's effectively a black box that nobody but the systemd team really understands; and the response by said team to problems with systemd too often defaults to "you're doing it wrong" - Systemd is not just an init system, it's a message bus, authentication system, logging system, container management system, xinitd system, and any other number of highly coupled systems. - Service startup order can s…
> - It's effectively a black box that nobody but the systemd team really understands; and the response by said team to problems with systemd too often defaults to "you're doing it wrong" I'm seeing this attitude a lot. Just last week, at our Linux User Group meeting, someone brought in a notebook with Debian 9, which didn't boot up correctly because drives were not detected. The issue turned out to be really simple (…
It doesn't follow any existing patterns, which makes it harder to learn if you're already familiar with troubleshooting init prior to systemd (troubleshooting which would have started with a quick trip to /var/log/dmesg and stopped with /var/log/syslog).
So yes, it can absolutely be learned. But existing administrators have to abandon most of their existing toolkit to do so.
That all said, that's not what I mean by opaque. By opaque, I'm referring to how many (few?) people truly grok what's going on inside of systemd. As an arbitrary point of measure - systemd (and only systemd) consists of over 500,000 lines of C code. It takes a lot of dedication and time to understand what is going on in that much C code. There are, by GitHub stats, less than 10 people who have contributed (combined additions and deletions in commits) to even 1% of the codebase, and only 4 who have touched more than 50%.
In comparison, sysvinit consists of about 9,300 lines, and upstart 115,000.
Headline: Light Debian desktop theme Describtion: Debian should have easy usability to set the desktop theme to a light color theme. Right now it is quite difficult for users to change desktop look and feel. Please also make usability testing of changing desktop settings. The current color scheme which is dark does suit all users. A dark and light theme should more users covered. Many thanks to all the Debian develop…
HEADLINE: Switch to persistent journald by default DESCRIPTION: Right now, Debian's default install includes rsyslog, and every message gets logged twice. Once in rsyslog on disk, and once in journald in memory. Let's turn on the persistent journal by default, and demote rsyslog to optional. (People who want syslog-based logging can still trivially install it, such as people in an environment that wants network-based…
Failing that, though, at least change the default rsyslog configuration such that:
* Timestamps are not ambiguous (the default includes no timezone offset)
* Timestamps are higher resolution (milliseconds at least, but preferably microseconds)
* The syslog severity/priority is not discarded (tools which display these files must use disgusting heuristics like searching for "err" to highlight errors)
* Rate limiting is disabled, as rsyslog sees all messages as coming from journald. This means that a misbehaving (chatty) application can cause critical messages from other apps to be dropped. journald does its own (per-source) rate limiting anyway.
* /var/log/syslog is rotated by size as well as time, so a misbehaving program can't easily fill up the partition which contains that file by accident. The current default is 1/day rotation, with no size limit.
- HEADLINE: Simplify contributing to Debian. - DESCRIPTION: TL;DR: Debian's web pages are hard to navigate and use and it's very hard to see what's happening. I contribute to FOSS projects whenever I have time and have been wanting to contribute to Debian, but the difficulty is offputting. I'm used to searching for the program name and arriving at a portal page from which I can easily browse the source, see the curre…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the OP, but: - It's effectively a black box that nobody but the systemd team really understands; and the response by said team to problems with systemd too often defaults to "you're doing it wrong" - Systemd is not just an init system, it's a message bus, authentication system, logging system, container management system, xinitd system, and any other number of highly coupled systems. - Service startup order can s…
Thank you for your response falcolas. Addressing your points: > "- It's effectively a black box that nobody but the systemd team really understands; and the response by said team to problems with systemd too often defaults to "you're doing it wrong"" Is this because the data being passed around is represented in binary form rather than text form (e.g. binary logs rather than text-based logs)? > "- Systemd is not just…
None of my complaints relate to binary vs. text. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, and while binary data requires new set of tooling, I intentionally did not mention it because of how contentious it is to even bring up.
> Sure, but this doesn't strike me as neccessarily bad.
It's just not necessary. This all worked before. Not always perfectly, and sometimes even poorly... but it worked. And importantly, it worked without requiring the authentication system, message bus (tied into the kernel), custom logging, and init all to be tied together.
> What advantages do you gain from having a unified layer that provides the services that systemd provides?
Personally? None - no advantages. Consider where I'm coming from - I've run Linux on the desktop and server for years (perhaps even before systemd was a glimmer in Pottering's eye). I've written software which ran on startup (including the sysvinit scripts), done init troubleshooting... and it all just worked.
Without reasonable gains in speed, and without resolving the determinism problem, and given a world in which supervisord, daemontools, and LXC exist... systemd just doesn't bring anything to the table that I've been asking for. Instead, it's brought a whole new toolset I have to now learn, and a ton more complexity and opacity.
HEADLINE: Stabilize dpkg C library (libdpkg) DESCRIPTION: Any plans to go ahead and stabilize the dpkg library for buster? Having access to a stable package management library is essential in our software. Ie. being able to verify package signatures and querying the database for files. Both of which are not supported. DISTRIBUTION: buster
This has been part of the dpkg roadmap for some time now ( https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/RoadMap ). And something I'm slowly but progressively moving towards. But TBH it has been low priority. Knowing of projects that require it, and specifically which parts, or that are already using the static libdpkg library are very valuable, so that those parts can be improved. If there's enough interest, my plan could be t…
What would be the best way of contributing this sort of information?
DESCRIPTION: In the past I've often ran into stuff in Debian just being too old for my needs. I don't need the bleeding edge, but two years is a really long time. I've switched to Ubuntu a few years ago, but not being a fan of Canonical it would be nice if I could come back to Debian.
DISTRIBUTION: stable
ROLE: full stack web developer