Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

blog.darknedgy.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 332 posts

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#321

Post by wrycoder »

morelisp wrote: post #259
wrycoder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lennart Poettering, the fellow who is turning GNU/Linux into a version of Windows, works for Red Hat.

> turning GNU/Linux into a version of Windows The piece of software systemd is most like is launchctl, which doesn't come from Windows. On the other hand, the biggest "Windows-ism" to reach Linux lately is io_uring. But it's both too technical and too useful to have some populist uprising against it.

systemd user sessions, socket activation, sysusers, dynamic users, systemd-homed, temporary directory setup, transient units, anything talking to the slice or control group APIs, containerization, firstboot, systemd’s whole “preset” system-wide configuration and policy mechanism for admins to say “what services do I want launched when installed and what services do I want to leave stopped until I configure them”, “stateless system” capabilities, and I’m probably forgetting another dozen.

I don't care about the init system - I reboot a Linux system once in a blue moon, for kernel updates. It's the rest of the complication and changes to a system that I had already made the effort to master. I understand that the New Linux is better for Enterprise, so that's what is going to happen. That doesn't mean I have to like Poettering gradually re-writing the entire base of userland. I just want to run simple servers, not a major enterprise.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#322

Post by wrycoder »

jcelerier wrote: post #308
hulitu wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should not use UNIX then. There is another mainstream OS besides UNIX. Some people like to be able to know what their system does and like to use tools on which they can rely on even when things go wrong.

yes, I don't use UNIX, I use ArchLinux which is a much better operating system for my computer needs. The "proper" UNIX I've used (macOS) really sucked in comparison.

I've used Arch, it's really excellent. But, not now that it's systemd. I use Devuan for my servers, and Alpine for my desktop.

I use MacOS and iOS for internet viewing and A/V. I have no interest in how they are implemented - superficial observation indicates they are a mess. I do ssh into my servers from MacOS - it's comfortable with my laptop actually in my lap.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#323

Post by wrycoder »

int_19h wrote: post #315
wrycoder wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have. OpenBSD is great! The biggest problem I had was that it was difficult to keep upgraded. In those days, it was basically a re-install every six months, plus a merge of any local changes. I understand things are much better now, and I may give it another try.

FreeBSD is generally more straightforward for desktop use, IMO.

I like OpenBSD - it's so clean. I use i3 and don't care about audio/video, so my needs are minimal. I use MacOS/iOS to view the internet, but not for development.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#324

Post by petre »

posix_me_less wrote: post #276
petre wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MySQL and SQLite, but the former is not a real transactional database, it's quite a joke compared to Postgres. The latter is a file based database. We use MySQL at work and I am exasperated by it. It's possible that even Firebird is better.

What exactly do you miss in MySQL compared to Postgres? With InnoDB it can do transactions, no?

Proper transactions, like the ones that aren't closed by create, alter or drop table, proper rollbacks, statement timeouts so that a single stalled statement doesn't block the table until you kill it, subscribe/notify among other things. My issue is primarily with performance under load, where you'll eventually end up with lots of blocked queries and an unresponsive database and the only way to solve it is to throw hardware resources at it.

Do yourselvs a favour and pick Postgres for new projects. If you properly vacuum your tables you'll probably be fine.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#325

Post by posix_me_less »

awrmc wrote: post #313
posix_me_less wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't really have a moral or tactical position other than "shut up and code." I don't believe that. People commenting negatively on some Linux software/trend do not need any such privilege or permission or show of stake. I think anybody with Linux experience is entitled to his/her opinion on what should and should not be done on their Linux machine and in the Linux software space, whether they produce new code…

That's just re-stating the grandparent comment! If you think everyone is entitled to their opinion then the only tangible way to express that opinion would be to produce new code. What use is the opinion if nobody ever implements it?

I don't believe that. There are many ways to express an opinion about Linux software, e.g. by writing about it, or by rejecting some software, or by adopting some different software.

I don't use systemd on my systems, I prefer sysvinit and openrc, and I sometimes express my arguments for why. Why would I have to write my own init system just to express my opinion that for some usecases, other software is better than systemd?

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#326

Post by fuzzy2 »

mongol wrote: post #14
fuzzy2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you’re asking about. If Systemd didn’t start it, Systemd doesn’t manage it. Nothing strange about that…? Systemd does not start all the Kubernetes stuff. k3s could stop everything, but it doesn’t. It’s a design decision.

It did start it. For example the k3s process did start a container registry, but it did not stop it. I thought one of the points of systemd was that it would reap parentless processes

Well, yes and no. Systemd starts the k3s master process (or whatever it is called). It also stops this process. At this point, Systemd’s work is done and it is working properly.

Now k3s of course starts tons of stuff, mostly in containers. Therein lies the problem: By default, Systemd indeed tries to get rid of the entire process tree. It does this using control groups (cgroups). Unfortunately, it is easy for a process to “escape” its control group, at least for root.

Stopping the master process could absolutely be made to also stop everything.

It would be great if k3s did properly integrate with Systemd. It doesn’t, but Systemd is not to blame for that. That’s my point.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#328

Post by awrmc »

posix_me_less wrote: post #325
awrmc wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just re-stating the grandparent comment! If you think everyone is entitled to their opinion then the only tangible way to express that opinion would be to produce new code. What use is the opinion if nobody ever implements it?

I don't believe that. There are many ways to express an opinion about Linux software, e.g. by writing about it, or by rejecting some software, or by adopting some different software. I don't use systemd on my systems, I prefer sysvinit and openrc, and I sometimes express my arguments for why. Why would I have to write my own init system just to express my opinion that for some usecases, other software is better than…

You've decided the best way forward for you is to write sysvinit and openrc scripts. That's an opinion completely focused around writing some additional code. You don't have to write it all from scratch to be expressing that opinion, you can express it a lot of different ways but that's all it encompasses. Unless we're talking about something else that I missed? Suggesting that something is better than something else is really meaningless without that.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#329

Post by rstuart4133 »

the_why_of_y wrote: post #258
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not. There is strange false history that systemd replaced sysvinit, which occurred only on Debian, because Debian was the last major system to discard sysvinit. Gentoo had replaced sysvinit with OpenRC in 2006; Fedora and Ubuntu were using Upstart in 2005. systemd primarily replaced Upstart and systems that used Runit or OpenRC tended to have stayed with them. Frankness be, this false history seems to be craft…

> Debian was the last major system to discard sysvinit This is partially incorrect and partially misleading. Incorrect in that openSUSE and Arch are major distros and migrated from sysvinit to systemd. https://news.opensuse.org/2011/12/22/systemd-e2-80-93-boot-f... https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4lzxs3/why_did_a... Misleading in that Ubuntu and Fedora did use Upstart but not in its native mode, they used…

There was also uselessd, which was the systemd init system without the rest. https://bitbucket.org/Tarnyko/uselessd/src/linux-devel/ It was a joke, but nonetheless if you like systemd's init system them you are probably going to like uselessd, because that's what it is - systemd's init system without the rest.

At 82k loc it's huge for what it does, but nonetheless is order(s?) of magnitude smaller than systemd. If it was active I'd trust it more that systemd on that basis alone.

I can't say I'm a fan of systemd's event driven approach. A system whose state depends on it's configuration plus past state is usually a nightmare to debug and control compared to a system who state is dependent on it's configuration alone - and that's how it has worked out for me and systemd.

The simple cases work fine of course but systemd's power over what came before it is it's dependency relationships it allows you setup. But they are the very things that break in weird and wonderful ways when the events it's reacting to fire in an unexpected order. If you could set them up reliably without much thinking it would be a big win - but as it is, not so much.

Re: Systemd, 10 years later (2020)

#330

Post by gotar »

api wrote: post #268
Too wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is arcane about systemctl stop and journalctl --since?

How do I list what's running? I have to Google that every time. How do I list units? What are units? What the fuck are... and so on. The output is hard to read. The files are all over. The directory and file names are counterintuitive. It’s just… needlessly arcane. Git has the same problem but at least git is excellent enough software in other ways that it makes up for the horrible UX. Systemd is mediocre.

> How do I list what's running?

systemd-cgls

> How do I list units

systemctl list-units

Simply use tab completion (like in zsh). And do not dare to compare UX-nightmare from git with systemd...

Post reply on HN