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Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

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Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#51

Post by lovelyviking »

JohnFen wrote: post #38
blakesterz wrote: post #15

This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)

I've never suffered data loss from systemd, but I certainly have encountered loss of functionality. There are a number of things that I just can't accomplish with systemd that I can accomplish without it.

>There are a number of things that I just can't accomplish with systemd that I can accomplish without it.

can you name those? I am eager to try them in system with minimum resources.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#52

Post by alyandon »

agwa wrote: post #30
blakesterz wrote: post #15

This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)

I've never had data loss (assuming that's what "lossage" means), but here's an incomplete list of problems I've experienced on systems running systemd: * System randomly taking 5+ minutes to boot * Daemons sometimes not starting on boot * Logging sometimes just stops (I confirmed this was caused by a systemd bug) * Logging in over SSH starts taking 2 minutes and can only be fixed by reboot (I confirmed this was cause…

Some random observations:

* System randomly taking 5+ minutes to boot

"systemd-analyze blame" can help identify issues relating to boot time

* Daemons sometimes not starting on boot

This most often occurs for me when services don't start quickly enough (too much contention on spinning rust and aggressive default timeout settings) so I have to adjust startup timeouts. "systemctl --state=failed" along with "systemctl status X" can usually help narrow down why your services failed to start.

* Logging sometimes just stops (I confirmed this was caused by a systemd bug)

I've found journald can get forcibly restarted if there is a lot of contention for disk iops and it can't checkpoint. I frequently run into this issue on a server that is used for backups for about a dozen or so clients that relies on filesystem snapshots.

* Logging in over SSH starts taking 2 minutes and can only be fixed by reboot (I confirmed this was caused by a systemd bug)

I've sometimes had this happen and for me it seems to be related to systemd-resolved deciding to stop responding to queries and the only solution I've found so far that actually works is to restart the system.

Despite the bugs I still prefer systemd over sysv-init - being able to run something like "systemctl status" and "systemctl --state=failed" to inspect the state of all services on a system has been invaluable to me.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#53

Post by gbear605 »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #25
TekMol wrote: post #4

I hate systemd with a passion, but I won't fiddle with Debian to get rid of it. I would love if a major distro emerges which works with human-readable scripts and logs and stays away from any "binary" formats for system configuration and logging.

> stays away from any "binary" formats isn't a text file also binary at the end of the day?

If you’re being pedantic, yes, but it’s a format that can be used by any number of tools that aren’t specific to systemd.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#54

Post by midasuni »

sgerenser wrote: post #17
blakesterz wrote: post #15

This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)

I’ve never heard of one either. While systemd is certainly more complex than old school init scripts, and arguably deviates quite a bit from the “Unix philosophy,” it seems some people just have an irrational hatred towards it. To the point of making up problems with it that I’ve never heard anyone actually having.

Had a problem with systemd-resolved yet again the other day. Blatted resolv.conf and job done, but between systemd and related things (network manager etc) it just breaks the way things have worked for decades and gives many people no benefit.

This isn’t all systemd of course, it’s the distros that choose to use it.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#55

Post by mikepurvis »

ttfkam wrote: post #2

It's been fashionable to hate on systemd, but I definitely prefer it to the hodgepodge of inconsistent init scripts, logging hacks, and bespoke process monitors that preceded it. init.d was familiar to graybeards (like myself), but I'm loathe to consider them a superior solution.

I've liked it from the beginning (coming from upstart), but I think my one frustration is that you can't run systemd in an unprivileged container— and this is not simply an implementation gap, it's an intentional design choice:

https://systemd.io/CONTAINER_INTERFACE/

You can argue that a process manager for an unprivileged container should be more like supervisor or systemd user services. However, it would be really convenient to be able to globally install unit files (say, using a deb package), and have them work whether it's bare metal, a VM, or a container.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#56

Post by peter_d_sherman »

Distrowatch's Advanced Search page:

https://distrowatch.com/search.php#advanced

Note that under the "Init Software" section (scroll down on page!), the following two choices (amongst numerous others, perhaps too many!) are included:

[ ] systemd

[ ] Not systemd

In other words, here, the User, regardless of their opinion, regardless of their political ideology (or lack thereof!) -- has a happy choice!

They can choose whatever they themselves believe to be the correct choice in the matter!

Or they can choose to leave both checkmarks blank -- and let Distrowatch's Advanced Search -- decide for them, and perhaps "surprise" them! :-)

You know, like you like Coke, I like Pepsi...

You like Windows, I like Linux (or vice versa!)...

You might think that it's a floor wax, I might think that it's a dessert topping -- but we could both be right!

Ah, choice -- it's a beautiful thing!

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#57

Post by midasuni »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #26
doublerabbit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gripe is on system shutdown. It always encounters some service to hang to where systemd responds: "Waiting for service to halt - xx / 2m" I've never not encountered that experience.

That's the default distro configuration more than a systemd issue. It can be changed and 20 minutes for a desktop config is far too high.

Too high for a server (yes some of us still use servers), a reboot should be back in a couple of minutes and that’s with crazy long bios posts.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#58

Post by freedomben »

JohnFen wrote: post #45
oarmstrong wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it’s a different OS and possibly isn’t relevant to you but I’ve found solace in OpenBSD (and other BSDs) in the search of “simplicity” of “the old days”.

This is the direction I'm going. I've already begun the process of converting all of my machines away from Linux to BSD.

What are your feeling about the philosophy behind it, i.e. GPL vs BSD license?

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#59

Post by JohnFen »

lovelyviking wrote: post #51
JohnFen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never suffered data loss from systemd, but I certainly have encountered loss of functionality. There are a number of things that I just can't accomplish with systemd that I can accomplish without it.

>There are a number of things that I just can't accomplish with systemd that I can accomplish without it. can you name those? I am eager to try them in system with minimum resources.

Sure. My most recent headache is with using a USB wifi dongle. During system startup, I want to attach some remote drives over wifi, so I need to be able to do that after the wifi connection is established.

Systemd does not appear to be able to tell when that happens. It thinks the network is established before it actually is, and then the mount calls cause the startup process to pause for 3 minutes for those mount calls to time out before continuing.

Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd

#60

Post by deckard1 »

blakesterz wrote: post #15

This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)

I was finally coming around to systemd. Then they broke my laptop.

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/25269

I'm still livid at this Luca guy gaslighting people on the "correct" behavior of a feature people were using for years already. They re-purposed an existing sleep mode and changed it entirely to mean something else. Originally you would set a timeout that your laptop would suspend and then hibernate. They changed it to mean that your laptop suspends until your battery hits 5% and then hibernates. As if people want to open their laptop the next morning only to have no battery left.

Ironically, the stated reason for this change was to "prevent data loss". Guess what they did? They introduced a bug in this "fix" that guaranteed your laptop would not wake from hibernate. You had to reboot the damn laptop each time you woke from hibernate because it would get stuck on a black screen, thus "losing" your data. I "lost" more data from their stupid fix than anything else.

They admit the original feature was broken because it didn't take into consideration for battery percent. Fine. But there was absolutely no reason to change the behavior. You can do both! The only reason I can think of is you just like being an incredible asshole to people. Which is obvious from that thread. Do they even use a laptop? Why would I want a dead battery next time I open the lid???

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