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Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

kevinboone.me

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Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#51

Post by blueflow »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #45

I couldn't disagree more: I've worked with lots of embedded devices running systemd, and it solves many more problems than it introduces. The community is also quite responsive and helpful in my experience. I won't pretend there aren't occasional weird problems... but there's always a solution, here's a recent example: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/34683 Memory use is irrelevant to me: every embedded Linu…

That "occasional weird problem" is because systemd is not designed to be used with other software. While you technically still have the choice to roll your own non-systemd initramfs, it will be an uphill battle.

Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#52

Post by perching_aix »

exe34 wrote: post #8
solarkraft wrote: post #4

> The more fundamental problem is that the people who most like systemd are distribution managers. (...) a distribution manager doesn’t have to maintain, integrate, and support a whole bunch of system utilities from different sources – systemd provides everything in one huge build. That’s actually a great lesson in optimizing your product for adoption.

it's also why corporate software is so shit - it's shiny in all the ways it needs to be shiny for management to make the decision, but it's a pain for the actual users. the trick in both cases is to know your customers!

what a weird comparison...

Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#54

Post by viraptor »

rjzzleep wrote: post #29
viraptor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link some upstream issues you raised about the big annoyances?

Random example. They randomly broke suspect-then-hibernate then the community manager gaslit people into trying to make them believe they don’t actually need the feature in the way it’s used and then silently acknowledged that their fix is broken after all. This is a common pattern by the way. But easily the most irritating thing for me is the simple issue that you used to be able to just go to /var/log/lastlog to se…

So there was a bug and bad interaction and everyone on non-rolling system didn't even notice, because it's been fixed in 2 months? (Nov to Jan) It sucks, but it's been fixed for almost 2 years at this point.

For the last boot you can use "journalctl -b -1" as long as you enabled persistent logs. If you ended up reinstalling everything, I don't think we can say whether that was a systemd related issue or not.

I was curious what the current daily issues are.

Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#55

Post by righthand »

cbmuser wrote: post #39
Brian_K_White wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you imagine this proves or disproves? How many people eat McDonalds? Or buy in to countless other things that can be trivially demonstrated to be against their own interests. I don't know about anyone else but I never heard the critiques of systemd to be based on any doomsday predictions. Everyone knew it would function, and that it even serves one use case better than before. The critique was only ever that…

> How many people eat McDonalds? If you’re already starting like this it’s obvious that the following text will be non-scientific non-sense. As a reminder: There is no such thing as “healthy food” and “unhealthy food”, there is just healthy and unhealthy nutrition. Still baffles me that people think it would actually be legal to sell actual unhealthy food, i.e. poisonous food. Also, “organic food” is just a marketing…

It is legal to sell unhealthy food, ie poisonous food. Sugar is a poison, drugs are poisons. You can legally sell escolar a fish that if eaten too much is poisonous.

What is poisonous food? You can sell plastic that breaks down into the environment and people are drinking it in water, eating it in fish. Is that legally sold poisonous food?

Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#57

Post by strken »

rjzzleep wrote: post #29
viraptor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link some upstream issues you raised about the big annoyances?

Random example. They randomly broke suspect-then-hibernate then the community manager gaslit people into trying to make them believe they don’t actually need the feature in the way it’s used and then silently acknowledged that their fix is broken after all. This is a common pattern by the way. But easily the most irritating thing for me is the simple issue that you used to be able to just go to /var/log/lastlog to se…

The linked GitHub issue is one of the most aggravating exchanges I've ever read: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/25269.

I don't understand how you can read someone telling you that they want to suspend and then hibernate after a set duration, but A) not understand why this would be desirable, B) not understand that this is compatible with also hibernating at low battery, and C) not understand your own lack of comprehension.

Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#59

Post by cyanydeez »

detaro wrote: post #33
phendrenad2 wrote: post #23

Wait so systemd is a problem for embedded Linux because... it uses 250MB of RAM? So it's only really a problem for systems where using a mainstream distro probably wouldn't even be a consideration anyway (yocto seems to be popular, as mentioned above). I'm not seeing a strong argument here. At the risk of inviting a parade of "actually, one time at band camp I saved the day with a first-gen raspberry pi zero", how ma…

> how many embedded systems in 2024 are really RAM-limited? A lot. Plenty embedded Linux stuff still ships with 256 MB or 512 MB RAM, and the wishlist for features in the software running on top is always getting longer than initially planned... But of course the average has moved up, and it's not unusual to see systemd in embedded systems either (while I don't have a number at hand, the 250MB number seems off to me)…

Seems like a complaint the author could help solve by extending the general purpose systems to their choice of hardware.

Re: Why systemd is a problem for embedded Linux

#60

Post by neuroelectron »

As for a solution to this, wouldn't it be possible to use systemd to build a targeted init script? Use the expertise embedded in systemd to bring up the system you're targeting, recording how it does that and then removing systemd, leaving the artifacts?

Why keep this huge monolithic system running in the background after it has served its purpose?

Also, with ai, would it be possible to redraw the lines within systemd between the separate domains/concerns, then redistribute the functions back to where they conceptually belong? Then you can refine those changes to make them more standardized and universal instead of interdependent and centralized.

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