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Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

danielcordova.me

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Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#101

Post by _flux »

nubinetwork wrote: post #99
_flux wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I perhaps didn't quite catch this. I thought having a generator would let you be less committed to it, as you wouldn't need to manually write all the init scripts you need.. ?

Writing a basic init script is less intensive than having to learn the entire "schema" for both script formats, which you'd probably want to know if you were writing the generator.

Yes, but one only needs to write it once, and then everyone could use it. It could probably even be packaged as an official Debian package.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#102

Post by benterix »

mort96 wrote: post #21
mid-kid wrote: post #4

Tbh, the installer was inevitable after systemd integrated a bootloader, crafted a paritioning scheme for autodiscovery, took over user and home directory management, and topped it off with an updater and "system extensions" layering system that some immutable distros are using. I'm not saying any of this is particularly bad but it's been very clear fot a while that systemd just wants to be an OS. With immutable syst…

The various Red Hat affiliated projects have so much more reason to call themselves the "OS" than GNU at this point. A Linux system with systemd for the init, systemd-networkd and NetworkManager for networking, GNOME for the desktop, systemd-boot for the bootloader, RPM/DNF as the package manager, etc. probably contains orders of magnitude more Red Hat code than GNU code even if the system uses glibc and GNU coreutil…

Suppose someone wants to play this game, what's the point? Not to mention the fact that Gnome, even though is not a GNU project, literally means GNU Network Object Model Environment.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#103

Post by simoncion »

s_ting765 wrote: post #49
mid-kid wrote: post #4

Tbh, the installer was inevitable after systemd integrated a bootloader, crafted a paritioning scheme for autodiscovery, took over user and home directory management, and topped it off with an updater and "system extensions" layering system that some immutable distros are using. I'm not saying any of this is particularly bad but it's been very clear fot a while that systemd just wants to be an OS. With immutable syst…

Partition autodiscovery is pretty neat. I did my archlinux install with it using this guide[0]. I have never touched /etc/fstab and I have had zero to worry about corrupting a boot with wrong fstab entries. [0] https://walian.co.uk/arch-install-with-secure-boot-btrfs-tpm...

My searches for "systemd partition autodiscovery" lead me to [0]. In the table labeled "Table 1. Partition Type GUIDs", we find this in the Explanation section for 'SD_GPT_HOME'

  The first partition with this type UUID on the same disk as the root partition is mounted to /home/.
...you can't spread your /home and / partitions on separate disks and use this? In fact, it looks like you can't use this autodetection unless all of the partitions of interest (including your /boot/) are on the same disk? Seriously? There's also no indication that this works with LVM... which is -if true- is extremely inconvenient. The document at [1] only mentions LVM in passing, and [2] is Poettering saying "Fuck off, I don't want to support doing this with LVM".

Did I misread a document or fail to find a relevant one? If not, is this really limited to single-disk, "legacy" [3] configurations?

[0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...>

[1] https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/discoverable_par...>

[2] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/1727>

[3] Yes, I'm considering any fixed-partition mechanism, whether MBR or GPT to be "legacy". The flexibility you get from LVM is sooooo nice.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#104

Post by bonzini »

mort96 wrote: post #75
tym0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, are any of the things mentioned in the GP really required if you only want this init? I know they've attached all these projects to the systemd brand because they thought it would beneficial but it's hard not to wonder if we could avoid all those discussions if the umbrella project was called something different...

No, you can just run the systemd init system and not use any other systemd programs. I would probably run systemd-journald just because it's really nice to have a logging system which knows about the system services, but it's not required.

You probably also want to run udev, and logind comes close. Everything other than these four is absolutely optional.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#105

Post by simoncion »

_flux wrote: post #101
nubinetwork wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing a basic init script is less intensive than having to learn the entire "schema" for both script formats, which you'd probably want to know if you were writing the generator.

Yes, but one only needs to write it once, and then everyone could use it. It could probably even be packaged as an official Debian package.

> Yes, but one only needs to write it once...

...and then keep up with behavioral changes that the Systemd Project people introduce and load-bearing bugs that services end up relying on for lifecycle management.

OpenRC service files are easy to write, and their schema is far far simpler than that of Unit files. [0] It's really not worth the effort to write and maintain an converter, if for no other reason than you need to understand the semantics of both systems' service files to double-check the results of the converter.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717056>

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#106

Post by mort96 »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #23

This makes the mistake of confusing systemd the service manager and systemd the project. This is an easy mistake to make given they have the same name. The systemd service manager does not have an installer, systemd-sysinstall is a separate tool that's part of the systemd project. > systemd already integrated it, why (age verification) systemd has not integrated age verification. All that's been discussed is a simple…

The expressed intention behind adding the DoB field is to comply with age verification laws. Intent matters a whole lot here.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#107

Post by mort96 »

Someone wrote: post #82
lukan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are your thoughts on deploying software to a fragmented system?

Not the OP, but the historical answer was POSIX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX , https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/2.56856 ). That didn’t work perfectly, but it did work to some extent.

POSIX is great! For basic command line apps which don't really need to interact with the system other than reading user provided files and directories.

For graphical stuff, or stuff which wants to interact more deeply with the system, you need so much more than a common C API and rudimentary shell specification.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#109

Post by wink »

hks0 wrote: post #43

I have a curious question. My local setup has worked for me for ages ever since arch decided to switch to systemd. Same on the servers I deal with, after Debian's switch. At the same time, I can say I'm not involved with inner workings of a Linux system enough, to be affected by init system change and the pain it might bring. In other means consider me an average Joe of the Linux world. Hence this question: If it suc…

It traded one set of problems for another set of problems.

The people who are happy now don't complain (or are too new to init systems) and the people you hear are the ones who now have more problems than before. I suppose the majority either shouldn't comment because they never used anything before it to some degree, or they're just more, or they're really happier, good for them.

I count myself as part of the latter group (nothing was broken, now I have some problems) but it's not catastrophic. I'm not arguing systemd is worse, I'm just saying I've repeatedly have problems I didn't have for the first 15 years of using Linux.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#110

Post by wink »

LtWorf wrote: post #64
hks0 wrote: post #43

I have a curious question. My local setup has worked for me for ages ever since arch decided to switch to systemd. Same on the servers I deal with, after Debian's switch. At the same time, I can say I'm not involved with inner workings of a Linux system enough, to be affected by init system change and the pain it might bring. In other means consider me an average Joe of the Linux world. Hence this question: If it suc…

It doesn't suck "now". It sucked when fedora and arch switched to it. I mean it of course wasn't complete garbage but it had a lot of bugs and people generally don't like to be used as red hat's guinea pigs. When red hat switched to it, it was stable enough. Before then people were complaining because they did find bugs and issues (I know I did) and were being told to STFU by inexperienced users who have the most bas…

> Very common is the case of some person who sometimes uses linux on their machine telling a system administrator who has thousands of machines under his responsibility what's what.

I'm not sure that's a good argument because it goes both ways.

Sure, times have moved on but having dozens or hundreds of machines is now nothing compared to thousands, but at some point it was - and people have experienced it then.

And even without the number, I'm not really sure it's a good thing to count professional users (who often have access to support and resources) more than hobby users.

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