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Shall we fork Debian?

debianfork.org

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Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#151

Post by ck2 »

IshKebab wrote: post #135
ancarda wrote: post #117

Am I the only person who prefers systemd? Maybe because it's the only init system I've managed to get my head around. Other init systems seem so complicated. A config file vs a bash script is far easier and they all seem to require forking. I only use Linux for servers so I may be unaware of a sane init system that works like systemd but isn't systemd. Until something like that appears, I'll stick to systemd.

I don't think you're wrong. I imagine all these people saying systemd is so awful are just worried that their hard-earned sysvinit knowledge will become obsolete and that new users won't have to go through silly bash scripts (that are totally secure of course - no chance of security vulnerabilities in something as ancient and wtf-free as bash). Instead they'll have something sane like this: [Unit] Description=Apache…

Show me where you do configtest in the systemd version?

(you can't - it doesn't take custom EXEC commands)

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#152

Post by justinsb »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #66

I think this is a great idea. - I think they're wrong about systemd, but if they're right, Debian can merge their fork back in, they can say "I told you so", and we can move on. - It gives us a place to point the anti-systemd people. Rather than spending their energy trying to fight the system, they can spend their energy productively on this fork. - This puts the burden of maintaining the SysV scripts on the fork, r…

Exactly; this reminds me of the quote "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." A key axiom of free software is that if you don't like something, you can fork it. If your fork is better, it will win (in theory).

It isn't necessarily an efficient allocation of resources, but open-source does not seek to achieve that: it values choice instead.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#153

Post by vezzy-fnord »

IshKebab wrote: post #135
ancarda wrote: post #117

Am I the only person who prefers systemd? Maybe because it's the only init system I've managed to get my head around. Other init systems seem so complicated. A config file vs a bash script is far easier and they all seem to require forking. I only use Linux for servers so I may be unaware of a sane init system that works like systemd but isn't systemd. Until something like that appears, I'll stick to systemd.

I don't think you're wrong. I imagine all these people saying systemd is so awful are just worried that their hard-earned sysvinit knowledge will become obsolete and that new users won't have to go through silly bash scripts (that are totally secure of course - no chance of security vulnerabilities in something as ancient and wtf-free as bash). Instead they'll have something sane like this: [Unit] Description=Apache…

I think this Debian fork talk is a bunch of nonsense, but so is your comment. It's the classic "systemd or sysvinit" false dichotomy, as evidently a ton of Linux users have never stepped out of their cage to ever look at anything else.

Besides all the sysvinit alternatives (like depinit) that have popped up throughout the years, fixed most of its deficiencies and were promptly ignored, even having a shell-based boot doesn't mean you need to resort to the antipatterns that Linux distros have been doing - look at what the BSDs do with /etc/rc.subr and rcorder(8). Though, to some extent, this can be blamed on sysvinit's flawed abstractions.

If anything, making a "systemd or sysvinit" dichotomy only tells me you're unknowledgeable.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#154

Post by vezzy-fnord »

IgorPartola wrote: post #134
StevePerkins wrote: post #132

From the source: ..... > Why don't you do that [i.e. vote against systemd] yourselves? > > We are excluded from voting on the issue: only few of us > have the time and patience to interact with Debian on a > voluntary basis. ..... In that case, you don't have the time and patience to operate and maintain a worthwhile and ongoing Debian fork. In that case, there is no substance to the "question" you're raising, becaus…

I came here to say exactly that. "We don't have time to work with the Debian folks on a solution, but have time to create our own distro." Right. Then again, they should go for it. If nobody but them uses it, that's that. If it gains traction, cool. On another point: why the hell would you have a choice in init systems? As a user of the OS, I care that the proceses start, stop, and keep running. I don't care how. A p…

On another point: why the hell would you have a choice in init systems?

Because systemd isn't just an init system?...

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#155

Post by adekok »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #63
jermo wrote: post #2

The main reason for forking seems to be opposition to SystemD. Initially I was unconvinced but then I remembered the recent story of Lennart Poettering (one of the authors of SystemD) on The State Of Open Source Communities where he describes the hostility towards him personally https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859 In light of that, forking is a more civilised approach than bullying and threatening the author…

Yeah, especially if everything what he wrote there was like that bitcoin hitman stuff, which turned out to be just a line like "maybe we should start btc fund?" from IRC written after someone else complained about issue with systemd by guy known from his funny trolling there - and absolutely nothing more than that. While at first I felt a bit sorry for him when I read that post, after I learned about what exactly was…

> I'd really welcome the anti-systemd ranters to just do some work that makes them feel happy, such as making a new distribution that has the exact init system they want.

Most people are already working on things that make them happy. The frustration here is that the tools they depend on are changing... in a way that they don't like.

They also have limited time for projects. Any time spent fixing other peoples projects is time they don't spend on their own projects.

I left the Linux desktop world nearly 10 years ago, for these kind of reasons. I use a Mac as my desktop, because I don't have to fight with it. 99% of everything works, and the other 1% breakages are ones I can live with.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#156

Post by yrro »

csirac2 wrote: post #101
voltagex_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step in troubleshooting that one is to run strace and find out what's happening. I agree it's frustrating but if no one debugs these things, problems won't get solved. (and yes, scorching the earth and installing a different distro is a valid solution to the problem at hand)

I'm not sure how to make strace pid 1 :-) And I'm not quite ready to abandon Debian yet. I've created a virt-install script which reproduces the problem reliably (honestly all it does is install jessie, then lxc-docker). Hopefully my workload eases and I can put this trivially reproducible thing into a bug report somewhere (debian? systemd? docker) for somebody to see what's going on. FWIW systemctl start docker work…

Sounds like lxc-docker.service simply wasn't enabled. "enabling" is basically creating a symlink from multi-user.target.wants to lxc-docker.service. This is done by 'systemctl enable lxc-docker.service' once that service declares WantedBy=multi-user.target in its [Install] section.

Other symptoms that would indicate this was the problem would have been that 'systemctl status lxc-docker.serivce' would have said "Loaded: loaded (...; disabled)" and "Active: inactive (dead)". i.e., systemd never started the service because nothing ever wanted it.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#157

Post by rakoo »

ck2 wrote: post #151
IshKebab wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're wrong. I imagine all these people saying systemd is so awful are just worried that their hard-earned sysvinit knowledge will become obsolete and that new users won't have to go through silly bash scripts (that are totally secure of course - no chance of security vulnerabilities in something as ancient and wtf-free as bash). Instead they'll have something sane like this: [Unit] Description=Apache…

Show me where you do configtest in the systemd version? (you can't - it doesn't take custom EXEC commands)

Config test is a human operation; you manually do it after you've edited the configuration, and if you've forgotten to do it then the next start will crash. It makes no sense to automate configtest.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#159

Post by xobs »

feld wrote: post #140
IshKebab wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're wrong. I imagine all these people saying systemd is so awful are just worried that their hard-earned sysvinit knowledge will become obsolete and that new users won't have to go through silly bash scripts (that are totally secure of course - no chance of security vulnerabilities in something as ancient and wtf-free as bash). Instead they'll have something sane like this: [Unit] Description=Apache…

How does systemd handle situations where you need to check for the existence of directories and check their permissions, etc, before starting the service? You'd have to script it... and it would end up looking like a sysvinit script anyway.

You can add ConditionPathExists= or ConditionPathIsDirectory= to a Unit to check if one or more directories exist. You can also substitute the userid into commands with %U, so you could have it always chown before running the command, as you can have multiple ExecStart= directives.

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.serv... and http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit...

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#160

Post by progman »

vacri wrote: post #11
martin_ wrote: post #4

From the article: We are excluded from voting on the issue: only few of us have the time and patience to interact with Debian on a voluntary basis. Using the same argument, forking would seem like a horrible idea if there isn't active maintainers.

I saw that as a giant red warning flag as well. Why would I expect them to maintain a fork and ensure it has full sysv init support, if they don't even have the time to engage in the current process? It's all a bit overdramatic anyway - there are heaps of Debian forks; they're called 'downstream distros'. Ubuntu is one.

> Why would I expect them to maintain a fork and ensure it has full sysv init support, if they don't even have the time to engage in the current process?

Probably because they (experienced Unix veterans) realized that it makes much more sense to test the demand of a fork (that's what they made the website for) than to continue any useless discussion about systemd. Some systemd proponents obviously have serious problems to make a sober discussion anyway (interestingly also in a prominent German forum).

Notice: "If SystemD will be substituting SystemV in Debian, we will fork the project and create a new distro: Pure Debian by Veteran Unix Admins. We hope this won't be necessary, but we are well prepared for it."

They are not eager to make a fork but I think they will actually do it if necesary.

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