Systemd redux: The end of Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#351

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

andor wrote: post #163

nitrogen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemd is most problematic because of its own-everything monolithic nature, and the changing of kernel interfaces to match. The vast majority of Linux systems are not desktops, and probably not servers either. The kernel and the core utilities around it (like init) should be designed with multiple implementations and all machine types in mind. This means phones, set top boxes, TVs, routers, automation hardware, supe…

systemd makes a lot of sense for embedded systems: * Embedded systems use watchdogs. systemd implements a watchdog supervisor chain, where systemd supervises applications, and the hardware watchdog supervises systemd. * kdbus: efficient IPC * networkd: simple network setup, very fast DHCP client * fast boot times * handles many complexities, so that embedded developers can focus on their application

That all sounds fantastic, but what do you do if just one component of systemd doesn't work for you? Or if you only want to use one or two components of systemd?

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#352

Post by anonbanker » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

mickt wrote: post #312

rbanffy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything I read about SystemD is negative May be a bias in action. People who like it, or who really don't care much about it (I dislike journalctl, but, apart from that, I'm mostly OK with it) don't waste time writing how not much changed for them and how things continue to work as expected.

There does appear to be a lot of negativity around systemd, such as people giving out about binary logging. I'm sure there's got to be a way to enable text logging along with binary logging. This lad seems really enthusiastic about systemd logging and systemctl: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/journalctl.html There are a lot of interesting features, but personally I'd prefer to have both binary and text logging. Tex…

Yes, the author of systemd/systemctl is very enthusiastic about his projects. Why did you point that out?

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#353

Post by GrinningFool » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

diltonm wrote: post #288

onli wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulseaudio still has problems. Sound suddenly being muted, it using the wrong alsamixer settings, sound being garbled until you pass in arcance settings or change it back to Alsa. Granted, the error might be more in part of the rest of the ecosystem, though I doubt it. But it is sadly far from "just use pulseaudio and everything will work instantly". And if it works, there is no need to think that Alsa alone wouldn't…

Strange I don't see the issues you're talking about I use Ubuntu Desktop on a variety of desktops and laptops. I'd say PA was stable by Ubuntu 12.04. I do Skype and Google Talkplugin (now Hangouts).

Working in your use case doesn't invalidate someone else's. I've had some systems that pulseaudio has been great for. I have some in which I still don't have fully working sound.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#354

Post by peterwwillis » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

andyl wrote: post #7

Everything I read about SystemD is negative. Negative on the technology, negative on the people who created it. Nothing positive. How is it that SystemD is about to dominate the market? Who is driving SystemD adoption, and why?

> How is it that SystemD is about to dominate the market?

Religiously passionate salesmen, selling an upgrade to your car stereo, who conveniently forget to mention that you also have to replace your whole car.

> Who is driving SystemD adoption,

Kay Sievers, Harald Hoyer, Daniel Mack, Tom Gundersen, David Herrmann, and its creator, Lennart Poettering [1].

> and why?

One guy wanted to make booting his desktop faster. [2]

--

Later it was decided that systemd would be "a big opportunity for Linux standardization. Since it standardizes many interfaces of the system that previously have been differing on every distribution, on every implementation, adopting it helps to work against the balkanization of the Linux interfaces. Choosing systemd means redefining more closely what the Linux platform is about." [3] Basically, they want to change "how we put together Linux systems." [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering [2] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html [3] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/why.html [4] http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linu...

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#355

Post by near » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

seivadmas wrote: post #244

badgersandjam wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no opinion on systemd until yesterday. In fact I had a glace or two at the code and it's pretty clean and I liked the rough objectives laid out. I installed CentOS 7 on a machine last night that we're replacing CentOS 6 on and was poked in the face with timedatectl and dbus problems for an entire hour, some of which were intermittent. Debugging these issues is a horrific pain. I lost 4 hours on it. I've never l…

You know this is funny, I remember reading comments EXACTLY like this about 3-4 years ago but with pulseaudio in place of systemd. Pulseaudio was Lennart's previous project. It broke everything in linux sound for a while, everybody moaned and hated it and said it was the worst thing since the crucifixion of Christ. Yet, name one problem you had with sound on linux in the past year? There are very few. Pulseaudio now…

> Yet, name one problem you had with sound on linux in the past year?

That's just it. Linux sound worked fine for me before Pulseaudio, and FreeBSD sound has always worked perfectly fine for me. In fact, FreeBSD solved sound mixing sooner via /dev/pcm virtualization (while Linux chose to create the Linux-only ALSA instead), and has always had lower observed latency.

Pulseaudio screwed up my audio so badly that for a year I was running the closed source OSSv4 binaries and manually recompiling all the audio libraries to use OSS instead of ALSA/Pulse.

It is not fantastic to push horribly broken code onto the entire Linux userbase while others frantically jump in to help patch and fix the trainwreck.

And we're doing the same thing again with systemd. Instead of having a few years where users can choose between systemd, sysvinit, openrc or upstart, while all of the major bugs are worked out, we're being forced immediately from sysvinit (Wheezy) to systemd (Jessie). I was on Lennart's treadmill with Pulse, I'm not getting on it again with systemd.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#356

Post by timf » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:11 PM UTC

The author responds to a number of the comments here: http://blog.lusis.org/blog/2014/11/21/a-few-things/

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#357

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:13 PM UTC

vdaniuk wrote: post #234

badgersandjam wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years in EE (embedded systems, defense industry), then 15 in what we now call devops/architecture. Experience is fine. I have no problems being arrogant about that. I've fallen down a lot more holes than a lot of people and know what I'm talking about. When I say tested properly, I mean tested completely. If you miss an entire functional unit of the software and a client reports it as broken, its pretty obvious wh…

> When I say tested properly, I mean tested completely. I am still in the learning phase, but even I know that complete testing of any complex software is practically impossible. So, how do you guarantee completedness in "proper" testing? I know you can't without redefining the word "completely". What's your definition? Also see Impossibility of Complete Testing[0] by Cem Kanen, co-founder of http://www.associationfo…

You should at least be testing the happy path and most common failure mode of every component of a software system, whether manually or automatically. The most visible components to the user should be tested most. Imagine an ecommerce site where nobody ever tested checkout, or an OS where nobody tested logging in.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#358

Post by ambrice » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:17 PM UTC

badgersandjam wrote: post #121

paulfurtado wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what ended up being the root cause of the timedatectl problem?

Absolutely no idea. It just went away spontaneously which is even more worrying as that suggests the system is non-deterministic. I don't have the error on my phone which I'm on at the moment but it threw a dbus error with no debug info.

If you don't know what the problem was why are you so convinced it was systemd? Could be the kernel, could be udev, dbus, filesystem, or hardware (sorry, there is never 100% "known good" hardware).

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#359

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:23 PM UTC

general_failure wrote: post #273

badgersandjam wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are individually I agree, but as a group of people it's not such a good story. It's quite dysfunctional from what I've seen.

What does this comment even mean? What's wrong with them as a group?

To borrow a quote from a popular movie:

    A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#360

Post by moron4hire » Fri, Nov 21, 2014, 5:24 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #339

moron4hire wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so let me get this straight. You're an engineer-engineer, not a system administrator or a software developer. And you think there is a fundamental problem of qualification in software development, yet you lack qualification in software development. On your points: #1 is patently false, to the point of being extremely insulting. You've lost all sympathy from me at this point. Go peddle your baseless opinions som…

Nah, they're pretty much right. As for testing--notice that when a lot of people here are reporting issues with systemd/pulseaudio, their reports are pretty much dismissed out of hand, or they're told "no, you've done something wrong". For #2, a lot of times somebody with the right political position (say, Lennart at Redhat) or just the ability to shout louder and longer than anyone else will get something put in, re…

I read him as leveling his complaints against the entire field of software development, and if he was being more specific than that, it was at least as big as the subset who develop Linux.