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Why I dislike systemd

steven-mcdonald.id.au

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Re: Why I dislike systemd

#11

Post by empressplay »

ghshephard wrote: post #7

There is something epically beautiful about OpenBSD's consistency over the last 10 years. I swear that a 2004 OpenBSD sysadmin would be close to 100% efficient with a circa 2015 OpenBSD system, despite the absolutely massive number of improvements and changes that have been made with the operating system. Once systemd starts to get traction, it's cognitive overhead is going to become a real problem for sysadmins who…

Except that there's no reason for systemd's model to "get traction" outside of desktop-focussed Linux distributions, since a "better user experience" is it's current raison d'etre.

So no, I shouldn't need to have to "learn to trust the operating system / systemd" on my servers -- it has no reason to be there!

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#12

Post by vacri »

keypusher wrote: post #6

I agree with most of this, especially the fact that complexity has simply been shifted to other places. It's much easier for me to read a systemd unit file than it was for me to read a complex set of init scripts. The problem is that when I have 10 or 20 units with interlocking dependencies, it's an absolute nightmare to try and untangle because I have to jump between so many different files. Having to specify After=…

$0.02: journalctl isn't even tab-completable until you've nearly finished typing it. :)

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#13

Post by empressplay »

stephen_g wrote: post #9
ghshephard wrote: post #7

There is something epically beautiful about OpenBSD's consistency over the last 10 years. I swear that a 2004 OpenBSD sysadmin would be close to 100% efficient with a circa 2015 OpenBSD system, despite the absolutely massive number of improvements and changes that have been made with the operating system. Once systemd starts to get traction, it's cognitive overhead is going to become a real problem for sysadmins who…

I'm not a professional sysadmin, but as a developer with a bunch of virtual servers systemd has only made things far easier. Writing init scripts used to be a real pain, now I can set up a unit file in two minutes and it works... Maybe there's something to be said for "sysadmins who want to be able to model the entire boot process and run-state in their head" but with correct information about dependencies and so on,…

...and that's awesome if you don't need 99.9% uptime and thus need to have absolute faith in your system's stability. However, for mission-critical applications that do it's hard to argue that systemd is a better solution than writing all your scripts by hand. Unless you want to be able to blame systemd if it all goes pear-shaped but I doubt your boss will buy it =)

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#16

Post by StevenJM »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

Steven, if you're reading, you got your history slightly wrong. System V got its init handling from Sun's SunOS 4.x. It was negotiated as part of the integration between SunOS and System V which would become the "one UNIX for everyone". Unfortunately for all of us, AT&T really really loved "run levels" and Sun really really liked BSD's way of configuring the system. Which got you the unholy love child you saw in Sola…

Thanks for the info. I've updated that section of the article with a note (and a link to this thread).

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#17

Post by anko »

stephen_g wrote: post #9
ghshephard wrote: post #7

There is something epically beautiful about OpenBSD's consistency over the last 10 years. I swear that a 2004 OpenBSD sysadmin would be close to 100% efficient with a circa 2015 OpenBSD system, despite the absolutely massive number of improvements and changes that have been made with the operating system. Once systemd starts to get traction, it's cognitive overhead is going to become a real problem for sysadmins who…

I'm not a professional sysadmin, but as a developer with a bunch of virtual servers systemd has only made things far easier. Writing init scripts used to be a real pain, now I can set up a unit file in two minutes and it works... Maybe there's something to be said for "sysadmins who want to be able to model the entire boot process and run-state in their head" but with correct information about dependencies and so on,…

> Writing init scripts used to be a real pain, now I can set up a unit file in two minutes and it works...

This.

I'm not saying systemd is the best answer, but I really think sysadmins could learn a thing or two from developers. Nearly every custom init script I've ever seen has bugs, and isn't portable between systems. Where are the unit tests? Code reuse? Focus on maintainability/readability?

Shell scripting used to be amazing, but as a language these days it's behind the times.

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#18

Post by swhipple »

The author mentions that he believes the biggest problem of systemd is repeating some mistakes of SysV init, but I think it's actually pretty important that familiarity is preserved to help people upgrade. For example, the author mentions babysitting the users (systemctl edit) and config/daemon reloading as things that could be made automatic, I'm assuming with e.g. inotify change events.

But you often want some confidence that the change you're making to your system is what you expect, and we've had them all along:

- visudo(8) sanity checks, for atomicity and syntax, to help prevent you from bricking your authorization

- an explicit SIGHUP to reload the configuration file for your daemon, after you've checked the config, rather than accidentally saving your file while you're editing it and bringing down your daemon.

You could expect everyone to adopt new practices for editing the configurations, but the behavior would be very surprising to anyone used to the old way.

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#19

Post by jveld »

It got the job done by making the 99% majority of use cases more difficult in order to make the 1% minority simpler. This is a design pattern I think is being repeated in systemd.

I kinda had the opposite impression. I first encountered systemd when I started messing around with arch for a couple little vps projects. At the time I was doing sysadmin that involved both Ubuntu and CentOS, and I definitely found day-to-day tasks easier with systemd (better built in monitoring, consistent syntax, etc). For simple cases, writing a unit file sucks a lot less than writing an initscript. The warts in systemd only started to irritate me when I was first setting up my personal machines (one laptop, one tower) to run arch [1]. Even then, the bloat in the design irked me more than actually using it. So, I'm in favor of systemd, but not thrilled (dbus everywhere is annoying).

Then again, I don't maintain any packages with strange and/or complex daemons. If anybody's had a really hard time getting their stuff to work with systemd, I'd be interested to hear stories.

1: Not completely true. I want my damn log files back.

Re: Why I dislike systemd

#20

Post by vacri »

devnonymous wrote: post #15

One of the more sensible ^rants^ I've read against systemd (it is KISS for some weirdly convoluted definition of KISS). Too bad these naysayers are not/will not be taken seriously.

The naysayers are taken seriously, but they're in the decision-making minority. Linux distro maintainers wanted to move on from SysV Init, and systemd looked promising. Just because the naysayers didn't get their way (and on some distros, they did) doesn't mean that their criticisms aren't noted.
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