A word about systemd
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A word about systemd
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: A word about systemd
#2I have a quibble with the following statement:
"It's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the past 20 years."
My quibble is it's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the last 40 years, not 20. The problem I see with the whole discussion/argument around systemd is it ignores there's two philosophies in computer science, which for convenience sake I'll call the Unix way and the Windows way. I believe the reason so many people, especially us old-timers, are railing against systemd is because it adheres to the Windows way. The problem is there's a lot of Windows people who've now migrated over to Linux and so they love it. It's like Linux has been gentrified and we've all been kicked out of our homes. At least that's why I think people are so intensely emotional about this subject.
As for me, I've decided the hell with it. If Linux now wants to follow the Windows way and adopt systemd - there's nothing I can do about it. It's not even really my fight. I had nothing to do with the creation or maintenance of Linux, GNU, the init tools, etc. Though it's all free I've decided to vote with my time and usage - and that now goes to BSD. So long as BSD follows the Unix way I'll stick with it. Maybe you'll join me, maybe you won't. You use what you want to use and I'll use what I want to use. Peace.
Re: A word about systemd
#3I have a quibble with the following statement: "It's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the past 20 years." My quibble is it's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the last 40 years, not 20. The problem I see with the whole discussion/argument around systemd is it ignores there's two philosophies in computer science, which for convenience sake I'll call the Unix way and the Windows way. I…
How is having every single daemon implement setuid, chroot, logging, privilege dropping and so on "unix way"?
Right now, every biggish daemon has to implement the same old logic in a slightly different way. How many logging systems and files do you know?
I am totally looking for more programs to use systemd's socket activation. This is the true Unix way -- a server should do only one thing (serve), and not worry about logging, uids, and other system peculiarities.
(yeah, we could do it with daemontools as well.. but no one did the hard job of converting thousands of packages to daemontools)
Re: A word about systemd
#4moderators: can you add [2016] to the title?
https://web.archive.org/web/20160308042800/https://skarnet.o...
Re: A word about systemd
#5I have a quibble with the following statement: "It's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the past 20 years." My quibble is it's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the last 40 years, not 20. The problem I see with the whole discussion/argument around systemd is it ignores there's two philosophies in computer science, which for convenience sake I'll call the Unix way and the Windows way. I…
Did you try systemd? My biggest problems with it is that a) it's written by macho C programmers, who couldn't produce anything secure even if their lives dependent on it and b) it's not unixy, i.e. not defining protocols and not letting everyone implement their own supervisors and their own behaviors and c) it's too sloppy wrt changing files on disk, making it really hard to keep control over that.
But I do believe we still need to move towards supervision trees, just not with systemd.
Re: A word about systemd
#6I have a quibble with the following statement: "It's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the past 20 years." My quibble is it's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the last 40 years, not 20. The problem I see with the whole discussion/argument around systemd is it ignores there's two philosophies in computer science, which for convenience sake I'll call the Unix way and the Windows way. I…
How is having every single daemon implement setuid, chroot, logging, privilege dropping and so on "unix way"? Right now, every biggish daemon has to implement the same old logic in a slightly different way. How many logging systems and files do you know? I am totally looking for more programs to use systemd's socket activation. This is the true Unix way -- a server should do only one thing (serve), and not worry abou…
The biggest problem with systemd is it purported itself to be an init system - and then set out to do a whole lot more. That's where it abandons the Unix way, as far as I'm concerned. But you like it and the Linux community overall seems to like it. That's fine. That just means I'm no longer in synch with the Linux community - I'm not aligned with their vision - so I'm leaving it. I no longer have any hard feelings about it. I don't feel my 25 years of using Linux have been "wasted." It worked well for what I needed it for but now it's time for me to move on. So I am.
Re: A word about systemd
#7I have a quibble with the following statement: "It's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the past 20 years." My quibble is it's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the last 40 years, not 20. The problem I see with the whole discussion/argument around systemd is it ignores there's two philosophies in computer science, which for convenience sake I'll call the Unix way and the Windows way. I…
Did you try systemd? My biggest problems with it is that a) it's written by macho C programmers, who couldn't produce anything secure even if their lives dependent on it and b) it's not unixy, i.e. not defining protocols and not letting everyone implement their own supervisors and their own behaviors and c) it's too sloppy wrt changing files on disk, making it really hard to keep control over that. But I do believe w…
I've used systemd and I'll still continue using systemd at work where we use RHEL, because our decision to use RHEL isn't going to change any time soon, if ever. But on my own devices? No. That's not to say systemd doesn't have some good points, it does. It's good at being an init system - the problem is it's gone on and taken over so much more. It's like kudzu. We wanted some greenery but damn! Now it's everywhere!
But, it appears the Linux community overall likes it. Which is their prerogative. I don't, which is mine. I look at it like an amicable divorce. I'm leaving Linux, but there's still visitations (work). I wish the community the best.
Re: A word about systemd
#8I have a quibble with the following statement: "It's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the past 20 years." My quibble is it's as if we had learned nothing from the mistakes of the last 40 years, not 20. The problem I see with the whole discussion/argument around systemd is it ignores there's two philosophies in computer science, which for convenience sake I'll call the Unix way and the Windows way. I…
Did you try systemd? My biggest problems with it is that a) it's written by macho C programmers, who couldn't produce anything secure even if their lives dependent on it and b) it's not unixy, i.e. not defining protocols and not letting everyone implement their own supervisors and their own behaviors and c) it's too sloppy wrt changing files on disk, making it really hard to keep control over that. But I do believe w…
Agree about a) [but: doesn't that rather contradict "it's not unixy"... ].
Regarding b), what do you mean exactly? If you're talking about cgroups, you can delegate part of the hierarchy to a supervisor process via the Delegate= directive, as documented at https://systemd.io/CGROUP_DELEGATION
Re: A word about systemd
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is having every single daemon implement setuid, chroot, logging, privilege dropping and so on "unix way"? Right now, every biggish daemon has to implement the same old logic in a slightly different way. How many logging systems and files do you know? I am totally looking for more programs to use systemd's socket activation. This is the true Unix way -- a server should do only one thing (serve), and not worry abou…
The biggest problem with systemd is it purported itself to be an init system - and then set out to do a whole lot more. That's where it abandons the Unix way, as far as I'm concerned. But you like it and the Linux community overall seems to like it. That's fine. That just means I'm no longer in synch with the Linux community - I'm not aligned with their vision - so I'm leaving it. I no longer have any hard feelings a…
I am not sure who said that systemd was just an init system. While the very first blog post did call it so, it is certainly not described as such now:
Package: systemd
Description-en: system and service manager
In any case, Linux is not systemd yet. You still have Arch and Gentoo at least. You will miss out the latest security features, but presumably you would not want to do this anyway.
Re: A word about systemd
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem with systemd is it purported itself to be an init system - and then set out to do a whole lot more. That's where it abandons the Unix way, as far as I'm concerned. But you like it and the Linux community overall seems to like it. That's fine. That just means I'm no longer in synch with the Linux community - I'm not aligned with their vision - so I'm leaving it. I no longer have any hard feelings a…
I am not sure who said that systemd was just an init system. While the very first blog post did call it so, it is certainly not described as such now: Package: systemd Description-en: system and service manager "systemd is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1" (from https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/ ) In any case, Linux is no…
> In any case, Linux is not systemd yet. You still have Arch and Gentoo at least.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? Arch has used systemd as the default for over six years now (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/systemd), and switching to something else is not officially supported (although technically possible).