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Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

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Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#11

Post by din-9 »

anon1385 wrote: post #2

>Correct. I don't mind people piggy-backing on some fairly obvious generic term like "debug" per se. I don't know if the old init scripts did that, but I do know they did it for "quiet", which is basically the reverse of "debug". >What I mind is people closing bugs and not admitting mistakes. If Kay had even said "sorry, the excessive output was a bug in systemd, it's already fixed in current -git", that would have b…

>> What I mind is people closing bugs and not admitting mistakes.

> So Torvalds is saying he doesn't like dictatorial project maintainers who reply in an abrupt and abrasive manner to contributors?

You have quoted what he did say and made up a position that he did not.

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#12

Post by [deleted] »

anon1385 wrote: post #2

>Correct. I don't mind people piggy-backing on some fairly obvious generic term like "debug" per se. I don't know if the old init scripts did that, but I do know they did it for "quiet", which is basically the reverse of "debug". >What I mind is people closing bugs and not admitting mistakes. If Kay had even said "sorry, the excessive output was a bug in systemd, it's already fixed in current -git", that would have b…

[deleted]

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#13

Post by [deleted] »

macrael wrote: post #9
rg3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. As things are currently, wouldn't it be best if the story link was to the actual original post? https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post...

My guess is that the comments on this one led to it being posted here (there is discussion from Linus and others down there.)

[deleted]

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#14

Post by Orangeair »

lawl wrote: post #8
Orangeair wrote: post #4

I have a fair amount of experience with Linux, but I'm a little lost by what's going on here. Can someone out there dumb this down a bit for an init newbie?

You can pass the kernel options before booting. i.e. "quiet" or "debug". The Kernel exposes these options via /proc/cmdline. systemd parses /proc/cmdline and if "debug" is set, it also raises it's log level to debug. Then systemd logs so much to the kernel log that it gets flooded and fails to boot. Edit: And story wise, systemd says yeah, we're not going to fix this or rename the debug flag for systemd to "systemd.d…

So basically, systemd is catching the common keyword 'debug' from a command that being given to something else entirely, and in turn enabling its own logging, which floods the system. The command wasn't actually meant for systemd, but for the kernel. Is that correct?

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#15

Post by lawl »

Orangeair wrote: post #14
lawl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pass the kernel options before booting. i.e. "quiet" or "debug". The Kernel exposes these options via /proc/cmdline. systemd parses /proc/cmdline and if "debug" is set, it also raises it's log level to debug. Then systemd logs so much to the kernel log that it gets flooded and fails to boot. Edit: And story wise, systemd says yeah, we're not going to fix this or rename the debug flag for systemd to "systemd.d…

So basically, systemd is catching the common keyword 'debug' from a command that being given to something else entirely, and in turn enabling its own logging, which floods the system. The command wasn't actually meant for systemd, but for the kernel. Is that correct?

Pretty much. Though Linus says he's okay with other people parsing these options, that's why they expose them. But of course you should do it in a sane way. And systemd refuses to patch their code to namespace their flag and listen for "systemd.debug" instead of the generic debug flag that is primarily meant for the kernel.

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#16

Post by Orangeair »

lordgilman wrote: post #10
Orangeair wrote: post #4

I have a fair amount of experience with Linux, but I'm a little lost by what's going on here. Can someone out there dumb this down a bit for an init newbie?

The kernel has a debug option that can be specified at boot time to increase its logging verbosity. systemd looks at the kernel command line to do the same and starts writing its own verbose logging out to the kernel's message buffer. Writing out to the kernel message buffer is done for pragmatic reasons: generally if you're debugging init problems they're happening when the machine is first starting so you would lik…

Very explanatory, thank you very much.

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#18

Post by Jach »

sprash wrote: post #17

> A kernel is just one component of the OS among many, and ultimately an implementation detail. -- Lennard Poettering

God damn it, now in addition to fighting off pulseaudio and systemd from being on my Gentoo box, in a few years I'm going to have to fight off the Lennart kernel...

Re: Response to systemd's use of the debug flag

#20

Post by onestone »

macrael wrote: post #9
rg3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. As things are currently, wouldn't it be best if the story link was to the actual original post? https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post...

My guess is that the comments on this one led to it being posted here (there is discussion from Linus and others down there.)

Yup. And Kay Sievers has another clone of the story, with a (quite unapologetic) comment of his own: https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/3cWXzYqB6MB
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