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Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

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Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#161

The proof in the end that SystemD is a cancer in the Linux ecosystem. Officially it is just a stack and you can decide to use another one if you don't like it. Unofficially RedHat money ensured that other critical stacks will depend heavily on it so that you can't easily swap without replacing the whole ecosystem.

systemd not SystemD idk why people got that in their head.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#163
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might use the NT kernel and their own version of the Linux userland. I'd be open to the idea, if the kernel were open sourced (MIT licensed?) so I could play with it too.

Why do that when Win32 is what everyone wants? We’ve already had NT + Linux userland; that was WSLv1.

I think if we're talking about "what everyone wants", Windows 11 obviously isn't it, so that's not necessarily the driving force here.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#164
post #55
post #50

From a completely technical standpoint, is systemd really better than SysVInit? I ask this question in good faith. I have used both and had no problems with either, although for personal preference, I am more traditional and favor SysVInit.

I always dreaded trying to create a service with bash-based init scripts. Not only did it involve rolling a heck of a lot yourself (the thing you were running was generally expected to do the double-fork hack itself and otherwise do 'well behaved daemon' things), it varied significantly from distro to distro, and I was never confident I actually got it right (and indeed, I often saw cases where it had most definitely…

Is this really that hard to type?

https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/etc/rc.d/watchdog...

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this was your first HN contribution and you didn't post any links, so maybe that's what they were thinking?

Links? To what? "First contribution"? I'm not new around here. (If anyone is wondering what he's referring to--I said that I was mystified why my post would be immediately downvoted.) Let's try again, much shorter this time: I am releasing a distro soon that is right up your alley. SEE MY PROFILE for info.

There is nothing visible on your profile[0] other than a derogatory comment about HN in your bio.

If you're seeing something there, then I would advise you to look at it again when you're logged out so that you can see what others are seeing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=its_ubuntu2

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#166
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just HTTP only (no SSL) and there's nothing there. ... until now! Here's some nice GTK3 patches for you: http://killthe.net/patches/gtk-3.24.43-allow-disabling-atk-b... http://killthe.net/patches/gtk-3.24.43-allow-transparent-win... http://killthe.net/patches/gtk-3.24.43-allow-wheel-scrolling... http://killthe.net/patches/gtk-3.24.43-appearance-tweaks-and... http://killthe.net/patches/gtk-3.24.43-disable-mnemoni…

Thanks for your work! Getting off the "upgrade" treadmill really resonates with me.

Just to be clear, I did not write these patches, but have collected many like this via scouring the net. I think I did make the ATK one though.

If you'd like to be an alpha/beta/release tester of this system, hit me up via email please. I'll start with an initial closed alpha release here in a month or so, if there's interest.

Now for the donation drive: I have plenty of time and a stable situation to work on this system, but the one drawback is I have little funds--and unfortunately my workstation is getting pretty long in the tooth. (AMD FX. It's been a good system, but I'm getting Left Behind here.) The main thing holding me back is compile speed, especially doing work on Chromium and WebKit. It's 12+ hour compile times for either of those, with the latest C++ standards they're using. The system as a whole builds in about 48 hours on my computer.

So I'm hoping to bump into an "angel investor" who either has some old Xeon (Broadwell or newer?) hardware laying around they would donate, something with lots of cores and memory, or who can make a cash donation for me to buy the gear I'm looking at on Ebay. $400-500 is enough for a nice 5x upgrade. It amazes me how cheap this stuff is. We're talking $5000+ hardware when it was new, for peanuts. Still quite powerful.

(A better video card would be great too, if you're feeling generous. Mine is a GTX570. I'd love to have a GTX7xx or newer, or equivalent AMD. That's more of a want than a need however.)

I'm very interested in ppc64 gear too. I want this system to have first-class PPC support. Anyone got an old POWER8 or POWER9 system laying around, or 32-bit stuff? I've got this system building OK in Qemu for ppc64le but it is SLOW, as you can imagine. Like 5 seconds per line in configure scripts, lol.

If anyone out there is in a position where they can help this project in some way, email me please! Thank you.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#167
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're already reported. And ignored. Have you _seen_ the systemd issue backlog? The iSCSI loop issue: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/34164 It keeps popping up again and again and is summarily ignored. The remote FS detection also came up multiple times, and the maintainers don't care.

OK, think it through... How do we determine that a specific instance of a filesystem mount is "remote", or even requires a "network"? Consider that the network endpoint might be localhost, a netlink/unix/other socket, or, say, an IP address of the virtual host (practically guaranteed to be there and not truly "remote"). systemd has .mount units which are way more configurable than /etc/fstab lines, so they'd let you,…

> How do we determine that a specific instance of a filesystem mount is "remote", or even requires a "network"?

Like systemd authors do! Hard-code the list of them in the kernel, including support for fuse and sshfs. Everything else is pure blasphemy and should be avoided.

Me? I'd have an explicit setting in the mount unit file, with defaults inferred from the device type. I would also make sure to not just randomly add landmines, like systemd-update-done.service. It has an unusual dependency requirements, it runs before the network filesystems but after the local filesystems.

I bet you didn't know about it? It's a service that runs _once_ after a system update. So the effect is that your system _sometimes_ fails to boot.

> systemd has .mount units which are way more configurable than /etc/fstab lines

It's literally the inverse. As in, /etc/fstab has _more_ options than native mount units. No, I'm not joking.

Look at this man page: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst... The options with "x-systemd." prefix are available for fstab.

Look for the string: "Note that this option can only be used in /etc/fstab, and will be ignored when part of the Options= setting in a unit file."

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#168
post #27

All I want is init scripts and X11, but the horizons are shrinking. I've already compromised with systemd, and I don't like it. I see BSD in my future, or at least a linux distro from the list here https://nosystemd.org/ - probably Gentoo. Nothing to stop me, absolutely nothing at all. I just need a few days free to backup/wipe/reinstall/reconfigure/restore_data and I'll be good. Better make that a few weeks. Maybe o…

What practical problems do you run into with systemd? All the compliants I see tend to be philisophical criticism of systemd being "not unixy" or "monolithic". But there's a reason it's being adopted: it does it's job well. It's a pleasure being able to manage timers, socket activations, sandboxing, and resource slices, all of which suck to configure on script based init systems. People complain in website comment se…

I wrote up some issues with service reliability here https://github.com/andrewbaxter/puteron/?tab=readme-ov-file#...

Design-wise, I think having users modify service on/off state *and* systemd itself modify those states is a terrible design, which leads to stuff turning back on when you turn it off, or things turning off despite you wanting them on, etc. (also mentioned higher up)

FWIW after making puteron I found dinit https://github.com/davmac314/dinit which has a very similar design, so presumably they hit similar issues.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#169
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, think it through... How do we determine that a specific instance of a filesystem mount is "remote", or even requires a "network"? Consider that the network endpoint might be localhost, a netlink/unix/other socket, or, say, an IP address of the virtual host (practically guaranteed to be there and not truly "remote"). systemd has .mount units which are way more configurable than /etc/fstab lines, so they'd let you,…

> How do we determine that a specific instance of a filesystem mount is "remote", or even requires a "network"? Like systemd authors do! Hard-code the list of them in the kernel, including support for fuse and sshfs. Everything else is pure blasphemy and should be avoided. Me? I'd have an explicit setting in the mount unit file, with defaults inferred from the device type. I would also make sure to not just randomly…

Sounds like your admin, distro, or the systemd team could pay some attention to systemd-update-done.service

The "can only be used in /etc/fstab" systemd settings are essentially workarounds to do those things via fstab (and workaround fstab related issues) rather than depend on other systemd facilities (c.f. systemd-gpt-auto-generator). From a "what can you do in /etc/fstab without knowing systemd is working behind the scenes" point of view, then yes, systemd units are vastly more configurable.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#170

This is a mindblower. To quote Bruce Dubbs: ''As a personal note, I do not like this decision. To me LFS is about learning how a system works. Understanding the boot process is a big part of that. systemd is about 1678 "C" files plus many data files. System V is "22" C files plus about 50 short bash scripts and data files. Yes, systemd provides a lot of capabilities, but we will be losing some things I consider impor…

Linux is literally 62k C files. The amount of time you'll spend understanding how Linux works will dwarf systemd. At least when studying systemd you will be learning a more modern approach of init systems.
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