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Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

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Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#41

Post by bitwize »

sseveran wrote: post #34
pmoriarty wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that…

All that may be true. But I prefer today writing a little file that is a systemd service than fixing up someone else's init scripts. If it is as broken as you say why was it adopted?

Because Lennart has a lot of pull at Red Hat, and Red Hat has a lot of pull in the Linux community.

The BSDs have really straightforward to maintain init scripts. Mainly because all the boilerplate junk is hidden in sourced-in files. Runit takes a more advanced approach, but its service files are still simple scripts a few lines long. We don't need a reinvent-the-world solution like systemd to address the most complained about problems with init.

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#42

Post by KirinDave »

horusthecat wrote: post #27
KirinDave wrote: post #2

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. System…

It's not a holy war, but it does have a lot of politics, which engineers like to pretend don't exist. Here is the only solid criticism of systemd I've read that focuses on design (as opposed to bugs that surface from the sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development): http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ Notably, darknedgy hosted/hosts uselessd, which was a lightweight version of systemd. On…

I joke that I'll stop using systenmd if "you" stop writing C. Thoughtcrime for thoughtcrime. ;)

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#43

Post by KirinDave »

falsedan wrote: post #19
KirinDave wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either: Linus's behavior is fine and this is expected in the FSF community OR We burn all those MLs into the ground. Terrible culture in these projects is basically how everyone is conditioned to interact from the top down. We can't pick and choose which assholes are okay and which are not. We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want.

> We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.

If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#44

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

KirinDave wrote: post #2

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. System…

With Emacs vs Vi it was a way to amuse ourselves, because everyone is free to use their own favourite editor. With Systemd, we are not - we're all forced to use it. Yes, it did solved some SysV init problems, but introduced a few of its own. Most importantly though, it grew into a more complex subsystem with numerous dependencies, and this unfortunately causes problems unheard of in the old days of SysV Init. I don't think so many people would complain that hard if Systemd was easy to replace (which I think is the main point of this unnecessarily lengthy post).

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#45

Post by rst »

horusthecat wrote: post #27
KirinDave wrote: post #2

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. System…

It's not a holy war, but it does have a lot of politics, which engineers like to pretend don't exist. Here is the only solid criticism of systemd I've read that focuses on design (as opposed to bugs that surface from the sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development): http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ Notably, darknedgy hosted/hosts uselessd, which was a lightweight version of systemd. On…

To some of us, the "sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development" is the problem. Particularly when they decide to reimplement services instead of using battle-hardened code, and revive old bugs that haven't been seen in the wild in years. As has happened with their DNS resolver, which was initially shipped missing measures that everyone else had shipped years ago to deter cache poisoning, and had buffer overflow problems on top of that.

There are not fundamental design flaws. They don't have to be, to be a problem. And it's a problem exacerbated by the developers' typical response to problem reports -- to try to transfer blame, or treat them as personal attacks, rather than dealing with the issue. An example of that is CVE-2017-1000082 -- a rare example of a real problem that was assigned a CVE number by request of someone other than the developer, because the developers are still insisting, after a week of well-deserved mockery, that it's not a problem (or not their problem, or something)...

Refs:

Buffer overflow: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/29/systemd_pwned_by_dn...

Cache poisoning: http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q4/592

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#46

Post by horusthecat »

bitwize wrote: post #41
sseveran wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that may be true. But I prefer today writing a little file that is a systemd service than fixing up someone else's init scripts. If it is as broken as you say why was it adopted?

Because Lennart has a lot of pull at Red Hat, and Red Hat has a lot of pull in the Linux community. The BSDs have really straightforward to maintain init scripts. Mainly because all the boilerplate junk is hidden in sourced-in files. Runit takes a more advanced approach, but its service files are still simple scripts a few lines long. We don't need a reinvent-the-world solution like systemd to address the most compla…

> Because Lennart has a lot of pull at Red Hat... We don't need a reinvent-the-world solution like systemd to address the most complained about problems with init.

You work in software right?

You never ever "just" replace a system with an improved feature-alike product, you go apeshit crazy with cool stuff you wanted for the past 5 years but couldn't get approved, until you run out of budget. Duh.

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#47

Post by ksk »

pmoriarty wrote: post #9
KirinDave wrote: post #2

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. System…

One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that…

>, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that just smells way too much like forcing Linux to be more like Windows, which a lot of hard-core Linux users are ideologically opposed to.

That ship sailed a long ago when Linus ranted against microkernels :) Linux was never meant to follow a 'do one-thing well' design. It was designed to be a monolithic do-all-things design that's also highly modular.

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#48

Post by catdog »

smhenderson wrote: post #32
bandrami wrote: post #18

I mean, it is kind of strange that with one apt-get install, one apt-get purge, one apt-get autoremove, and one pinfile in /etc/apt, you can replace systemd in Debian. You'd think Devuan could just do that and redistribute or something.

It's not systemd that's the problem, it's libsystemd0. Try removing it on Stretch. It's doable [0] but it's a pain and makes future maintenance fragile and error prone. And if I understand correctly once you do so you're not running Gnome on that system anymore... [0] http://lkcl.net/reports/removing_systemd_from_debian/

Which is a purely religious problem as libsystemd0 basically does nothing if systemd is not running. Debian is a binary distribution, a lot of stuff is linked against libs you probably never use, that's just how it is.

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#49

Post by [deleted] »

pmoriarty wrote: post #9
KirinDave wrote: post #2

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. System…

One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that…

[deleted]

Re: Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

#50

Post by jcrites »

benchaney wrote: post #28
KirinDave wrote: post #2

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. System…

> I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors It is interesting that you say that, because I am still waiting for the reasoned technical argument in favor of systemd. Anyway, my main issue with systemd is how difficult it is to get rid of. It doesn't matter how awesome you think your software is, there is always going to be someone who disagrees. The beauty of FOSS…

> It is interesting that you say that, because I am still waiting for the reasoned technical argument in favor of systemd.

In that case, you may be interested in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387989 and the other resources it links to.

The comment reviews Russ Allbery's analysis of systemd [1], which he wrote as part of Debian's evaluation of whether to switch to it. Russ lays out a number of detailed arguments in favor of systemd, and contrasts systemd to alternative init systems.

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2013/12/msg00234.html

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