Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

lists.linuxfromscratch.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 416 posts

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#51

Post by tokyobreakfast »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #29
antonyh wrote: 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…

Almost wonder if this kind of thing will be an impetus for GNU Hurd to get more momentum. I saw an update recently that they're now finally properly supporting 64bit and sounds like there's active dev going on there again. It apparently uses SysVInit

Did they finally add USB support?

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#52

Post by mid-kid »

I was considering forking the base book and maintaining it, as I have kept an eye and occassionally built the project over the years (I use it a lot for package management/bootstrapping/cross compilation experiments), but it appears there already is one: https://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/sympa/arc/lfs-dev/2026-02...

I believe maintaining the base book is the most important part, BLFS has some really good hints but a very significant amount of packages have few differences, collecting these in a separate hints file or similar would help a bit, at least for things that don't hard-depend on systemd like gnome.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#53

Post by acdha »

cf100clunk wrote: post #10
smartmic wrote: post #8

It's a pity. It's also a step back from valuing the Unix philosophy, which has its merits, especially for those with a "learning the system from scratch" mindset. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for systemd.

SysVinit has been seen by some people in the post-systemd world as some sort of mystifying mashup concocted by sadists, yet I've found that when it is explained well, it is clear and human-friendly, with easy uptake by newcomers. I echo that this decision is a pity.

It’s not just explaining but whether you have to support it on more than one distribution/version or handle edge cases. For a simple learning exercise, it can be easier to start with but even in the 90s it was notably behind, say, Windows NT 3 in a lot of ways which matter.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#54

Post by nialv7 »

smartmic wrote: post #8

It's a pity. It's also a step back from valuing the Unix philosophy, which has its merits, especially for those with a "learning the system from scratch" mindset. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for systemd.

If you want to learn the system from scratch, the best way will be writing your own little init system from scratch, so you can understand how the boot sequence works. And as you make use of more and more of the advanced features of Linux, your init system will get more and more complex, and will start to resemble systemd.

If you only learn about sysvinit and stop there, you are missing large parts of how a modern Linux distro boots and manages services.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#55

Post by rcxdude »

byte_0 wrote: 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 gone wrong). Whereas systemd has a pretty trivial interface for running most anything and having some confidence it'll actually work right (in part because it can actually enforce things, like actually killing every process that's part of a service instead of kind of hoping that killing whats in the PIDfile is sufficient).

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#56

Post by onraglanroad »

cf100clunk wrote: post #22
eikenberry wrote: post #17

SysV init was the overengineered cousin to BSD init and I never liked it. Easily my least favorite of all init systems I've worked with over the last 30 years. On the flip side, daemontools or maybe runit were my favorites. Lots of good options for init/supervision tooling over the years and SysV was not among them.

If we look on LFS for its academic merit, I'm saddened that key historical elements of Unix/Linux design are being left behind, much like closing down a wing of a laboratory or museum and telling students that they'll need to whip up their own material to fill in those gaps.

Yes, it's like asking students to actually produce something themselves.

What a horrific thought.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#57

Post by IshKebab »

byte_0 wrote: 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.

Yes, much better. The original intro blog post goes into detail: https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#58

Post by acdha »

eikenberry wrote: post #17

SysV init was the overengineered cousin to BSD init and I never liked it. Easily my least favorite of all init systems I've worked with over the last 30 years. On the flip side, daemontools or maybe runit were my favorites. Lots of good options for init/supervision tooling over the years and SysV was not among them.

SysV was this weird blind spot for many years. I remember installing daemontools on the OpenBSD server my office ran on because it was nicer to work with, and thinking that the Linux world would switch to avoid losing that particular feature war with Windows.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#59

Post by cf100clunk »

raggi wrote: post #46
cf100clunk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way was Bruce incorrect, your one link excepted?

he is counting every c file in the systemd _repository_ which houses multiple projects, libraries and daemons. he equates that to the c file count for a single init. it's a disingenuous comparison. systemd-init is a small slice of the code in the systemd repository.

I'm guessing he shares my belief that systemd-init cannot exist in the wild on its own, correct? When you want a teacup, you have to get the whole 12 place dinner set.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#60

Post by cf100clunk »

its_ubuntu2 wrote: post #49
antonyh wrote: 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…

[flagged]

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