[colug-432] systemd dislike

Mon Mar 7 13:05:01 EST 2016

While I agree with your basic philosophy and approach, at this point,
it is a bit of tilting at windmills.  All the major distros have adopted
systemd.  If you are getting paid to work on Linux, you're most likely
going to be using systemd for at least the next 5 years.  If you're 
purely a hobbyist, then there are distros that are working around it, 
but you are going to be in a corner.

It's kind of like side air bags on cars.  I hate the lack of visibility
they cause.  But complaining is not really going to change anything...

For an interesting take on it, see this review as well...which is a bit
of RHT getting hoisted on it's on petard.

http://lwn.net/Articles/676831/

On Mon, 7 Mar 2016, Rick Troth wrote:

> I propose that it will be more effective long term to focus on what's
> good about SysV INIT (or other INIT schemes). This will naturally touch
> on things that "we" dislike about SystemD. But if we keep our compass
> stayed on "I like thus-and-so" we may actually be able to retain what
> remains of thus-and-so. See below.
>
> Try to be practical. If all your thus-and-sos really don't matter, then
> join the SystemD crowd and move on.
> Otherwise,
> be bold! If your thus-and-sos DO matter, then talk about them ... shout
> loudly and and preach broadly.
>
> Historically, Solaris, HP-UX, and others (including AIX) used the AT&T
> branch of INIT driven by /etc/inittab. Few people wanted to mess with
> /etc/inittab. Maybe it was because the syntax is akin to that of
> /etc/passwd. (Only certain kinds of doctors really *want* to look at
> that many colons on a regular basis.) HP-UX and Solaris and others
> adopted an improved method, without breaking /etc/inittab, where scripts
> could start and stop services at each run-level. Some Linux distros went
> this route. (I never got my head completely wrapped around pre-Upstart
> Ubuntu/Debian, nor the BSDs for that matter.) HP-UX went so far as to
> support a per-service message, yet without breaking when an HP-UX
> "message capable" INIT script is used on Solaris or (eventually) Linux.
>
> I found that I was able to hack FreeBSD to drive SysV INIT scripts. Easy
> peazy.
>
> What appealed to me about Linux from the earliest days was that it
> provides an unencumbered Unix system, borrowing "the best" from either
> AT&T or from Berzerkeley (Left Coast). I like Unix, leaning slightly to
> the right (East Coast, so to speak). Mostly, I hate being painted into a
> corner, and with "Unix" I can move a program or workload (or my desktop)
> from one system to another, pursuing that fit-for-purpose goal. Fond as
> I am of Linux, I've never (ever!) suggested that it would be the basket
> to hold all my eggs.
>
> Here's my current thus-and-so list, what I like about SysV INIT:
>
> + Interoperability (among other Unix and Unix-like systems)
> + Non-Breakage (of older /etc/inittab which don't have the break-out
> scripts, e.g., AIX)
> + "the Unix way" because INIT does one thing and does it well*
> + Simplicity, in that the scripts can stand on their own**
> + Speed, in that some of us did not experience the delays SystemD
> allegedly relieves***
> + Ease of implementation (I know at least one guy who wrote his own set
> of INIT scripts ... from scratch)
>
> Anyone have more bullet points they could add? Please do!
>
> * For varying values of "well", since obviously a great number of people
> were dissatisfied with SysV INIT. Never the less, SysV INIT is clearly
> more attuned to the "do one thing" method than SystemD.
>
> This "do one thing and do it well" mantra has been mentioned many times
> already by prominent software luminaries. The assimilation of other
> functions into SystemD is probably its most damning feature. It seems
> that resistance is futile.
>
> ** What little I have been able to comprehend of SystemD takes me to
> several directories. (And that's just for the INIT function.)
>
> *** I actually experience more delays, and longer delays since my
> distros of choice went with SystemD. Not a scientific sample, but does
> lead one man to ask, "why did we do this?". In any case, a well written
> SysV INIT script does not inherently mean delays. Most of them simply
> fork the associated daemon and return.
>
> There *are* Linux distributions which eschew SystemD. Not sure what the
> current story is in Debian land. (Mostly due to lack of time, not that I
> don't care.) There was certainly a great hue and cry in that world, Jim.
> Debian may be pressed by decisions made by Canonical. And I know of at
> least one large company in-house Debian spin which fell to SystemD.
>
> There are other battles. I'm keeping silent about a big one (now several
> years older than SystemD) for now.
>
> For what it's worth, I'm in the middle of a discussion with the
> Coreutils team over their recent dis-use of /etc/mtab in favor of
> /proc/self/mountinfo. The latter has more detailed info than
> /proc/mounts. Both /proc/mounts and /proc/self/mountinfo still do not
> provide what I enjoyed from /etc/mtab. I'm hoping they'll just make it a
> compile-time option. But they put some work into their
> /proc/self/mountinfo parsing so they seem to be a little sensitive about
> it. (I can relate!)
>
> When most distros started making /etc/mtab a sym-link to /proc/mounts,
> the remedy was trivial, so I didn't complain. Whatever "mtab hate" there
> was in the community has evidently continued, not satisfied with
> /proc/mounts.
>
> Twice over the past year or three, I was surprised by dislike which I
> did not share:
>
> Git is terribly unpopular with long time users of Subversion, CVS, and
> others. Some of it may be learning curve or muscle memory. But I've seen
> arguments stated from (what reads like) practical and objective
> objection. (For me, the worst thing about Git is building the cussed
> thing, where CVS and SVN are "standard recipe".)
>
> Recently at COLUG, someone mentioned LibreSSL and a number of staunch
> OpenSSL aficionados booed the former quite vocally. I use the newcomer
> when I can, but follow updates in both camps very closely. (Call me
> paranoid. But am I paranoid enough?)
>
> -- R; <><
>
>
>
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE       jim at rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.net
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best
state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine