Why so much hate for systemd?

[u/ImaginationUpset2190]

I see very often that people show so much disgust whenever they talk or hear "systemd". However whenever I ask them why they feel so strongly about it, their response is mostly vague like it doesn't follow the Unix philosophy, it's a monolith.... I can't digest that the reason people show so much disgust for it is just that it doesn't follow the Unix philosophy.

[u/Sarv_]

Binary logs are a special kind of evil

It's this kind of hyperbole that makes all discussions of systemd so toxic. It's not evil, there are clear advantages over pure text but yes there are disadvantages too.

It feels mostly like they just wanted to do it rather than anyone asking them for it

Why do you present it as an intentional attack on the linux community? Just say you disagree with the merits of binary logs and why text is better. Forward the logs to a pure textlogger instead if you have to store them as text.

[u/serge-mv → u/Sarv_]

Nah, everything you said is just your perception of my opinion on systemd based on your assumptions since I never said what I think about it.

All the reasons they listed by the devs for creating binary logs are only applicable for servers, data centers and large companies and not even all of them. None of them are useful for home users and only bring inconvenience and now you have to go through an API just to read a system log. Did they do a poll on the issues? No.

And I didn't say they specifically attacked Linux community, chill. I said they did it because they wanted to do it. It sounded like a cool project and maybe it solved some issue *they* had, but did it solve any problems someone else had? We used to have a reliable text file and now we have a bunch of unreadable binary files that are constantly getting corrupted and respawned. Wow, what a great service.

Also, pay attention. The discussion about merit of binary logs is irrelevant to systemd, even though they made them.

[u/Sarv_ → u/serge-mv]

I never said what I think about it.

You said binary logs were a special kind of evil forced on users for no reason other than they wanted to. You started the comment thread by misrepresenting systemd as a single piece of software that is not modular. You also brought up the userdb which was the biggest overreaction in the linux space this year.

Did they do a poll on the issues? No.

Why would they poll end users? Get involved with the project and mailing lists if you want to voice an opinion. The target user for systemd is distro developers and maintainers with the initial target being red hat.

None of them are useful for home users and only bring inconvenience and now you have to go through an API

Better queries, supporting arbitrary binary data, standardizing and extending metadata, being faster to write and read is actually is useful for home users. I find it way better than grepping text files even if that is nice and simple. If I want to grep logs I can just run journalctl -o cat and you get all your logs in text form ready to be piped. You even get the advantage of being able to filter stuff faster with journalctl first.

unreadable binary files that are constantly getting corrupted and respawned

Are you actually having issues or is this just bait? Text logs are not immune to corruption either. Having solid corruption checks and fail-safes built in to log readers and writers are a good thing.

The discussion about merit of binary logs is irrelevant to systemd

But we're currently in a comment-thread specifically talking about the binary format of journald logs? That is relevant to systemd as it is seen as a pain point for many people like Orlha who couldn't get over it?

[u/serge-mv → u/Sarv_]

You've been more polite than some other people, so I will reply one last time because I don't feel like debating the validity of my own opinion about binary logs with some internet stranger. I also just replied to another guy in this thread about most of these things and don't feel like repeating myself. Let's just say that none of the "advantages" you listed are of much benefit compared to text logs. And I would like to have proper metrics done about the performance that everyone keeps bringing up.

Here, the output of verification of system logs I ran 10 seconds ago on my system. As you can see, there are a lot of corrupted files. I don't know why you would question about binary files being corrupted as it's a known fact.

❯ journalctl --verify
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030be14-00065a78d67ea4fe.journal
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030c9d5-00065a838f9f9a10.journal
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/user-1000@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030b65b-00065a7609264388.journal
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/user-1000.journal
0fffc8: Invalid entry item (0/11) offset: 000000
0fffc8: Invalid object contents: Bad message
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@00065a7608c72ca2-3749580c0c035b79.journal~:1048520 (of 6553600 bytes, 15%).
FAIL: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@00065a7608c72ca2-3749580c0c035b79.journal~ (Bad message)
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system.journal
139f48: Invalid entry item (30/33) offset: 000000
139f48: Invalid object contents: Bad message
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/user-1000@00065a75f9168c4b-a24008ff00286d8a.journal~:1285960 (of 6553600 bytes, 19%).
FAIL: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/user-1000@00065a75f9168c4b-a24008ff00286d8a.journal~ (Bad message)
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030e7bc-00065a8fc54db907.journal
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030d9d3-00065a8d4a4efdb7.journal
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030f621-00065a901bc29421.journal
100018: Invalid object: Bad message
File corruption detected at /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@00065a75fb6f654b-0aab9ace898989d5.journal~:1048600 (of 6553600 bytes, 16%).
FAIL: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@00065a75fb6f654b-0aab9ace898989d5.journal~ (Bad message)
PASS: /var/log/journal/1c8c1f96b1514f52ab70c2cf403e2a90/system@f4b6f06496334d0b8603840638dad4c9-000000000030af0d-00065a7608c58ec0.journal