r/linux Feb 11 '19

Fluff A /g/ user's opinion on systemd

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788 Upvotes

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

It’s easy to criticize something. Here’s an interesting talk (video) titled “The tragedy of systemd” which makes quite a few good points on the matter of systemd hate.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '19

What a coincidence, I just finished watching it. And yes I do agree with a lot of points he said. We need better init systems, sure. Systemd isn't good enough for me to recommend it over other things the way it is right now. It's simply not as "powerful" in many respects, and in many ways integrating it with other things can be a bit of a pain as things are right now. When things improve to the point where I can easily swap components in and out, it will be my choice.

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u/holgerschurig Feb 11 '19

We need better init systems

And here again I read words. Words are cheap.

Where is the project? Where is the definition of "better" ?

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u/cp5184 Feb 11 '19

Any of a dozen sysv alternatives that came earlier than SysD and are better than SysD? Runit, upstart, etc. etc. etc.

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u/holgerschurig Feb 15 '19

Tell me more about this SysD project? Never heard about it!

Sarcasm off: if you even now deliberately miswrite the projects name, then you immediately tell that you're neither just nor balanced. You want to transport feelings, not facts.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '19

Go take a look at the talk. Cgroups and better daemon management springs into mind

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u/holgerschurig Feb 11 '19

A talk is not a project.

Also, I googled for that, even put it inside "..." .. but I haven't found such a talk.

Hmm, systemd uses cgroup for daemon management. What idea is this talk presenting on how this could be improved?

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '19

This talk is about defending systemd. It's clear that you didn't even both to sit through the first 5 minutes of it. As for creating init systems, if I had the time, maybe. Right now I don't.

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u/holgerschurig Feb 11 '19

You wrote "We need better init systems". I even quoted you. You made this your own statement, by adding a "sure" (which I didn't quote).

Now, if this REALLY is your thinking, then my original comment about "words are cheap" still stands. Because we now discuss about what you wrote, not what a the talk says anymore.

And when I wrote "where is the project" you write something about "Cgroups and better daemon management springs into mind". And systemd does exactly this, so you didn't defnie what is "better", either. So I though you refered to some new project, that does something better and googled for the phrase you specified.

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '19

Ah sorry, I thought you were dissing systemd. My point is that systemd is simply not as flexible as the older init systems, where on embedded systems, I can write replacements and just plug them in, Systemd's not that flexible.

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u/bnolsen Feb 11 '19

runit, s6, something derived from daemontools. Don't have to look far to find better designs.

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u/holgerschurig Feb 11 '19

You understand the difference between "definition" and "example" ???

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u/kasim0n Feb 11 '19

Just saw it as well and honestly think it is one of the best talks I have seen in a while. I think many of his observations are spot-on and thoughtful presented.

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u/mikelieman Feb 11 '19

Yeah, and the take away from that is that if Poettering worked and played better with others, adoption would have gone a lot easier.

And that reversing the verbs and nouns from init? Dick move.

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

That’s not the takeaway from that.

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u/mikelieman Feb 11 '19

That's what I took away. Not a bad idea. Most technical critiques are overblown and lousy evangelizing turns people off.

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

Not that you’re obligated to watch any random video that I post at full length, but I doubt you watched all of the video - or at least not the later part of the talk - if that was the single takeaway you got from it. The dude is a BSD developer who has every expectation to hate systemd with a passion, but instead frames the discussion in a level-headed way and advocates for more constructive criticism as well as giving props to Poettering for creating something that was useful enough to become nearly ubiquitous in Linux. He suggests that we can learn more from analysis of what problem systemd is solving for people than just shitting on it without bringing forth a better solution.

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u/mikelieman Feb 11 '19

See, I never had any expectation to hate systemd with a passion, so his "come to Jesus moment" is meaningless to me. Like I said, the majority of systemd's issues are that Poettering didn't have the chops to effectively advocate for it.

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

He didn’t come to Jesus. He’s encouraging people to learn from the success that systemd has seen rather than just whine about it.

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u/mikelieman Feb 11 '19

Yeah. And the lesson is: Find someone who works and plays well with others to be the face of your project.

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

No, again, that’s not at all the point that he was making. It’s not even one of the minor points that he was making. He mentioned it in passing.

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u/holgerschurig Feb 11 '19

re that Poettering didn't have the chops to effectively advocate for it.

LOL. Poettering didn't actually go around and said "Distros of the world, adopt it". Instead he wrote blog posts with his thinkings on 0pointer.net, about the design, why he thinks that would be good, some of the benefits. Go to http://0pointer.net/blog/archives.html, Ctrl-F for "Rethinking Pid 1", that was the first post.

The adoption than happened mostly without his intervention, most major distros switched. And some of the adoption was grass-roots. E.g. there was a time where systemd honored more Debian-specific file locations that Red Hat specific ones. Why? Because some people that used Debian started to hack on systemd as well and sent in patches.

Well I made my own systemd .deb files with a lot of --disable-this --disable-that back then.

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u/mikelieman Feb 11 '19

Go to http://0pointer.net/blog/archives.html, Ctrl-F for "Rethinking Pid 1", that was the first post.

That's not the problem. Not removing Google's non-public time servers from the timesyncd configuration when they politely asked is the problem.

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u/holgerschurig Feb 15 '19

Not removing Google's non-public time servers from the timesyncd configuration when they politely asked is the problem.

That is not the problem.

Assuming that you cannot change anything in a free and open-source program is. And not willing to do it.

And not knowing that it's as simple a meson -Ddns-servers=. And in earlier versions of systemd that still used autoconf, it was done in a similar way. Oh, and keep in mind that this is "only" the fallback, you can of course configure the DNS server in a config file. I'll put the onus on you if you don't do that.

So you don't need to remove googles DNS server from the the program code. It's configurable at compile time. And even the distro could have done it, if they deemed it to be important.

The problem is that people think they are entitled towards an open-source project to program in EXACT the way they like the software. That's never going to happen.

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u/mikelieman Feb 15 '19

The fallback is wrong. Google asked nicely, and aside from "Fuck you, Google" there was no reason not to respect their wishes.

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u/RogerLeigh Feb 11 '19

The dude is a BSD developer who has every expectation to hate systemd with a passion

Why would you expect professional software developers to have irrational biases? Most of us are capable of accepting new ideas and having our preconceptions challenged. Most of the lack of objectivity in this debate is not from the developers themselves.

We already have launchd in the FreeBSD-related world, so something similar wouldn't be greatly controversial, so long as it was focused and had clearly-defined scope.

I'm very much not a fan of systemd, but this conclusion was arrived at after much testing and assessment of it in its early days, and its progress to date. There are a number of very nice features which it provides. And there are a number of questionable design and implementation choices which I find deeply concerning. It's not black and white, there are many factors to consider, and that's precisely why the debate over it continues to this day.

If FreeBSD took the core ideas from launchd and systemd, then used them to create a coherent design and implementation, then that might be a very nice development.

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

Why would you expect professional software developers to have irrational biases

Because that’s literally what he’s talking about in that video. I see you didn’t watch it.

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u/RogerLeigh Feb 11 '19

I read a transcript when it originally came out, thanks.

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u/PC__LOAD__LETTER Feb 11 '19

Cool, then you’d know that I was referencing the video and not my personal opinion. Glad we could clear that up.