I do not want to fight with you. I do not want to silence you.
I do not want to _force_ you to think a certain way. But I would be pleased if you would be willing to try a different way of thinking. I do not want to detract from the focus of the original post of this thread. Meaning I would just like to offer a perspective, but if you don't think it helpful, it will be ok to leave it alone. I will not badger you, because I don't like being badgered, even when I'm completely wrong, I still don't like being badgered. When you read my email, please, just take it as someone trying to help you see something from a perspective you might not have considered. Please don't consider it hostile, because that is not what I was going for. I tried to help explain with example the unintended consequences of changing stuff just to change stuff sometimes is kinda bad. It wasn't about sysv, nor systemd, nor microsoft, nor GPS. It was [it's 30 years old, and outdated, we need to move forward] given as a reason. But you are totally right, I would rather have my freedom to try something else, than be forced to accept that there is only one way. -> However, I sometimes forget that others might have tried different things too, and some lessons might have been learned from it, hence it's not that there is only one way to do this, but it is best to do it this way for reasons <x, y, z, squirrel, etc>. There have been many times in my life where I have been worked up, and convinced I had given something more than enough thought -> and was pretty damn sure my way was the only way. Figuratively speaking -> about half of those times I was right. My way was superior. -> the other half -> only after I got worked up, said many things I was certain of, and then got so frustrated I broke away -> did I temporarily just let a few things go. When I did that -> let a few things go & a bit of time passed -> it occurred to me that there was an entirely different way of thinking about <whatever> and I all of a sudden saw what others were trying to get me to see. -> I am not saying you are wrong. I don't know much about systemd. I am an aerospace engineering student. -> I've learned (continue to learn) that I am smart, but I can still do some rather foolish things. -> Only by learning the hard way that my concrete reason is not always so concrete, I've recognized that smart is not the opposite of foolishness. Wisdom is. And I like how someone once said, wisdom is the union of knowledge and experience. -> Sometimes I know best because I have had a great deal of experience in what I am talking about. -> Sometimes I have learned that I am bad at judging the inexperience of others, and I am too dismissive of what they are saying. I usually end up finding out that I never had actually really listened to what they said the first time around. So, I don't want to fight. Fighting poisons my mind with emotions that lock me out of being able to see things from a different perspective. I am usually unable to see things from a different perspective until I've calmed down from getting worked up. I usually only calm down when I've decided that I am just going to leave this alone for a while. Do something else, like aerospace hw. ....Yays. Sorry for the ramble, ADD meds kicked in when I was just starting to type. But, I do think I have some good points, I also think sometimes people ignore the point unless you show them why it actually is a good point, hence, the explanation. : D Oh, some people have asked why the microsoft stuff is relevant. Here is an expanded rationale, hopefully it will make sense this time. Speaking of linux hasn't changed in 30 years, it's time to move forward... I tried to show that (I think) the reason it hasn't changed in 30 years is because a superior way to go has not yet been implemented. That does not mean you can't have a better or just as good idea, but it usually is a cautionary tale to at least see what other things have been tried and how did they turn out. That's where the microsoft / unix example came from. It was just to show that... it was an older idea, but it still works better. And when you think... -> 1960s : multiple people affecting the same computer : we need some restrictions to keep the peace (like police in real life) -> 1980s : microsoft - mainframes were a thing of the past, now everyone has a computer to themselves, we can leave that minimal permissions way of thinking in the past and move forward with...... -> 1990s : internet - rapidly, all of the isolated single user computers started to interact with other systems. You could start to think of the internet as this giant system with multiple people using it at the same time : and if you abstract home directories into home computers, people could write programs to do malicious things and trick you into running them with deception. Since unix long ago learned that you should only use the admin account to do admin things, on unix, malware might print through all the paper you have, or delete all of your files, but with minimal permissions, the damage would (usually) stop there. It would suck, but it wasn't compromise your entire computer with just browsing the web suck. You had to be targeted by crackers, your system wasn't so naive as to just let any and everybody have their way - hence, where the unix model got its start. Microsoft tested what happens when you remove a police force from a population - anarchy and chaos and vigilantes ensue. Only it's system - malware, bluescreens, and antivirus. Would not call it a better way to go. People don't like history lessons because they feel lectured when history disagrees with their idea. History shows people who don't like history lessons tend to concretely re-establish why we teach history lessons in the first place. History is a ladder. Kick it aside and start climbing anyway and eventually you will climb up to where you started, minus a significant amount of time and energy, and possibly your life as well. If it is something new, go for it. If it is something previously done but abandoned, there are probably some lessons why, and that is what some of the people here are trying to get you to see. -Kev On 19 November 2012 04:23, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote: > Hello Kevin, > > On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 09:51:22PM -0600, Kevin Toppins wrote: >> Just because something is very old, does not necessarily make it >> wrong, obsolete, or require that it be changed. > > Correct. But on the other hand, just because something is 40 years > old, doesn't mean we're not allowed to rethink the idea and start from > scratch. A fresh breeze is always needed from time to time. > >> The unix model stemmed from when computers were mainframes and single >> user systems had not been conceived. > > Thank you for your lesson, but I think I already know that. > >> Unix's design of minimal permissions was/is a good idea. Since not >> everything running reflects the mindset of just one person, it makes >> sense to isolate users from messing with one another. Or, to allow for >> some relative sanctuary while using the system with others logged in. > > And this has to do with replacing sysvinit with a modern alternative > how? We still have user separation. In fact, we have even more > possibilities by being able to control what ressources single users > can use (cgroups) which is very important if you have a big cluster > with dozens of concurrent users. > >> It worked well to keep the peace. > > Again, that doesn't mean we're not allowed to rethink the idea. CRT > television sets, analogue broadcasting, steam engines, mechanic > typewriters, analogue photography, audio and video cassettes also > worked well for decades. Still, people have upgraded to newer > technologies when they became available. > >> Computer viruses (really) emerged when microsoft threw that notion to >> the wind and made their os a single user system with unlimited power >> and no layers of permissions to protect the integrity of the system. > > Well, no. You can have a single user operating system and still be > perfectly free of virusses. On the other hand, you can even have > virusses on Linux machines. An important factor of a successful virus > infection is social engineering. Even Windows can be safe when taking > the proper precautions and even without a virus scanner. > >> It's like if the pentagon upgraded every united states government >> employee with the highest security clearance. Sure the spec ops guy >> has clearance. So does the janitor and the delivery guy as well. It's >> defcon 1 24/7. > > Again, how is this related to systemd vs sysvinit? As I mentioned > already, systemd has even more features to ensure resource control and > security (fine-grained permissions for journalctl, for example). > >> That is why viruses are so prevalent. That is the real reason. > > No, virusses are prevalent because people open every file without > extra precautions. Even advanced users and administrators sometimes > happen to do that. > >> So unix stayed with the idea of minimal permissions for 40 years. They >> still stay with it. So does linux. > > It's getting tiresome. I suggest you just read up on systemd a bit > before you start your discussion. systemd is actually a huge > improvement over sysvinit regarding reliability and security. It's > designed with these considerations in mind. > >> Just about every os I can think of that has some resistance to malware >> uses a security model somehow based on separation of permissions. > > Well, Windows NT uses separation of permissions. Yet there is > malware. Same applies for MacOS X. > >> If something makes sense, has a sound foundation, is concrete in its >> logic...... and does not involve some specific point in time in some >> way..... >> >> ...... then the passage of time does not invalidate that idea. >> >> That idea should be succeeded by a better idea. >> >> That idea should not be obsoleted simply because it's 30 years old. > > sysvinit is not being replaced because it's 30 years old. It is being > replaced because it lacks features we need nowadays and it's simply > not reliable enough. > > For example, sysvinit cannot prevent a process from forking away. Once > sysvinit has started a daemon, the daemon can pretty much do whatever > it wants provided it has enough permissions. On systemd, there are > means to prevent that. > > Another thing is making sure that a daemon is actually > running. systemd always knows the state of a daemon and can restart > it, if necessary. I probably don't need to explain you why this is > important. You cannot do that with sysvinit. As an example, we're > using autofs5 here at the department and we constantly are having > trouble when the machine is rebooting and autofs was already started > before NIS was ready even after sysvinit has started it. The result is > that none of the autofs mounts work until autofs has been manually > restarted. On systemd, this won't happen, because systemd is aware of > the fact that NIS and rpcbind need to be up and running before autofs > can do anything sensible. > > And thirdly, if you have very large file systems (we have a 30TB > hardware raid here, for example), filesystem checks can take > forever. If you reboot such a server and it needs to do an fs check, > it will be unavailable until the check has finished. With systemd, you > can just declare the filesystem as an automount [1] and the system > still boots while the filesystem checks are performed. > >> We use the mathematics of relativity and trigonometry to make GPS work, btw. >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#History > > Sticking to your chain of arguments: If physicists had been happy with > the theory aether [2], Einstein had never come up with special > relativity and GPS actually would never be able to work. The math > behind special relativity is just a little older than 100 years (annus > mirabilis is dated back to 1905), so it's actually something NEW. > > The fact that GPS works is a result of PROGRESS. > > Cheers, > > Adrian > >> [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd#Automount >> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether > > -- > .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org > `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de > `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cadkoaxjlwcguuvlp3n1fanwje2b43ofoh9tqz4mgkx9xpfv...@mail.gmail.com
