Probably a lot of it has to do with:
- we're merging udev and a bunch of other things into systemd
- you want GNOME to work, you'd better use systemd
- Canonical (Ubuntu) DIDN'T commit to udev until Debian made the
decision - they would have kept going with upstart, but when Debian
committed, they decided they didn't want to support a now-orphaned init
system
- Gentoo supports systemd as an option, it's fork funtoo doesn't
- Slackware doesn't
Miles Fidelman
Jay Ashworth wrote:
The thing that I don't understand about systemd is how it managed to get
*EVERY SINGLE DISTRIBUTION'S RELEASE MANAGER* on board in less than a year,
given how thoroughly it violates the Unix philosophy, and how poorly
documented it is -- to the point where you can't even run sysvinit anymore
unless you're willing to build initscripts by hand, since packages don't
even include them anymore.
Does Poettering have compromising photographs of all these guys in a
puppy pile at a Linuxcon somewhere?
Cheers,
-- jra
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Shein" <b...@world.std.com>
To: "Israel G. Lugo" <israel.l...@lugosys.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 3:11:55 PM
Subject: Re: Linux: concerns over systemd [OT]
I've done a fair amount of hand-to-hand combat with systemd.
When it's good it's good, tho not always apparent why it's good. But
for example some of my servers boot in seconds.
When it's bad it can be painful and incredibly opaque and a huge time
sink.
Googling for suggestions I've found several threads where the
co-author (Poettering) jumps in usually to be annoyingly arrogant (I'm
sure he's very bright and good to children and pets and overworked)
responding with comments like why don't you just read your logs and
not bother this list or similar (that was paraphrased.) The logs are,
in my experience, almost always useless or nearly so, "mumble failed
to start" basically.
I'm not the only one:
http://www.muktware.com/2014/04/linus-torvalds-happy-systemd-author-kay-sievers/25151
It also resists tools like strace because it tends to do things by
IPC. In one extreme case I just reworked an /etc/init.d script to
avoid systemd (not use the various /etc/rc.foo files), mostly just hit
it with a sledgehammer and put fixing that on my TODO
list. Unfortunately I am mortal and have limited time on this earth.
My experience as I said is mixed, hard cases are very hard where they
really seem like they shouldn't be (just tell me roughly what you're
trying to do rather than just fail, eg, via some debug enable), most
are just your usual oops it wants this or that situations.
I don't think I'd want to revert to sysvinit, systemd seems
architecturally superior.
But it needs a lot more transparency and some attempt to gather common
problems -- like why is it hanging asking for a password on the
console when I can't see why it thinks it needs one? -- and FAQ them
with real answers or add some code/configuration to fix that (never
ask for a password in this script OK? And no --no-ask-password isn't
fixing this so stop repeating that answer!)
--
-Barry Shein
The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada
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--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
