Re: [arch-general] kde and systemd [was Re: [arch-dev-public] merging systemd back to a singular package]
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 06:36:22PM +0200, Joakim Hernberg wrote: A distro fork would be the absolute worst outcome imaginable (imo) of the initscripts vs systemd schism... Assuming you mean a fork of Arch, I agree. But consider ArchHURD downstream. They'll have no choice but to do something different.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 07:15:26PM +0530, gt wrote: Maybe you can test the AUR package and see if works as good as your own setup, and maybe you can contribute to that package if you ever find the time to do so. What I'd offer to the AUR is run scripts for common services like apache, sshd, and the like -- so you don't have to maintain your own /service/* stuff. You'd get the parallel startup for a lot less cruft than systemd offers.
Re: [arch-general] Think twice before moving to systemd
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 12:19:00AM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: For all its faults, being incapabel of giving you a boot time advantage is _not_ one of them. Yes, that's *in theory*, but in practice that's not what I see, and I already investigated the culprit: It's more like if the stars align. I hold the potential for boot time speed to be axiomatic and the only question is if your starting services are the particular combination that would actually make it matter.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 03:34:00PM +0200, R??my Oudompheng wrote: The cumulated amount of time spent on these endless discussions has now almost certainly get past the amount of time necessary to fix initscripts. init scripts are irredeemable. The argument is more one of whether systemd is to be the redeemption.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 11:24:31PM -0500, C Anthony Risinger wrote:
... are we done? you guys are really boring me to death here --
interest level is pitifully low. yawn.
Pretty long message for someone who's uninterested.
if you want to see a boot up process that uses daemontools, or runit,
or monit or {insert-here} ... then get on it chief! alas, i expect
there are good reasons said tools were never used as such.
I have to assume, since you mentioned daemontools, that you're
talking to me (since I don't recall anybody else bringing it up).
I use daemontools for all my daemon management right now.
Seems to me the main reason not to use it is because a distro already
ships with its own startup system -- and most people don't care to
tear it all down when they just wanna get apache serving out PHP.
let's cut to the chase here: there is no reason to get all bent out of
shape ...
I'm not. Just trying to weigh the priorities of the community. It's
obvious now that Modernity is more important than Code Correctness
here and that's cool with me.
so buck up, do something useful, or find
another outlet ... puh-puh-please?
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for here.
When I have time I do tinker with making daemontools more
accessible. If I ever get it polished to the point of making
a package out of it, I may submit it to the AUR -- If there
is sufficient interest -- which, I can only discover by getting
the idea in peoples' heads and weighing their reaction.
I'm uncertain as to what other outlet one can have when
their primary concern is to advocate a philosophy and
technology to the community that's most likely to receive
it, according to this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
Now, of course, these words mean different things to different
people. And any credo must inevitably bow to practical demands
(this is why I continue to state that Arch dev probably has no
choice but to accept systemd as the default, eventually) but a
little bit of disruptive behavior is necessary if any innovation
is to take place.
Sorry if this bothers you.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 04:48:01PM -0700, Patrick Murphy wrote: Could you give me a brief explanation as to why init scripts are better? They really aren't. The best argument one can make in their favor is that they're already debugged and stable. systemd, as a new thing, will inevitably go thru' some growing pains. That's to be expected. The problem is that systemd is a brilliant solution to the wrong problem. It's trying to be all things simultaneously -- which is just way too much centralization for sanity. The superior option is to use daemontools. Not as PID 1 but as the means of starting up everything after the filesystem is mounted. You get process supervision, startup in parallel, you loose the unjustified delicacy of inherent in init scripts, and you get small, compact, well-tested programs that do one thing and one thing well. If you had to go more modern, I suppose you could use runit in lieu of daemontools but I'm not exactly sure how much you gain from that.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 10:03:44PM -0300, Denis A. Alto?? Falqueto wrote: You know that all this jibber-jabber could be easily avoided if you just asked for help or opened bug reports, don't you? You know, just like when polite peopple try to solve their own problems and, when nothing else seems to work, ask for help in a friendly community, with a friendly attitude. That is what really mekes Arch so good and you seems to ignore so many times. He is trying to reason with the friendly community. He has a particular idea that he thinks is a good one. Open discourse is a healthy part of an open source community; all ideas are put forward and subjected to peer review and the mighty hammer of experiment. I know it can be frustrating when people disagree with you so vehemently but he's not trying to insult you and the nature of the Internet is such that I think you could stand to grow some thicker skin. If you think Filipe is wrong, explain it to him. If he ignores your explanations, then ignore him.
Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux and systemd
On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 10:13:33AM +0200, Kwpolska wrote: Huh? I've never seen any complaints about udev before you. udev is kinda crufty. And it really doesn't belong inside the same monolithic program that manages startup and file- system mounting.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 11:34:28AM -0400, Brandon Watkins wrote: Can we then agree then that you don't *know* if systemd is stable enough to be used (in general, not only by you)? Felipe Contreras Umm, the fact thats its been the default init system in several popular distros already? Fedora 15+ , Opensuse 12.1 , Mageia 2, Mandriva 2011... I don't know why you keep hanging onto this idea that systemd is untested Seems to me like the argument is that it's untested in /this/ distro. Doesn't matter how well it works for Fedora. Arch isn't Fedora so that doesn't necessarily apply.
Re: [arch-general] Think twice before moving to systemd
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 09:23:33PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: So it's only needs twice the time with only on third of the ticks? Well that is awesome... Yeah to systemd! systemd is much more complicated, and requires many more tricks. Please remember: I hate systemd. I have seen systemd boot faster than rough equivalents. Yes, the software is a huge, bloated piece of crap. But it is also unmistakably capable of faster boot times when services are started properly in parallel. That's assuming a few things (like that your services are not hugely inter-dependent or that a couple [like, maybe DHCP, depending on your server] just take stupidly long to start up). For all its faults, being incapabel of giving you a boot time advantage is _not_ one of them.
Re: [arch-general] Think twice before moving to systemd
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 03:31:19PM -0400, Brandon Watkins wrote: You are being pedantic. A 2 second difference is negligible, and certainly not the huge issue you are making it out to be. It's not negligible in computing terms. It can matter but plan A is usually for your boot time to be immaterial (because rebooting is lame in the first place). It's not entirely clear where these two seconds are being lost, tho'. It's tough to lay the blame precisely where Filipe is placing it.
Re: [arch-general] [Bulk] Re: Arch Linux and systemd
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:12:05PM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: I've been wondering what the best term for 'corporate' or 'enterprise' software like exchange is where they change your nappies for you but also offer you razor wire to hang yourself with by giving you IE to browse the web on the mail server itself and encouraging compulsory remote wipe for clients! I've always just called it commoditized software when I'm not surging with invective and use the term infantile computing BS
Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux and systemd
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 04:45:34PM +0200, Jakob Herrmann wrote: So which components (obviously used by the majority of Arch users) do currently have or will soon have hardcoded! dependencies to systemd? udev. Upstream, Gnome has considered it.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 01:23:12PM +0200, Roel Deckers wrote: Remember it's not about whether or not you're allowed to use initscripts/systemd, it's about what will become the default. No, maintaining both boot methods, even if upstream weren't abandoning init scripts (which they are going to) would be a terrible waste of time. Yes, there are also technical reasons/strong arguments for systemd, but that's beside the point. I disagree. The technical reasons are the entire point to do or not do anything. And I'd like to remind those that feel strongly against systemd that you can still run initscripts and make a package for it, submit patches etc. An init system isn't one of those things that just drops-in, tho'. A package for an MTA (for example) will have to know how to start itself up. You're left with the following options: 1. Rework the MTA to startup with your own method 2. Have the package maintainer somehow allow both such as... 3. Post to the AUR (or whatever) another version of the same package that uses the alternate startup system. The work snowballs from there. For every package that needs to care about how it starts up, you have to change that, too. Yes it still remains a possibility but people aren't going to do that work. Upstream has explicitly stated that the effort isn't worth _their_ time. Why would it be worth ours?
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 05:28:16PM +0200, Damjan wrote: A package for an MTA (for example) will have to know how to start itself up. You're left with the following options: 1. Rework the MTA to startup with your own method 2. Have the package maintainer somehow allow both such as... 3. Post to the AUR (or whatever) another version of the same package that uses the alternate startup system. That's why a declarative service config files help. An alternative init system could just read the systemd ini files and do whatever it thinks it can do better. I'm confused as to how this solves the problem. Sounds like you've just introduced parsing into the mix another unnecessary complication.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 07:14:29PM +0200, Damjan wrote: I don't understand why you think parsing is a hard thing. INI files have been around for millennia (in internet years) and both parsers and writers for them are well established in many languages. The question is not whether it is hard but whether it's a good idea. Things are much more likely to go wrong in parsing than many other parts of a program. When you introduce parsing, or the need to parse, you are necessarily introducing the potential for bugs. You can be a mathematically immaculate programmer and never write bugs and this doesn't change the fact that the room for human error is greater in parsing code or in the data being parsed than in other places. You are correct in assuming that well-covered territory is less buggy than new ground. I assume this is why you mention that parsing's been done for so long. This is important when we consider the following: Also, bash scripts are also parsed, for better or worse. This is infinity percent true. Now consider that: 1) Using shell does not introduce a new parsing code-base but instead, uses a code-base that is actively and rigorously used in a multitude of other ways such that bugs are more vigorously identified and corrected. 2) Razor-thin shell scripts (such as those used in daemontools style run scripts) have an order of magnitude less matetiral to parse than their systemd equivalents. Thus, the room for errors in the input data is far, far less; while the versatility of such run scripts are far greater -- all with a smaller code base than if you were consuming a config file yourself. Even if you are using a popular config-file-reading library to consume your configuration data, that is still more code and, necessarily, more potential forg bugs than if you did not consume config files at all. Thus, my advocacy for daemontools over systemd. The benefit of declarative config files is that you can extract information from them by *just* parsing and not by parsing AND running them as is the case for random init scripts. You are correct and articulate this truth well. It does not invalidate my position; that systemd is unnecessarily complex, that it has greater room for errors than some alternatives (please understand that I am not advocating sysv inits cripts in the least), and that the only reason to adopt systemd is because upstream is making it mandatory. If technical benefit were the only consideration and Arch were developed in a vacuum, daemontools would certainly be a superior choice. Because Arch is part of a greater Linux ecosystem and does not carry the burden of all its development by itself, systemd is probably superior for Arch at this time. This truth has convinced me that devs are making the right call in spite of the fact that most advocacy of systemd is based on some fallacious assumptions. Also, even making a small error in a Turing complete bash script is much more dangerous than in a declarative file, in which you'd just ignore that line. By what means do you know to ignore a line? What kinds of errors are we talking about? I'm having a hard time understanding this assertion.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 08:11:58PM +1000, John Briggs wrote: IMHO the cost of Linux embracing complexity is a loss of freedom. We must all decide personally if we are willing to pay this price or we remain true to the principles of GNU/Linux and abandon this type of software. At this time we as Arch users do not have to make this decision but we will shortly. Well said. Arch devs are making he right decision to follow upstream. But LInux as a whole is going to suffer from this trend. Tying stuff tightly to the startup system will undoubtedly harm the high disposability principle spoken of in ESR's Art Of Unix Programming. When software loses this kind of orthogonality, rot sets in and it becomes harder to move to new technologes without breaking everything else. Yes, I imagine it is easier for folks in Red Hat to control things thru' a central authority of their own desgn. I feel the same way about my own systems. I do believe that there are real engineering consequences that we will suffer (not just in Arch but in other Linux distros as well) as a result of this highly coupled, overzealous aproach to startup and daemon management. It is true that linux is more unified and possibly more accessible to other corporate users and developers as a result of this. But at what technical cost?
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 12:03:55PM +0100, Geoff wrote: As I have said in a previous post, I arrived in linux a little later than you, but for much the same reasons. On KISS / The Arch Way / Unix philosophy etc, it seems to me that here as in my own field (law), maxims make good servants but poor masters. This is a sound observation. We should all avoid evoking slogans for their own sake. But in software, we have the luxury of some of our cliches having a more cogent, annotative meaning. Ultimately, every decision has to be evaluated as good or bad in its own right. Indeed. This is the discussion afoot. How tightly coupled can we afford to make any piece of software? When one cde base manages mounting filesystems, daemon startup, service dependencies, and the like, how does this affect the software ecosystem as a whole? What technologies become easier or harder to adopt and why? systemd strikes me, based on my experience, as too centralized to give the flexibility that *nix has been famous for. I may be totally off my rocker on this one. That's what I have come to believe as I have been forced to deal with it and te plethora of other startup systems that we use at work. Dev here is right that init scripts are worse (as is upstart, IMHO), but the praise leveled on systemd by its proponents (even the casual ones) is disproportionate to the gains from using it.
Re: [arch-general] SystemD poll
On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 01:52:59PM +0200, R??my Oudompheng wrote: I don't understand why you are saying that. I can't speak for him but I can tell you why I say it. Parsing a config file is _always_ unnecessary complexity. It is where some of the biggest bugs lurk. It hurts the functional paradigm, hurts the idempotence, harms the testability of the system, harms the automatability of the setup and packaging, and is just plain not worth it. Secondly, the cgroups feature is more harm than good. It only nurtures slopy design on daemon developers' parts. Just my opinion based on my work in the Unix software indutry.
Re: [arch-general] Arch-general is becoming a mess !
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 01:52:05AM -0400, Justin Strickland wrote: heh seems most of this blaze has to do with users who are unfamiliar with systemd and by convention afraid of it I've seen a couple of people for whom this is probably true. But I have seen a couple of posts that seem more educated on the matter. I have to use systemd every day at work. I use it next to several other startup systems which are far worse (including init scripts). It is my use of systemd that causes me to hate it.
Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux and systemd
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 04:08:32AM -0500, C Anthony Risinger wrote: initiatives like this are not removing choice ... Kinda. This initiative doesn't remove choice. It is a natural consequence of the greater linux ecosystem choosing to abandon some choices. Am convinced that moving to systemd is probably the right thing for Arch at this point. But let's not get overzealous in the proselyting.
Re: [arch-general] Some funny bloke - 2
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 07:06:36AM +, Fons Adriaensen wrote: BTW, I don't want to discourage anyone from reading Lennart's blog. It's very revealing at some points. Just know what you are reading. No, it's important to understand the full arguments before you criticize them. The first thing I did when I heard about systemd is look at his blog and read the crazy this is the best thing since sliced orgasm! posts. If you glean the actual information from there, you'll find what you need to know about systemd. The narrative dross is there because it was written by a human.
Re: [arch-general] OT: Major distributions (WAS: Re: [arch-dev-public] Migration to systemd)
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 01:02:45AM +0200, Rodrigo Rivas wrote: But you linked to the Appeal to novelty fallacy, suggesting that other people argue that systemd is better just because it is new. Fallacies usually come in pairs, thus my link: changing for change's sake makes no sense; nor does not changing for tradition's sake. Okay. Fair enough. Anyway, the fact that SysV is good enough doesn't mean that it cannot -or should not- be changed. Whether systemd is the right answer is yet to be seen, though. If you check the list's history, you'll find that I hate sysv more than systemd. I have been trying to use this opportunity to get people to consider better alternatives. (*cough* http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html *cough*) The world changes, and the opposite of evolution is stagnation. And I, for one, moved to Arch to see the change happen! After looking at other distros, reading more of the upstream material, I am convinced that Arch really needs to go with systemd. Not because it is good software but because the other adequate software that this community depends on is going to require it. Arch can't afford to fork all those packages just to have a superior startup system. The value of code correctness is not that high.
Re: [arch-general] OT: Major distributions (WAS: Re: [arch-dev-public] Migration to systemd)
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 03:11:16PM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: Not because it is good software but because the other adequate software that this community depends on is going to require it. Let me know so I'm aware what the software you have in mind is if it hasn't been mentioned please. It has been mentioned. http://smarden.org/pape/djb/daemontools/noinit.html That argument is pretty thorough. But again, I don't know if it applies to Arch. The needs of this distro may include requirements beyond just a good, elegant startup system.
Re: [arch-general] simple trick to make dealing with python 2/3 scripts easier
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 11:09:06AM -0700, Ben Booth wrote:
remove the /usr/bin/python symlink and replace with this shell script:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
exec /usr/bin/${PYTHON:-python3} $@
Bravo! I approve.
This solution is 0.99 times as good as the option to just not
have Python 3
Re: [arch-general] Arch-general is becoming a mess !
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 10:02:57PM +0200, fredbezies wrote: Last threads on systemd was useless. I disagree. In the last thread, I had to really dig for outside information to understand both sides of the argument. My research and tinkering has lead me to the following valuable conclusions: Init scripts are wrong. Sure, you can say they're adequate, that things start-up as you want them to. But that's not the same as them being right. They're gratuitously stateful, they leave you with a lot of uncertain state (can has idempotence?), they are large amounts of delicate code that only provide the illusion of stability because they've been so prolific and so heartily tested by a bounteous supply of users. systemd is also wrong. Pretty much, all anybody can say about systemd is that it isn't init scripts. This much is certainly true. It still does unnecessary parsing (place for bugs to lurk), it is highly coupled (having dependency on outside software including the kernel), and it goes to unnecessary lengths to nurture sloppy daemon developers. The arch dev's are making the right call. They can't maintain a fork of all the software that's going to be coupled to systemd. We're going to have to accept it sooner or later. systemd isn't really any better but I'm unsure if it's any worse. It's okay if we move the bugs into a place that upstream is more inclined to look at and fix. I know you guys can't be convinced to use daemontools and I'm not sure if you should at this point. Making the right decision is therefore not an option. You should just go with the wrong decision that's easiest for the movers-and-shakers to live with. I got all this from reading the several monster threads. Arch-general seems to be working for me.
Re: [arch-general] Arch-general is becoming a mess !
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 03:15:36PM +0200, Thomas B?chler wrote: That's not more pragmatic, It is. Person X is annoying everyone, so person X can't post any longer. You seem to be conflating pragmatism with bigotry. Those of us who are used to the internet don't get annoyed by other peoples' silliness.
Re: [arch-general] OT: Major distributions (WAS: Re: [arch-dev-public] Migration to systemd)
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 11:08:50AM +0200, Rodrigo Rivas wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition I do not argue that software is good because it is old. I argue that software which is correct does not need to be changed.
Re: [arch-general] Arch-general is becoming a mess !
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 11:50:20AM -0400, Calvin Morrison wrote: On 16 August 2012 11:47, Anthony ''Ishpeck'' Tedjamulia archli...@ishpeck.net wrote: Those of us who are used to the internet don't get annoyed by other peoples' silliness. This is sort of how I feel about Tom and other who have gotten very upset and taken leave of the list. I don't really blame him. His goal, in reading the list, is to help those who need technical support in the stuff he works on. His goal is not to have philosophical arguments with people about software he has no intention on working on. If we have a healthy and lively debate that he has no part in, and these debates end up dominating the list, he _should_ move. There is no harm in focusing on what matters to you.
Re: [arch-general] Arch-general is becoming a mess !
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 12:00:55PM -0400, Calvin Morrison wrote: Right, but he has even said (along with others) that nobody is gonna change their mind, who cares about them, they're just trolls... to that effect. Why bother fighting something so stupid, if even you admit it is stupid? It's just totally pointless We all tend to pepper our actual communications with some personal narrative. It takes great communication skill to extract the actual meaning from the things that humans inevitably say. What he said was: I'm working on this software. If you need help with it, lemme know in this other place. Yes. He has feelings and those were conveyed on top of that message but it's okay. These things stop mattering eventually and the real effect is, if you need technical help from him, submit a bug report.
Re: [arch-general] Some funny bloke - 2
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 09:29:26PM +, Fons Adriaensen wrote: Just received a second bogus 'unsubscribe confirmation request'. This begins to look like stalking. The request was sent from anonymouse.org, so whoever is doing this is a miserable coward apart from whatever else. It was especially hurtful for me. QQ I've done my very best to stay focused on the actual software and the argumentation of their merits.
Re: [arch-general] DJB vs LP, was Re: Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 07:18:10PM -0700, David Benfell wrote: Have you looked at qmail lately? Yup. Installed it just a couple weeks ago. Use it every day. Pointed a coverity analysis at it the other week.
Re: [arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Migration to systemd
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 10:21:25AM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: Here's one part A good design would make the init process which is always running and everyone must run. 1./ Be a small simple binary 2./ Have no dependencies 3./ Be easy to follow, fix and lockdown, best fit being interpreted languages. 4./ be as fast as possible systemd meets 4. Sysvinit meets 1-3 well but OpenBSDs init meets 1-3 better And daemontools satisfies all of the above!
Re: [arch-general] Personal note
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 01:44:07PM -0700, David Benfell wrote: There is almost always a tension between those who know what they are doing and those who don't. There is also conflict between people who simply have different values.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 08:58:41AM -0400, Baho Utot wrote: Yes looks like I will need to migrate to BSD I've already begun using FreeBSD. Only real complaint I have is that my notmuch database isn't backwards compatible with the one they have in ports. Other than that, it's been a smooth transition. I was always most attracted to arch by its proximity to the BSD's. With all this talk of systemd, I felt it was time to bring that proximity to fruition. Arch remains on my laptop for the time being. I have fond memories of Arch that I hope do not dwindle.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 03:05:02PM +0200, Jelle van der Waa wrote: Tell me what's hard about systemd? I think what he was saying wasn't that systemd is hard but switching is hard irrespectively of what you're switching to. That's my inference anyway.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 09:12:30AM -0400, Baho Utot wrote: I have stopped using arch except for one server that does mail and DNS. It is presently being moved to my own linux distro based on LFS and using pacman for the package manager. Oooh! Link?
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 02:37:54PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I suspect that BSD for artist that draw can be used, but for audio not. Am I mistaken? I'm not sure I understand the question. There's a lot of audio software in FreeBSD. Whether any of it suits your purposes, I can not say. http://www.freebsd.org/ports/ Arch certainly has great stuff in this department. The AUR's full of decent packages. But I'm not really an artist interested in audio so I can't say how any of it compares.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 09:08:36AM -0400, Baho Utot wrote: What is so wrong with the booting using sysvinit? As a critic of systemd, perhaps I can help. Init scripts tend to wreck the determinism beacuse they can inherit your env. pid files are a problem waiting to happen. There really is nothing preventing them from getting trampled or deleted and then you've gotta go kill daemon processes by hand. Having to start daemons in a certain order is obnoxious. The more shell script you have to write in order to get daemons up (or shut 'em down) just means more opportunity for little annoying bugs. Startup speed is therefore affected. This doesn't matter if you don't reboot often but if you're doing lots of systems dev, it can be said that every minute spent waiting for the system to boot is one less minute spent improving your software. I really don't need what systemd offers and sysvinit does everything I need and has not failed me. Indeed, this is a values judgment. The argument for abandoning init scripts could be made in the department of Code Correctness as it is defined in the Arch Way... https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way There is no doubt that the community-tested traditions have found their way into effectiveness. As for systemd being better solution for the problem of booting the beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I just don't see it, so why take away sysvint? I'm still experimenting with daemontools under sysvinit as I described here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=141831 The transition seems less brutal, the ability to start things in parallel is there, supervision is there, but there is no process grouping (which I consider unimportant) as with systemd. You can use systemd and I should be able to use what works for me and not be forced down the systemd path. As explained in this and other threads, it may not be a decision we, in the Arch world, get to make. Too much of upstream may actually be dictated by what a comercially-backed distro does.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 03:32:42PM +0200, Thomas B?chler wrote: And you don't want systemd because you are sure it won't do what sysvinit can, even though you didn't try it. I think the complaint here is that the switch itself is a problem. I think he made it rather clear that he's not criticizing systemd itself but the notion of forcing a switch. I've been bellowing to local linux user groups and friends that sysvinit needs to go for years but I understand the general resistance: Every change -- even the especially good and worthy ones -- requires effort. For some, that's too much. Arch's policy on systemd vs. initscripts has not even been discussed among Arch developers yet... This is really all that needed to be said.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 03:28:17PM +0200, Jelle van der Waa wrote: On 08/09/12 22:00, Anthony ''Ishpeck'' Tedjamulia wrote: I think what he was saying wasn't that systemd is hard but switching is hard irrespectively of what you're switching to. Because the devs made systemd being able to use rc.conf? I'm just trying to clarify his actual argument so you can address that rather than slaying the straw man. You have to admit that the dev work does forebode the potential to make it the default in the distro. Doesn't make it certain but I don't think the certainty is what scares people. It takes less then a day to use systemd, but I am not forcing you to use it. No, you'll never force me to do anything. As I said in this thread already, I'm not using arch on my workhorse. I'm not worried about it like some people are. I'm just trying to elevate the level of discourse here.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 07:20:29PM +0530, gt wrote: Offtopic: Your system clock seems to be way off. So it is! Thanks for the heads up.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 05:05:14PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Mailman archives! IIRC Heiko mentioned that there are more disputes about Lennart Poettering and his software on ALL mailing lists, than about anything else. Why is it like that? Probably because he has all the arrogance of DJB but none of the skill.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:30:50AM -0400, Brandon Watkins wrote: Also, I will state once again that I think people are highly exaggerating the difficulty of transitioning an arch install to systemd, its quite simple. It sounds like you're trying to turn peoples' subjective preferences into an objective discussion. Most of the complaints I see are I've used it. I hate it. I don't want to use it again. You disagree. That's great. Discussion is healthy. It's also important to know that there are a lot of people in this community with a lot at stake. The were attracted to arch for a reason and, however annoying the bitching may get, they are making it clear what those reasons were. Not saying you should care. Just saying their behavior is inevitable and you might find a little more joy in life if you understood these complaints for what they are.
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 06:00:25PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I had to google, I never heard about Daniel J. Bernstein before. I suspect DJB is for Daniel J. Bernstein? Yes. If so, he seemingly isn't as half as arrogant as LP. Spend a week lurking a crypto mailing list and you may change your mind. :P
Re: [arch-general] Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 05:13:45PM +0100, Paul Dann wrote: Sometimes the most loving thing to do is let someone go through a short, sharp pain in order to avoid a long, drawn out one. Systemd is not evil. You may not like the idea of changing, but it probably will be the best thing for you to do to avoid more pain down the line. No rush, but I reckon the anticipation is accually worse than the switch. Well said. I know that nobody in arch has declared the switch is inevitable but the way it looks, with upstream being eager enough to do so, it seems incredibly likely unless we train everyone to use DJB's daemontools instead. :P http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html Sorry. I couldn't resist.
Re: [arch-general] DJB vs LP, was Re: Lennart Poettering on udev-systemd
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 03:53:10PM -0700, David Benfell wrote: I'd add that djb has started several projects that have been, I think, very, very good, but then dropped them. It is harder to justify using his stuff when development is largely limited to one man's attention span. I really don't understand the lust for novelty people have. If the solution is correct, there really isn't much need for additional work. Code changes are not the same as improvements.
Re: [arch-general] OT: Major distributions (WAS: Re: [arch-dev-public] Migration to systemd)
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 07:51:25AM +0800, Leon Feng wrote: As a rolling release, Arch is usually the leader of adopt new technology. But now, Arch is falling behind Debian now. So sad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty
Re: [arch-general] My end-user $0.02 on /etc/rc.conf splitting.
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 12:20:10AM +0300, Menachem Moystoviz wrote: In addition, it may be considered to move from systemv to NetBSD's init, which stays in-line with the simple interface of rc.conf but adds parallelization and modularity. That'd win so hard. Lastly, it may be beneficial to suggest to users to install one of the daemon monitors. Daemontools has been working sufficiently well for my purposes. It's lean, robust, and I'm a fan of the exec chain. For this reason, while we should add compatibility for systemd, we shouldn't force it down the users throats. How do you add support in this way?
Re: [arch-general] My end-user $0.02 on /etc/rc.conf splitting.
On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 09:36:05AM +0200, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote: The pain is the need to merge new changes while updating. Some tools (like pacdiff) can help with the job but it's very frustrating to have one configuration file and merge lot of changes in it. Especially when it comes to cosmetic/comments changes. Having one big configuration file means it's much easier to make mistakes in it and have strong problems because of that. Dedicated files to services/requirements make such problems more isolated. Yes, I concur. Although I'm not so much a fan of systemd, I can say with confidence that this assertion matches my experience. Dividing the configurations makes each package far more likely to update itself cleanly withit botching-up some other, unrelated part of your system.
