Re: complaints about systemd

2014-10-08 Thread Michael
After having read much of the stuff available online (including parts of 
Lennart Poetterings blog), it appears that the essential point of it all seems 
to have been to make boot up a little faster.

Bit i have a strong feeling that just a few seconds faster boot up simply do 
not justify the heavy impact.

The new systemd is by no means easier to maintain or customize, or even just to 
grok in the first place, with binary logs, abandoned script format (no more 
init scripts), providing a temporary hardware base - like sockets or autofs 
mounts - for later daemons (so you have to configure 2 different places now), 
and so many backward dependencies that it soon (already?) will be impossible to 
don't use it. And even trivial updates may need a reboot now.
The new system reduces some complexity on one side while introducing much more 
on the other.
It will make Linux a lot less attractive for people who want to work with it as 
developer, or distributor, finally cutting its dev base.

Unfortunately, these few seconds were just about all that normal users 
recognize, and thus they constantly nagged their favorite distributions to make 
the move.

I can very well imagine how just these few seconds are also the most impressing 
argument to be presented to the Red Hat board, which anyway never had the time 
to dive into details of pros and cons. They want the summary. In Lennarts 
presentation, those seconds probably were the killing measure of success. 
Making the developer inexchangeable...

I can't help but it reminds me of the way city govs pay horrible sums for 
planting huge trees, to have a visual result immediately. Faster is always 
better ! As a tree biologist, i know how these trees are grown in nurseries, 
cutting their roots dozen times to football size, and how they are doomed to 
crank many years later, shortening their life span - of course, with additional 
cut-down and exchange costs. For all my life, so far, i was growing and 
planting trees, and for some time, was part time working to cut the unlucky 
ones down, and i should know the money involved. But in the budget plans, 
there's simply no connection between nursery, planting, and replacing. There's 
simply no one judging about it in synopsis of decades. It's all about now and 
here.

Right now i see such a thing happening now and here in the linux world, too. It 
gives me the creeps.

I'd insist to know who ever complained about a few seconds boot up if there was 
no knowledge of any faster alternative. Is there any real problem behind it ? 
Like, for my 4 y old PC desktop (which, besides, boot up in 7 seconds with some 
customized sysv init) or for way too old hardware which always needs too long 
either way ? Is there a problem in server farms ? In laptops or smartphones 
which anyway got hibernated most of the time, instead of a reboot ? 

If my first task of the day is to boot my whatever-device, what for would i 
need these spared seconds. Just because they exist, would i wait, and get my 
first whatsapp, even before doing anything else, like going for a coffee ? Am i 
addicted like 'Did you already watch your boot up today ?'
Instead of doing something useful in parallel, which spares me just this time. 
But wait, wasn't parallelizing one of the core issues.

Or was it hypnotizing, ugh, i just can't remember.

That said, i don't deny that systemd contains some good ideas. But they should 
be implemented in the respective (daemon/subsystem) packages, and in a smart 
'launchd' which does not need to be more than that.





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Re: complaints about systemd

2014-10-08 Thread ael
On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 03:32:58PM +0200, Michael wrote:
 The new system reduces some complexity on one side while introducing much 
 more on the other.

The whole design so far as I can see lacks the simplicity and
transparency that the greatest minds in computer science advocate.

That seems to be confirmed in that systemd is more or less permanently
broken, at least on all my machines. It takes *far longer* to boot up
and particularly shutdown than ever the old init system did.
I have given up even thinking about bug reporting it: what do I say?
Where are the logs that throw any light on the system problems?
Which bug do I report when it changes from day to day?

I suspect that many others are in a similar situation, so that the bug
tracking doesn't reflect the real situation.

All of that said, some of the underlying design ideas are good, but
particulary concurrent systems need that simplicity and transparency, and
the technology to do it exists if little used.

ael


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Re: complaints about systemd

2014-10-08 Thread Ray Andrews

On 10/08/2014 12:39 PM, ael wrote:

On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 03:32:58PM +0200, Michael wrote:

The new system reduces some complexity on one side while introducing much more 
on the other.

The whole design so far as I can see lacks the simplicity and
transparency that the greatest minds in computer science advocate.

That seems to be confirmed in that systemd is more or less permanently
broken, ...
I don't  know enough to weigh in on this, but I spent the morning 
researching the subject and it does seem like this is no small issue.  I 
myself am deeply troubled by what I read, it seems that cleverness has 
replaced level-headedness, wiz-bang technology has replaced simplicity 
and transparency, and featureitis has replaced stability.  I hope this 
gets sorted out.  Me, I want my computer to boot reliably, and I 
wouldn't care even if it did take 2 seconds longer, and I want to be 
able to understand and even edit how it works.  But that's just me.




at least on all my machines. It takes *far longer* to boot up
and particularly shutdown than ever the old init system did.
I have given up even thinking about bug reporting it: what do I say?
Where are the logs that throw any light on the system problems?
Which bug do I report when it changes from day to day?

I suspect that many others are in a similar situation, so that the bug
tracking doesn't reflect the real situation.

All of that said, some of the underlying design ideas are good, but
particulary concurrent systems need that simplicity and transparency, and
the technology to do it exists if little used.

ael





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Re: complaints about systemd

2014-10-08 Thread Dean Hamstead

I will weigh in.

In the FOSS world - I could care less what people decide to code up and 
run. If you like it, go for it. Scratch that itch and share your code.


I liked the look of systemd early on, but this was in comparison to 
upstart. Debian's dash based init scripts always struck me as well 
thought out and robust.


For people with energy and inclination to radically change things, might 
I suggest two areas far more important than merging everything with 
init:


1. proper use of cpu rings
2. unified hardware raid interfaces and corresponding cli tools

Ok perhaps #2 isnt widely impacting. But OpenBSD has done it, i am still 
baffled that Linux is such a mess.



Dean


On 2014-10-09 07:25, Ray Andrews wrote:

On 10/08/2014 12:39 PM, ael wrote:

On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 03:32:58PM +0200, Michael wrote:
The new system reduces some complexity on one side while introducing 
much more on the other.

The whole design so far as I can see lacks the simplicity and
transparency that the greatest minds in computer science advocate.

That seems to be confirmed in that systemd is more or less permanently
broken, ...

I don't  know enough to weigh in on this, but I spent the morning
researching the subject and it does seem like this is no small issue.
I myself am deeply troubled by what I read, it seems that cleverness
has replaced level-headedness, wiz-bang technology has replaced
simplicity and transparency, and featureitis has replaced stability.
I hope this gets sorted out.  Me, I want my computer to boot reliably,
and I wouldn't care even if it did take 2 seconds longer, and I want
to be able to understand and even edit how it works.  But that's just
me.



at least on all my machines. It takes *far longer* to boot up
and particularly shutdown than ever the old init system did.
I have given up even thinking about bug reporting it: what do I say?
Where are the logs that throw any light on the system problems?
Which bug do I report when it changes from day to day?

I suspect that many others are in a similar situation, so that the bug
tracking doesn't reflect the real situation.

All of that said, some of the underlying design ideas are good, but
particulary concurrent systems need that simplicity and transparency, 
and

the technology to do it exists if little used.

ael





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