[Fwd: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian]

[Svante Signell]

Hi, 

This message was not intended to be sent to a debian-* mailing list by
the author. However, since it is (in my opinion) of large interest I
got the permission to forward it to debian-devel. Hopefully, also some
of the debian-devel subscribers will appreciate it too.

Thanks!
 Forwarded Message 
From: Steve Litt 
To: d...@lists.dyne.org
Subject: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 12:07:34 -0500

On Fri, 01 Jan 2016 15:45:49 +0100
Micky Del Favero  wrote:

> If I remember well Solaris has /bin linked to /usr/bin since many
> years, so linking /bin to /usr/bin is not a poetteringisation, or
> almost it's not an original idea of poettering.
> 
> Ciao, Micky

Well, OK, if we're really going to discuss this... 

This *is* poetterization, regardless of what Sun or anyone else did
before. It's supported by Freedesktop.org, and I think everyone here
can agree that anything Freedesktop supports is anti-init choice,
anti-simplicity, anti-modularity, and pro-systemd.

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/

Those of you who have tried to lay down an alternate init system, to
replace systemd, without the aid of a package manager, will probably
agree with me that the toughest obstacle isn't udev, it isn't dbus,
it's initramfs. I looked up the word "black box" in the dictionary last
night, and they had a picture of initramfs.

Hey, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes you need an initramfs.
Maybe you have LUKS plus LVM plus software raid. Merge or not, you'll
need to compile yourself one heck of a kernel to avoid needing
initramfs. But for the very prevalent use case of Ext4, no raid, no
LVM, no LUKS, no silly merge, and a few partitions, initramfs is as
useful as udders on a snake. I mean seriously, in such a use case, you
forego initramfs: boot to the root partition, run /sbin/mount -a, and
bang, you have all resources available to you. But nooo.

Initramfs does have one big benefit for the Poetterists: It provides a
dark, safe place for them to start up their megacomplexities and call
it magic. Oh, there are tools with which you can periscope into
initramfs, but have you ever really looked at everything in an
initramfs? It's a jungle in there. Just right for the Poetterists to
incubate their plague.

Now, the Freedesktop.Org to which I referred earlier in this email has
a link to the following Rob Landley page explaining what they call the
"historical reasons" for separate directories:

http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html

Note that Landley's #1 reason for merging is the existance of
initramfs. Now I'm not stupid enough to call the author of Busybox a
Poetterist. He wrote this in 2010, before anyone really knew the
Napoleonistic aspirations of systemd, back in the days when a complex
and opaque "early boot" wasn't a big deal.

But now it's 5 years later, and that early boot black box is exactly
where the Poetterists fester most virulently.

In summary, if you accept the merge and /usr on a separate partition,
you need initramfs. And if you have initramfs, you've just made it
three times as hard to lay down Runit or Epoch or s6 or Suckless Init
plus daemontools-encore plus Littkit.

We all have to pick our own battles, and I'm not sure how much effort
I'd make to roll back the merge. It may indeed be a good thing that
only 3 changes are required to patch up Devuan for the merge. But make
no mistake about it: regardless of its initial motivation, today the
merge's primary beneficiaries are Red Hat and their proxies,
Freedesktop.org and Lennart Poettering.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
November 2015 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
 of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques

Re: [Fwd: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian]

[Iustin Pop]

On 2016-01-03 15:59:37, Svante Signell wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> This message was not intended to be sent to a debian-* mailing list by
> the author. However, since it is (in my opinion) of large interest I
> got the permission to forward it to debian-devel. Hopefully, also some
> of the debian-devel subscribers will appreciate it too.

Wow, here I was thinking this would be some informed oppinion, but:

"Oh, there are tools with which you can periscope into
initramfs, but have you ever really looked at everything in an
initramfs."

Wait, what? Yes, I have many times unpacked the simple cpio archive that
an iniramfs is, and I have looked at its entire contents. It's not black
magic.

This is just more FUD being spread by somebody who doesn't want to
change their ways, at all.

iustin, who wasted 1 minute on this


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Re: [Fwd: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian]

[Andrey Rahmatullin]

On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 03:59:37PM +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
> This message was not intended to be sent to a debian-* mailing list by
> the author. However, since it is (in my opinion) of large interest I
> got the permission to forward it to debian-devel. Hopefully, also some
> of the debian-devel subscribers will appreciate it too.
It's a good thing that people who do appreciate such examples of hate
speech and conspiracy theories are mostly at the place the message was
intended to be sent to. I personally would like for such messages to not
be forwarded here.

-- 
WBR, wRAR


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Re: [Fwd: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian]

[Guido Günther]

Hi,
On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 04:08:53PM +0100, Iustin Pop wrote:
> On 2016-01-03 15:59:37, Svante Signell wrote:
> > Hi, 
> > 
> > This message was not intended to be sent to a debian-* mailing list by
> > the author. However, since it is (in my opinion) of large interest I
> > got the permission to forward it to debian-devel. Hopefully, also some
> > of the debian-devel subscribers will appreciate it too.
> 
> Wow, here I was thinking this would be some informed oppinion, but:
> 
> "Oh, there are tools with which you can periscope into
> initramfs, but have you ever really looked at everything in an
> initramfs."
> 
> Wait, what? Yes, I have many times unpacked the simple cpio archive that
> an iniramfs is, and I have looked at its entire contents. It's not black
> magic.

It is a bit more complicated if you use microcode updates:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=807759

but the tools to handle this are all there and in Debian.
Cheers,
 -- Guido

   

Re: [Fwd: Re: [DNG] FW: support for merged /usr in Debian]

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, 3 Jan 2016 16:08:53 +0100, Iustin Pop 
wrote:
>Wow, here I was thinking this would be some informed oppinion, but:
>
>"Oh, there are tools with which you can periscope into
>initramfs, but have you ever really looked at everything in an
>initramfs."
>
>Wait, what? Yes, I have many times unpacked the simple cpio archive that
>an iniramfs is, and I have looked at its entire contents. It's not black
>magic.

I fully agree. Initramfs is not quite easy to understand, but it is
possible to understand, it is easy to debug, and I have been able in
the past to find the root cause for any initramfs issues I had in the
past.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | http://www.zugschlus.de/
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834