Re: minimizing footprint
We are talking of end users systems, how many kids will add a cron task? I was more concerned with other Fedora packages that insert cron jobs when they are installed. But if Fedora gets the dependencies right, rpm would install and run cron at the same time the package that needs cron is installed, so that's not an issue (unless the package dependencies are set to assume that cron is always part of the base system). The packages you're proposing to change are OLPC-specific packages anyway, so the changes won't mess up any other Fedora installs. I do see the point of removing unneeded daemons in every memory-constrained laptop, and this does look like low hanging fruit. On the Ubuntu system I happen to be typing on, 'cat /proc//status' shows cron taking 300k of resident RAM and 2.7Mb of virtual memory at its peak (and I have a place to page out to, which most XO's don't). The XO system will certainly be more responsive with another 2MB of memory available for general paging; its worst performance bottleneck was lack of DRAM when I last looked, and that situation has probably gotten worse as the system grew. My thought was that systemd probably wouldn't get much bigger if it got a parser for cron files. But your proposed change is less work, though it only fixes the issue for XO's, not for other memory-constrained systems. John ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: i think the point john (gilmore) was making is that it's a bad precedent that simply because a) systemd offers a second-rate API for scheduling events, and b) we only have a couple of uses for an event scheduler, that we should therefore switch from a well-established API to a lousy API. instead, if systemd can be made to support the cron API properly, it would be worth making it do so. systemd's cron-like API is actually more powerful than cron, in that it can schedule based on seconds precision, and offers monotonic clocks in addition to calendar times. It is true that it has not passed the test of time. barring that, or if it's too much work (likely), then if it saves us boatloads of disk to make the switch, and our use-cases don't lose functionality or correctness as a result, then i guess we should switch. It's not a huge saving, but a small amount of work to eliminate a daemon that runs all the time on every laptop seems worth it to me. Daniel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
On 03/24/2013 09:38 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote: It's true, we need learn new tricks, but does not have sense have a service not needed on every xo, if we can do it in a better way. Does this logic apply generally? 12.1.0 has a control panel entry 'Modem configuration'. How many XOs require this capability? Tony ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.netwrote: On 03/24/2013 09:38 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote: It's true, we need learn new tricks, but does not have sense have a service not needed on every xo, if we can do it in a better way. Does this logic apply generally? 12.1.0 has a control panel entry 'Modem configuration'. How many XOs require this capability? Generally. In the case we are discussing, we don't need remove a feature, only implement it in a different way. Gonzalo ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
i think the point john (gilmore) was making is that it's a bad precedent that simply because a) systemd offers a second-rate API for scheduling events, and b) we only have a couple of uses for an event scheduler, that we should therefore switch from a well-established API to a lousy API. instead, if systemd can be made to support the cron API properly, it would be worth making it do so. barring that, or if it's too much work (likely), then if it saves us boatloads of disk to make the switch, and our use-cases don't lose functionality or correctness as a result, then i guess we should switch. but when systemd falls out of favor in a year or two we'll just have to change things again -- either to something new, or back to cron (which will most certainly still be available). paul gonzalo wrote: On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.netwrote: On 03/24/2013 09:38 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote: It's true, we need learn new tricks, but does not have sense have a service not needed on every xo, if we can do it in a better way. Does this logic apply generally? 12.1.0 has a control panel entry 'Modem configuration'. How many XOs require this capability? Generally. In the case we are discussing, we don't need remove a feature, only implement it in a different way. Gonzalo part 2 text/plain 129 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
Hi Paul, On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: but when systemd falls out of favor in a year or two we'll just have to change things again -- either to something new, or back to cron Not sure whether you're stating that straight or facetiously. Systemd has some shortcomings, but it seems to be an outstanding step ahead in Linux system infra. And it is evolving quickly for the better -- I can't see any fundamental problem with it, and its limitations and blemishes will be overcome. cheers, martin (who's idling on a sunday) -- martin.langh...@gmail.com - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first ~ http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/User:Martin_Langhoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
IMHO, if we can speed up the startup time a litle, the change worth it. We are talking of end users systems, how many kids will add a cron task? And who propose the change is dsd, we know him and is a conservative guy, does not do change without reason. We did this in the same way the last 30 years, is not the best argument neither... Gonzalo On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: i think the point john (gilmore) was making is that it's a bad precedent that simply because a) systemd offers a second-rate API for scheduling events, and b) we only have a couple of uses for an event scheduler, that we should therefore switch from a well-established API to a lousy API. instead, if systemd can be made to support the cron API properly, it would be worth making it do so. barring that, or if it's too much work (likely), then if it saves us boatloads of disk to make the switch, and our use-cases don't lose functionality or correctness as a result, then i guess we should switch. but when systemd falls out of favor in a year or two we'll just have to change things again -- either to something new, or back to cron (which will most certainly still be available). paul gonzalo wrote: On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Tony Anderson tony_ander...@usa.net wrote: On 03/24/2013 09:38 AM, devel-requ...@lists.laptop.org wrote: It's true, we need learn new tricks, but does not have sense have a service not needed on every xo, if we can do it in a better way. Does this logic apply generally? 12.1.0 has a control panel entry 'Modem configuration'. How many XOs require this capability? Generally. In the case we are discussing, we don't need remove a feature, only implement it in a different way. Gonzalo part 2 text/plain 129 ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: minimizing footprint
martin wrote: Hi Paul, On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Paul Fox p...@laptop.org wrote: but when systemd falls out of favor in a year or two we'll just have to change things again -- either to something new, or back to cron Not sure whether you're stating that straight or facetiously. Systemd has some shortcomings, but it seems to be an outstanding step ahead in Linux system infra. And it is evolving quickly for the better -- I can't see any fundamental problem with it, and its limitations and blemishes will be overcome. we'll see. =- paul fox, p...@laptop.org ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
