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Debian To Replace SysVinit, Switch To Systemd Or Upstart
An anonymous reader writes "Debian has been one of the last holdouts using SysVinit over a modern init system, but now after much discussion amongst Debian developers, they are deciding whether to support systemd or Upstart as their default init system. The Debian technical committee has been asked to vote on which init system to use, which could swing in favor of using Upstart due to the Canonical bias present on the committee."
But that doesn't mean that Upstart does.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I fucking hate this new system. Its a mess of scripts that call on more scripts. Its such a pain in the ass now if you want to have a program run when the system starts. Gone are the days of just adding a line to /etc/rc.local
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Init would have been my pick, but I still hope this works out well for them.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why not keep sysvinit and switch to OpenRC for managing the init scripts?
Actually, that's how sysv init works. To get a program started by systemd you have to create a service file full of magic commands and put it in the magic systemd directory. Then you have to type systemctl --abracadabra enable yourservicename.service. Then you have to go and add an [install] section to your service file, because nobody actually remembers that you have to write one or how to do it. Then you do the systemctl again. Then you check the log files to see if the thing actually started, because nothing gets output to the console during boot (except the filesystem mount messages and the big fat warning that my root fs is readonly).
Tell me I'm not the only one still clinging to sysvinit?
The new "replacements" (alternatives) are ghey++ and will no doubt be replaced in due time.
I dno't want to hear about a few seconds faster boot time. I want my *nix startup to be configurable, scripted, and simple. sysvinit takes the cake;.It's documented, and sysvinit is so simple it doesn't really require documentation, anyway.
This is your way of stating your opinion? Looks, like your parents forgot to teach you something particular important to be considered an adult and able to participate in a discussion. You could say that you disagree with Canonicals decision towards Wayland/Weston. You could say that the way they handled the issue and announced Mir sucks and was not a cooperative mode. In addition they made some bad blood. And that all would sound like someone really discussing the issue, but really you just sound like someone either too young to remember the vi vs. emacs wars or like someone exhumed from that day, just to behave like a troll.
BTW: Get a life, normally that reduced these urges to hate someone just because you find his or her decision questionable.
I used to not only use RedHat, but contributed fixes. Ubuntu is not, in many respects, my ideal, but systemd is enough reason all by itself for me to use Ubuntu.
SysV init scripts just work. They are simple to create and easy to maintain. Debugging is a cinch when things go wrong -- and a lot of packages DO NOT get upstart init, nor SysV init correct. Upstart is only easier in theory. In practice it's made a complete mess of things and I have several Ubuntu systems to prove it.
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On a Gentoo box, and it should still be starting via sysvinit.
My #1 reason for keeping it installed is standardization:
All the BSDs use a similiar system, all the legacy UNIXes do as well, as do all my linux installs that are more than 2 years old.
Additionally I have had *NO* problems with it in like 15 years that weren't caused by user error, or distro error. Systemd on the other hand rendered my system hung or inoperable on more than a few occasions when it first became popular, as has udev by itself. There's something to be said for 'windows-like' functionality, but all the subsystems that have been getting added to linux to provide it are proving messy, unmaintainable, and even more prone to 'unidirectional grading' (it used to be you could have both newer and older kernels, even across major versions running. Nowadays you're lucky if the minor versions don't break things over the span of two months. Anyone here remember having 1.2 installs running 2.0? Or 2.0 with a 2.2 kernel? Or 2.2/2.4? The only major issues you had were if you used ipchains/tables/ipfwadm and had to migrate your settings. And there was almost always legacy support for most or all of a major version change.)
Honestly with the way linux is going nowadays, as well as the various *BSDs, I'm considering very strongly migrating to another platform. If you change what people are used to too much, there's far far FAR less incentive for them not to try something totally new rather than bungling themselves up with half remembered details about how their *FORMER* version of the system operates. Much like happened with WinXP/Vista/7/8.)
Not that many people will agree with this assessment.
This sounds like a really awful idea, based on what I've read here. I like how Debian's init works now, its fine, there's nothing wrong with and it's simple.
Where the heck do I send hatemail to perhaps encourage them not to do this?
Citation needed, anonymous. When has the Debian Technical Committee last made a decision based on a political bias?
It seems like I'm the only person on here who thinks this, but I really can't wait for the switch to happen. Upstart scripts are unbelievably easy to write when compared with init scripts. For one thing, they don't require massive amounts of boilerplate code. For another, they are relatively easy to manage and execute.
Just the other day I was trying to set up a couple of machines running deluge as a daemon. The Ubuntu machines took me 10 minutes tops. The remaining debian one had me in init script hell for an hour or more...
We want to change to "that" because basic idea is a good one. The ability to start services in parallel, socket activation, and cgroups for process group management are all good things. The problem with systemd is not so much these ideas, but the implementation. To put it bluntly, the developers are all "superstar" jerks who wouldn't know usability if it hit them over the head.
They designed an ugly interface with way too much automatic magic that no doubt is perfectly obvious and correct to them, but abstruse and incomprehensible to anybody outside their little circle. Then they wrote a couple of "howto" articles on complex sysadmin tasks that almost nobody has to do, and declared documentation complete. To do a simple task, like writing a service file, or God forbid, changing the getty program you want to use, requires a monumental effort of sifting through disconnected, unintuitively named man pages.
systemd: good idea, horrible implementation.
So upstart has some things that need to be fixed (mostly the clean shutdown thing)...
Systemd is a monster that gets to infect more of you packages over time, plus you get the benefit of binary log files!
I hope they choose upstart and just fix it up a bit.
OpenRC has been proposed by some too, which seems like a nice sysvinit replacement, but event driven startup and shutdown of services (think laptops and hotswap stuff) is more important than just a fast startup time.
Reinventing the wheel is how you put your collective mark on things. Programmers like writing things, and there is a natural desire to write rather then use, and a warm fuzzy feeling when other people use what you have written.
There is an old saying, "Standard is better then the best solution", but programmers and engineers have a natural desire to build better solutions, even when it is not such a good idea.
That is not to say everything must remain static, and it is fair to say there are some functional shortcomings of the old system (esp in terms of dependencies), but I suspect that pragmatism aside, said desire to fix things is a pretty big factor here, esp for people working in niche domains with disproportionate representation or people in dominant domains who have trouble seeing past their own community's needs (the embedded community frequently ends up on the wrong side of that issue).
I cannot abide the SysV (AT&T) mess'o'symlinks multiple-indirect startup scripts. One reason I've stuck with Slackware for almost 20 years. It uses BSD-style inits that have far less indirection and need far fewer lookups. Frankly, some of the BusyBox startup look attractive too -- one script to rule them all :)
Debian should stay true to its core principles. The user should be able - by installing a package - to choose the init system she wants.
There is no one true mail server on Debian. You can choose to run zsh as a shell instead of bash. There should never be only one supported init system.
Distributions don't choose, users do. Oh and technical committees are there to find solutions to make that work, not to complain about how difficult that is.
I hope for systemd; I know it from Fedora. And in my opinion upstart is some kind of mess; it's a mixture of bash script and their own added syntax. It kind of feels like Microsoft's extensions for C++. I'm also a fan of declarative configuration like systemd is. After 5 minutes reading the manual of systemd I could write my own service for pdnsd.
[Unit]
Description=PDNSD
ConditionPathIsMountPoint=/mnt/read
After=NetworkManager.service
[Service] /var/run/pdnsd.pid
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/pdnsd --daemon -p
PIDFile=/var/run/pdnsd.pid
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
# systemctl status pdnsd /var/run/pdnsd.pid (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) /usr/local/sbin/pdnsd --daemon -p /var/run/pdnsd.pid
pdnsd.service - PDNSD
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pdnsd.service)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2013-10-28 18:46:23 CET; 1h 14min ago
Process: 1585 ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/pdnsd --daemon -p
Main PID: 1587 (pdnsd)
CGroup: name=systemd:/system/pdnsd.service
1587
Oct 28 18:46:23 vostrotitan.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting PDNSD...
Oct 28 18:46:23 vostrotitan.localdomain pdnsd[1587]: pdnsd-1.2.9a-par starting.
Oct 28 18:46:23 vostrotitan.localdomain systemd[1]: Started PDNSD.
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Because:
1. What sane organization wants to follow in Canonical's footsteps?
2. Who, besides an utter fool, thinks systemd is a good idea?
No Solaris SMF was a good idea, systemd is what you get when someone looks at that idea and says "you know what, I can fuck that up."
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
To shutdown: yank the power cable.
To reboot: yank the power cable, then plug it back in again. Then depress power button if necessary.
Accompany either process by shouting the magic words "fuck it, it'll probably be fine".
At a former university the desktops used Slackware with initscripts all the way up until 2011. These desktops were beefy machines with decent chunks of RAM and SATA disks but would take minutes to finish booting. The administrators there switched the start-up scripts to systemd across a holiday and things became dramatically better - no boot took more than 30 seconds and most disk based boots were sub 15 seconds making the old system look laughable.
I'm glad that Slackware gave the admins the choice because the old way of doing it has had its day. Not everything from the 90s was better...
You need to remember that most of the time Debian is not about developing new stuff, it's primarily about PACKAGING and DISTRIBUTING existing stuff.
From "package a bunch of software into an usable system" standpoint it is a smart decision to wait until the dust settles and things are tried and proven. Especially if you are producing system as stable as Debian Stable.
--Coder
I do agree bootup times don't matter if you run a server. For a laptop, a tablet, a mobile, even a desktop that gets turned off startup times are important. For tablets, laptops and mobiles, they are VERY important.
:-/
I agree that complexity is evil. I have no experience with systemd nor with upstart, so I cannot comment on them. However, dependency graph and parallel execution should not be THAT difficult or complex
--Coder
I've heard tempting-sounding things about Debian kFreeBSD, actually - aside from anything else, BSD has a port of ZFS. So if you want something with a familiar userland (GNU utilies, Debian package management, loads of packages available) it does look quite appealing. I'm not sure how common it is to use ZFS under FreeBSD so far, though.
Also, there are Solaris distros out there, which is potentially another way to get the same effect. Nexenta started as one, though I remember them switching more to focus on server stuff since then...
FTS: The Debian technical committee has been asked to vote on which init system to use, which could swing in favor of using Upstart due to the Canonical bias present on the committee."
So what are the chances of getting the Canonical-associated board members to recuse themselves from the vote, given the obvious conflict of interest there?
Nothing to see here
systemd service files are quite straightforward---I'm not sure what kind of monumental effort you are referring to when creating service files. For a simple service, starting/stopping/restarting the service is handled automatically, leaving a very minimal service file.
For example:
[Unit]
Description=AutonNav
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/autonnav
Type=forking
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
And that is a good thing for Linux because it can use a lot of good technology from the kernel. The major issue is that systemd requires cgroups and that means no support for kFreeBSD. Even if the ex-Canonical people recused themselves, systemd was always going to have an uphill battle.
There is a Debian derivative that has decided to use systemd, but it's -- the still incubating -- Tanglu.
After having repeatedly run into the limitations of SysV init, I'm all for replacing it with something smarter, but I'm torn between these two.
I've used Upstart on Ubuntu, both as an admin and as a developer. I like that the commands and configuration files are clean and pretty easy to understand. A few things bother me, though:
I haven't used Systemd at all, but the common points that come up again and again in every writeup I encounter have me forming me some opinions already. I really like the idea of the load-as-needed dependency model. A few things have me quite worried about the implementation, though:
Its "obtuse", but your point is taken
Actually, it is "abstruse".
abstruse
adj. Difficult to understand; esoteric; recondite.
It's a well thought out post.
Control groups of course are at the center of what a modern server needs to do. Resource management of services is one of the major parts (if not the biggest) of service management, and if you want to stay relevant on the server you must have something in this area.
-systemd apparently does this?
-upstart does not.
For me, this is exactly the right direction, but I'm biased to server applications. ...The kernel folks want userspace to have a single arbitrator component for cgroups...
-systemd has this
-upstart apparently does not. He has grave doubts about upstart being able to do it.
I don't understand what he wrote.
ether you take the path where you use the stuff that the folks doing most of the Linux core OS development work on (regardless if they work at Red Hat, Intel, Suse, Samsung or wherever else) or you use the stuff Canonical is working on (which in case it isn't obvious is well... "limited").
It's an accurate assessment. How is that FUD?
Killing process isn't the point. Just try it for your own.
I have. If you can get all the appropriate daemons terminated and your filesystems unmounted or read-only, you're done. What were you hoping to accomplish, having the machine turn itself off? Who cares?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
systemd falls into the same trap as "desktop environments". It starts with appealing goals (basically, make startup a graph that is traversed parallel-breadthfirst), but it winds up sucking. Consider what happens when systemd dies. This happened to me recently (fedora19, upon resume) - there's not much you can do except reboot. Yes, this could have happened with sysvinit, but who among us ever had a crash of init? I certainly haven't, and I'm a certified greybeard.
AFAIKT, the problem is that it's trying to borg a whole bunch of subsystems that do a great job by themselves. For instance, systemd tries to replace syslog for the most part. It's easy to see why it would want to do this, since daemon/server IO is a useful part of managment. But trying to do so, the system becomes more fragile and *narrower* in its applicability - more specific to how one guy (Lennart) thinks every system should behave.
I suspect what will happen is that systemd will get shaved down a bit with some of the excess functionality removed, and in the process will become reasonably robust (ie, NEVER crash).
Its daemon management, It by its nature touches a lot of stuff to do its job well. Now the relivant question is, could it do everything it needs to do in a cleaner fashion with well established interfaces allowing other programs to do the same thing, while also limiting systemd to just do a subset of it. Leinart seems think that's a silly goal, to have a daemon manager that isn't as good as it could be.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Size and complexity
Upstart (1.5): 285 files, ~185k lines, ~97k C
Debian: sysvinit + 120 files, 5.8k lines
systemd (v44+): dbus + glib + 900 files, 224k lines, 125k C
sysvinit: 560kB, 75 files, ~15k lines
Debian startup is smallest, it's only shell with sysvinit (C) as dependency
Upstart is about 10 times bigger in terms of lines of code/text. Most of the extra complexity size comes from C.
systemd is about 10 times bigger, like upstart. But with the mandatory deps it blows up to about one hundred times the code footprint! Most of the extra code is in mandatory dependencies, but the systemd core is also bigger than anything else.
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_init_systems
I don't care what they replace it with, so long as there's a flag/switch/option somewhere to make the boot deterministic and identical across systems and across boots.
We run ~5000 diskless clients using Debian, booting via PXE/TFTP and mounting all filesystems via NFS.
With Debian 5, everything ran perfectly. With Debian 7, the boot is now very racy and too many things depend on the speed of the network (some services start before their dependencies are ready). We actually had to turn on verbose boot messages in order to slow things down enough for everything to boot correctly. We're testing the "don't run in parallel" flag now to see if that fixes things.
It's virtually impossible to debug a concurrent/parallel boot system, as every boot is just slightly different from the last. With the original sysvinit system, where things ran in series, one after another, it was very easy to find problems and fix things.
We don't care if the computer takes an extra 15-30 seconds to boot; we boot everything in the morning via WoL before classes start, and they are rarely booted during the day. What we do care about is being able to debug problems and make things work the same, time after time after time.
Upstart doesn't sound like it helps much in this area. Don't know about SystemD.
Both upstart and systemd will support unmodified initscripts. It can make your boot slower but it preserves backwards compatibility so your wish has been already been granted (albeit in reverse)!
You can still use startx even under systemd and upstart (e.g. if you boot to runlevel 3 (which is also emulated)) assuming your setup has provided it.
Good luck w/that.
I hope you don't expect to update any SW on your system for a while.
opensuse has gone out of their way to make their systems NOT be systemV compat... including moving to a requirement for booting from a ramdisk image (because systemd doesn't handle PATH, it uses fixed paths for it's binaries), integrating the power, device, udev and logging subsystems into systemd, with logging going to a binary MS-like format that is, by default, not saved.
Also put all the var/run files on ram disk, so progs that were used to their own directory for run /var/run/dir/xxx so they could run as non-root, need to have it recreated each boot....
it can be real hairy trying to get around all those problems and opensuse's official position is that any other config (including booting directly from your hard disk) is not supported.