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Fork of Systemd Leads To Lightweight Uselessd

Posted by timothy on from the not-big-and-fancy dept.

An anonymous reader writes A boycott of systemd and other backlash around systemd's feature-creep has led to the creation of Uselessd, a new init daemon. Uselessd is a fork of systemd 208 that strips away functionality considered irrelevant to an init system like the systemd journal and udev. Uselessd also adds in functionality not accepted in upstream systemd like support for alternative C libraries (namely uClibc and musl) and it's even being ported to BSD.

14 of 469 comments (clear)

  1. kill -1 by Spazmania · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it still doesn't adequately support the "kill -1" functionality of initd (which kills and resets all processes init manages, especially the getty processes on the terminals), I still don't want it.

    --
    Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    1. Re:kill -1 by Spazmania · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, it was trivial to achieve. With sysvinit. Lots of stuff is trivial with sysvinit and overly complicated with systemd.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    2. Re:kill -1 by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The compatibility is a main reason. Being able to run and configure all startup/shutdown processes independently of the overseer is nice. As a sysadmin, I get to do easy manual corrections, additions and deletions without giving init a thought.
      i don't have to use the "service" command, and I spend far less time when seting up a new server or adding a service.

      i don't give a crap whether the system boots twice as fast - reboots are years between, and in scheduled windows. I want something that lets me admin my systems without relying on anything more than a dumb terminal - and if need be, not even that.

    3. Re:kill -1 by fnj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      reboots are years between

      Really? You don't reboot after a kernel security update? I entirely agree that boot time is a non-issue, but your statement sounds either like hyperbole/exaggeration-for-effect, or you're not serious about security.

      I want something that lets me admin my systems without relying on anything more than a dumb terminal

      I entirely agree with this, and coming from not-a-fan of systemd, systemd can be administered with ssh just as effectively and probably as easily as sysvinit or bsdinit can be. What is necessary is some additional learning/training, as with any such change.

      In sysvinit, the /etc/rc.d directories are full of symlinks to /etc/init.d scripts, with "magic" prefixes to control priority. In systemd, etc/systemd/user and /etc/systemd/system are full of symlinks to ... wait for it ... scripts in /usr/lib/systemd/user and /usr/lib/systemd/system. And the systemd scripts are simpler. In sysvinit, every single script reinvents the wheel by including a big bunch of the same boilerplate.

      Like I said, I'm not a partisan fan of systemd, but (I hope that) any criticisms I have are based on reasonable grounds, not misconceptions.

    4. Re:kill -1 by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      On my PC with an Asus mainboard the Sleep and Hibernate simply don't work (and never worked with multiple distros and kernels). I need to reboot each day therefore boot time is important for *me*.

      Then the solution seems to fix sleep and hibernate, not to break servers.

  2. Finally someone decides to do something by Skarjak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's how the free open source community works. If you don't like something, it's pointless to just spend a lot of time bitching about it (like many linux users have done about systemd). Just go out and make your own version. Everyone who's been complaining about systemd better contribute to this thing.

    1. Re:Finally someone decides to do something by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, that's a bad idea. They should go an support another init project that's already underway, like OpenRC. This is just protest software by a single guy.

    2. Re:Finally someone decides to do something by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree and am happy to see this fork. As unpopular as it may make me, I actually like the initd functionality of systemd. I'm fine with using and writing the old init scripts, but systemd unit files are simple, concise, and powerful enough for my needs.

      This is understandable, but there are much, much simpler ways of achieving this goal than systemD.

      One of the interesting things about systemD discussions. If you watch, people who criticize say things like, "that's an ugly hot mess of architecture!" People who support it answer by saying, "the features are so good!" You can see those two things are somewhat arguing past each other.

      You captured both sides of the argument in a single post, so good job.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:Finally someone decides to do something by visualight · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That pat answer again? Apples and Oranges...

      Get this into your head: The fucking kernel is the fucking kernel alright? It is one fucking thing. Yes, people refer to it as a "monolithic kernel" to contrast with a "microkernel" but , it is one fucking thing. Got it? Next time someone complains about the monolithic design of systemd and you feel the words "but the kernel..." welling up in your throat, just slap yourself until you start to remember words like "context" ok?

      --
      Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
  3. Re:Not a boycott but a confirmation by dskoll · · Score: 5, Insightful

    systemd does have some very good ideas when it comes to the init system. Socket-based activation and process supervision are Very Good Things.

    But when the systemd developers started trying to embrace, extend and extinguish other things like syslog, core dumps, etc. then systemd jumped the shark.

  4. at least the rationale is good by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Regardless of the particulars of this project, it's good people are waking up and realizing what a bloated feature-creeped rube goldberg contraption systemd is, a non-Unix non-Unix-way solution no serious Linux/Unix admin wants, it hinders troubleshooting and configuration. Systemd is what happens when inexperienced people with high IQ fly off on a tagent without engineering ability.

    1. Re:at least the rationale is good by visualight · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Systemd is what happens when inexperienced people with high IQ fly off on a tagent without engineering ability."

      Exactly. There is no doubt that he's a very smart person who can code, but his ideas suck. Dependencies, political pressure, and inexperienced young windows refugees are why we are where we are now...

      --
      Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
  5. launchd by smash · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... seems to work adequately for the 70+ million OS X installs out there.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  6. Re:Not a boycott but a confirmation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Binary logs. If they were simply testing to see if it's a bad idea then I could give them a pass. But it's already been proven to be a bad idea via the massive heap of poo called Windows.

    It's like standing on train tracks to see if it's dangerous. Others have settled that issue already.