Systemd Adding Its Own Console To Linux Systems

An anonymous reader writes: The next version of systemd is poised to introduce an experimental "systemd-consoled" that serves as a user-space console daemon. The consoled furthers the Linux developers' goal of eventually deprecating the VT subsystem found within the Linux kernel in favor of a user-space driven terminal that supports better localization, increased security, and greater robustness of the kernel's seldom touched and hairy CONFIG_VT'ed code.

Comments

Is this a troll about systemd or is this real news

[NotInHere]

srsly?

Please stop this madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Few people want systemd at all. Why it is being forced on us?
Please stop this madness!

Re:Please stop this madness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it's time for an "Ask Lennart Poettering".

I still remember spending a summer loving the FreeBSD single do-all config file (it was the 90s) and being annoyed at Linux's confusing mess of an init system. It's not like Linux init is actually good... it's just a thing you know.

Re:Please stop this madness!

[The Technomancer]

It's less about rewriting scripts (from my understanding, systemd does a bang-up job of supporting init scripts unmodified), and more about the major distributions in use on the server side of the house (RedHat and its derivatives, Debian and its derivates) making it the New Way Forward. It may very well be an improvement over the current init system. For desktops and mobile where boot time matters significantly more than stability, it should be the new way forward.

But on the server side, nobody gives a crap about boot time. If you're on physical hardware, it should be happening rarely. If you're using a cloud architecture, it should happen all of once per instance. To keep my log management installations working properly, I need to add the extra overhead layer of having systemd's binary logs reprocessed and forwarded to syslog. Not a big deal until you do the math and realize that an extra half percent of overhead is an extra box or instance needed per 200. I also ned to devote sysadmin or devops time to doing some thorough testing for stability.

This is all a very roundabout way of saying that it's unclear if systemd is an improvement for the server side of things, and that even if it is an improvement, it's not enough of one to be worth all of the resources needed in an enterprise-grade installation to justify switching to it, nor am I comfortable being an early adopter on anything other than my personal lab kit.

As far as the developer goes? He wrote software. It's not his fault that the project managers of the major distros have decided that shooting for the desktop and mobile is more important than supporting the server side people that have been paying their bills for decades. Be pissed at them for this.

it solves some unicode issues

[behrooz0az]

Why is everyone so mad about it?
Is it really just me that has a shitload of problems with the current VT?

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd is turning into an operating system, rather than a service.

When your startup manager becomes more important than the kernel, you might want to rethink your design philosophy.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[UnknowingFool]

Systemd goes against the KISS principle that Linux and Unix have long followed. However, many would argue that Linux has become too complex for this principle to work when it comes to system management. For user space, it is becoming more of necessity. Those who are using Linux on server side, it seems to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[caseih]

Oh really? From the sound of it, VT code in the kernel hasn't been KISS in a long time, certainly not since KML was introduced. Was KML a solution in search of a problem? Hardly. The VT code is full of hacks, bugs, and hard to fix and improve. And we're not just referring to the lack of unicode support, which isn't hugely important. This knee-jerk reaction to systemd is way silly too. One would think Linux users would understand that moving things out of the kernel into userspace is desirable, especially on a server, and especially in an environment where virtualization is the norm. Besides all this,you could just, you know, not run the systemd console daemon. Linux has always supported serial terminals, and will continue to do so. If you're a hardcore server operator (physical or virtual servers) I'm sure you already have this set up.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[kthreadd]

Systemd is not monolithic. It takes a number of components that used to be developed separately and streamlines them under the same roof, making them work better together. It's is not and there has never been the idea that everything under the sun should go into the same binary.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[fisted]

No, is monolithic Note the part where he repeatedly gibbers about that stuff is impossible to separate.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[rainmaestro]

Don't get me wrong, I disagree with a number of decisions Linus has made. But he tends to be more controlled than Lennart in that regard. His approach is to ignore POSIX when it makes sense to do so (eg, when the standard is too vague to be practical). Lennart seems to want to throw the whole standard away straight out.

I support replacing VT, it is a mess. A mostly working mess, but it could be much better. I just don't trust anything Lennart writes at this point.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[kthreadd]

A fully functional Systemd has about 69 or so binaries. That's hardly monolithic.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[0123456]

A fully functional Systemd has about 69 or so binaries. That's hardly monolithic.

It is when they're all tied together so tightly that you're forced to take all or nothing.

That's the fundamental problem with systemd. This man's last major project was pulseaudio, which most Linux users know only because an entire generation learned that it was the first thing they should uninstall after installing a new Linux release. Years later, it works OK, but only after years of suck beforehand.

You don't get that 'just unininstall it' option with systemd.

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[Rich0]

A fully functional Systemd has about 69 or so binaries. That's hardly monolithic.

It is when they're all tied together so tightly that you're forced to take all or nothing.

Really? I'm certainly not using every systemd binary on every one of my systems, and the others work just fine. Do you have an example of a case where there is unnecessary inter-dependence?

Re:it solves some unicode issues

[IamTheRealMike]

I haven't used desktop Linux for about a year now, but before that I used it for about a decade and in the early 2000's even did development for it, so I read this post with interest.

I feel the money quote is this one:

People on the email thread have claimed we had an agenda. That's actually certainly true, everybody has one. Ours is to create a good, somewhat unified, integrated operating system. And that's pretty much all that is to our agenda. What is not on our agenda though is "destroying UNIX", "land grabbing", or "lock-in". Note that logind, kdbus or the cgroup stuff is new technology, we didn't break anything by simply writing it. Hence we are not regressing, we are just adding new components that we believe are highly interesting to people (and they apparently are, because people are making use of it now). For us having a simple design and a simple code base is a lot more important than trying to accommodate for distros that want to combine everything with everything else. I understand that that is what matters to many Debian people, but it's admittedly not a priority for us.

For what it's worth, this paragraph makes a ton of sense to me. The biggest problem with Linux, both on the desktop and to a lesser extent on the server, was the fact that you got a basically half-baked set of components that were hardly integrated at all. Basic stuff like being able to set the timezone graphically ended up being distro specific apps / hacks because there was no API to do it, and everything was held together by giant piles of shell scripts and Python which might or might not be something you could actually contribute to or work with, but was certainly never usefully documented.

Basically, the experience of using or developing on Linux gave you the impression of a man in a slightly dishevelled, ill fitting suit. All the parts of a smart suit were there, but none of them quite fitted or lined up, and there were lots of small tears everywhere. And waaaaaay too many people liked this state of affairs because they had made "I am a UNIX user" a part of their identity and had managed to convince themselves that an OS architecture that dated from the 1970's was actually totally elite, and any attempt to reform it was "ignoring the UNIX philosophy" or some shit like that.

Result: MacOS X absolutely ate Linux's lunch on the desktop, despite the fact that Linux was free and Macs .... decidedly not free. Heck Linux didn't even make much headway against Windows, even though under Ballmer the Windows team basically sat on their ass for a decade rewriting the start menu.

From a (now) outsider looking in, this whole systemd fiasco looks a lot like Linux finally being dragged into the 21st century through the sheer willpower of one man, who has an apparently infinite ability to withstand faeces-throwing by the UNIX peanut gallery. Don't like systemd? OK, stick with Debian Stable or FreeBSD and don't get the new features. Stick it to the man and keep your "I Love *Nix" t-shirt on. Me? Between reading about GNOME 3 and systemd I'm starting to wonder if it's time to revisit Linux and give it another shot. If that community can conquer its UNIX fetish and build a modern OS, it has a lot of potential.

Awesome!

[Delicious Pun]

All systemd needs now is an integrated web browser and a registry!

Or we learn from others mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone really want "better localization" in terminals. My experience as a bilingual user from windows is that the less things are localized the better they work.
Making commands localized breaks script compatibility. (And that includes any output if that is parsed too.)
It has gone to the point where I get the English version of Windows rather than one adapted to my native language. The localization of some of the folder names makes things break and the translation of GUI elements obfuscates the function and makes it so that one has to translate everything to English and back to realize what the function is, especially when the original translator used every synonym for "device" he could possibly find.

Unless they have found a new revolutionary way to localize stuff that haven't been done before. Then it might actually work.

Re:Or we learn from others mistakes

[gnasher719]

I cringe everytime I see "é" "Ã" or "Ã" in folder/file names.

I cringe every time someone has a problem with accented characters in folder or file names.

And it doesn't break any programs. Those programs are broken already.

Re:Or we learn from others mistakes

[BasilBrush]

It's 2014. There should be no forgiveness for software that doesn't use Unicode correctly. With the supposed superiority of open source and the ability of any programmer to dive in and fix bugs how is this still a problem for Linux?

Re:Or we learn from others mistakes

[Culture20]

You should neko a Japanese file instead.

Re:UseLessD

[smash]

Or you could use what we've been using for the past 20-30 years that has been debugged, proven to work and not completely different to the rest of the world.

Shut up and listen...

[joelholdsworth]

Before you go round acting like the sky is falling, try educating yourselves about why this is necessary. This is not just a systemd problem, this is a problem for any init system that wants to support multi-seat, and sane switching between VTs:

• How VT-switching works
• Sane Session Switching
• Thoughts on Linux System Compositors
• Session-Management on Linux

Now you may say that OMG systemd is teh evil monolith!!1!!!, but before you do that understand that this has been an important feature that has been needed for a long time in any init system it just happened that SystemD solved it first.

Re:So?

[TangoMargarine]

Joke's on you--next they'll merge vi into systemd.

OH GOD IT BURNSSSS

Slashdot Response

[inhuman_4]

Article: Old, crusty, and possibly bug ridden part of the kernel is being moved to userspace. This new work will increase both the security and the stability of Linux systems, while adding the possibility of internationalization support.....

Slashdot Comments: Finally some one is doing something about CONFIG_VT. People have been bitching about that for years!

Article: this new feature is part of systemd.

Slashdot Comments: NOOOO! Why is Lennart taking away my freedoms! I'm switching to BSD.

It has gotten pretty clear that a lot of the hatred for systemd has nothing to do with the technical merits. This is a fix that has been a long time coming. Yet, almost half the comments are just more systemd hate fest.

Re:Why do people care so much?

[DeHackEd]

[Disclaimer: Yes I hate systemd and I proclaim that loudly. Everything below is my personal experience with systemd and why I hate it.]

If booting the machine up was all it did, then I probably wouldn't care. Most of my hate (I can't speak for the rest of the internet) comes from the fact that systemd does a lot more. It also tracks user logins using a mechanism (control groups) that isn't available in some container scenarios making systemd unusable in those environments (and by extension any distro mandating systemd). It does its own logging in binary which needs a tool to read the logs and if it gets corrupted then systemd's devs say "just delete the logs". Really?

But I think the best reason people hate it is because it makes other applications become dependent on it. GNOME is the most well known example but I've also seen that Centos7's Source RPMs have systemd-specific commands (macros?) making it hard to build them on other platforms. rsyslog doesn't listen on /dev/log because systemd is doing something with the socket now. You cannot start services without systemd being the one to do it.

This is the hate. systemd isn't just an init system, it becomes part of your daily life. I liken it to the MCP (Master Contrl Progam) from the first TRON movie. It's systemd's way or the highway.

Re:at some point it isnt linux anymore.

[drinkypoo]

Except that RC init wasn't fine. More than a few times over the years I've had a service that wouldn't start right on a server that actually prevented boot! Whether it was some stuck PID file that wasn't properly erased on boot, or some other race condition (often a network condition, or a chicken/egg problem),

...it was actually an init script problem, and not a problem with sysvinit at all. Your init script must not assume that /tmp has been cleared before run. When it finds a PID file, it must not blindly trust it. This sort of problem would be readily solved by simply unifying init scripts based on some sort of well-crafted template, but instead we have a daemon to fix the problem.

Ideally none of this should ever happen, but it did. Bugs are there.

Explain how systemd prevents bugs.

Combine that with the fact that init scripts are huge, fragile, hacks

Let's take a look at your three claims.

First claim, init scripts are huge. No, most init scripts are quite small. Sometimes they source a library, but there's nothing wrong with that. The replacement (systemd+unit files+required libraries) is still larger than (sysvinit+init scripts+script libraries). So this claim is clearly false.

Second claim, init scripts are fragile. Init scripts are not fragile. Some people are very lazy scripters. Some init scripts are well-written and they are fault-tolerant. Some init scripts are not well-written, and distribution maintainers should have remodeled them after ones which were. Distributions should have solved this problem by unifying init scripts. I have made the point elsewhere that a simple hashbang and shell script-based processor could permit using unit files as shell scripts, at least for long-running daemons. So this claim is also false.

Third claim, init scripts are hacks. Shell scripting is a central feature of Unix. Therefore, init scripts are not hacks. This claim is also false.

Everything you have claimed about init scripts is false.

As a system administrator I'd far rather mess with a simple ini file to create services than hack a huge bash script,

As a system administrator I'd far rather mess with a simple script file than have to debug the system that's supposed to interpret the unit files. With a shell script, I can simply run the script with -x and see precisely what is happening, even if all I have is a command line and 80x25. With a daemon interpreting a file, I may be lucky enough to get useful information out of strace, or I may have to load a debugger to actually see why my daemon isn't starting.

All other major unix server vendors ditched sysv init for the same reasons as I state long ago.

That's interesting. I looked up AIX, and it looks like they still have init with an inittab. And So does Solaris. From what I can tell, your claim that major Unix vendors have moved on from the traditional init system is also false.

Systemd has been in production a fairly long time now, and I see no issues at all brought up about it in actual practice.

Either you haven't been following the discussions here on Slashdot on this subject, or you are a liar. There have been numerous examples in these threads by actual systems administrators who have encountered actual problems with systemd. So while your claim might be true, it points only to your ignorance due to inexperience and lack of investigation.

Uselessd is a validation of the systemd approach. They clearly also believe that init is broken, or they wouldn't be working on the uselessd fork.

This is also false. They believe that systemd is broken, which is why t

Re:Why do people care so much?

[meta-monkey]

In addition to the other reasons people have given you (bloated, breaks the unix idea of doing one simple thing well, binary log files, doesn't play nice with others, etc), the reason people are rabidly opposed is because of the way it's being adopted, or should I say, thrust upon us. Poettering and friends are not simply making a piece of software and releasing it and getting people to adopt it because it's good and solves a useful problem. They're playing shady political games to force adoption.

Ideally, if you think you have this great new replacement for the fundamental piece of userland software in Linux, awesome! Write it, fork a distro and build your distro around systemd. Use it. Find the bugs. Work them out. Do this long before you start suggesting people run it on their servers. If it's actually better, distros will start including it. Instead they've played political games to force it into really popular distros like Debian.

It's just not ready for prime time. Build it, test it, show us how it's better and we'll be overjoyed to use it. But ram buggy bloated bullshit down our throats for no other reason than your own ego and well, fuck you.

On the ignorance of this debate

[Peter H.S.]

It is pretty sad to see, that after so many comments nobody really has a clue about what the story is about, and what is happening in the Linux kernel.
The kernel VT system has been considered a monstrosity by kernel developers the last decade and everyone is of the opinion that it should be used to user space.

The finally a really smart guy actually attacks and solve the problem. His name is David Herrmann, and he has tirelessly worked on this for years. Systemd distros will get the full support of his research, simply because almost all Linux distros are using, or a going to use systemd. But don't worry, he has provided rich support user space VT's on non-systemd Linux distros, by eg. "ksmcon"
https://github.com/dvdhrm/kmsc...

Here is his fosdem talk:
https://archive.fosdem.org/201...

Here is his blog that will tell you more about VT's than you ever knew:
http://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/

Here is a wiki link about VT:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Here is an old blog post about the problems with the old kernel VT:
http://dvdhrm.wordpress.com/20...

In short, no need for the systemd opponents to get their panties in a bunch; they can either use Hermanns user space tools, or pretend there isn't a problem and use the present kernel system.

For the rest of us who really likes systemd, this is great news. Thanks to Hermann's work, there will be much better console support for early boot debugging, better security, better keyboard and language handling etc.

Re:On the ignorance of this debate

[Peter H.S.]

I guess you don't know much about systemd and kernel VT's. The explanation is quite long and technical, but the bottom line is that systemd provides needed infrastructure to allow eg. user switching in user space for VT's, and nothing else really does, so of course all the advanced features are going to be systemd only; nothing else provides what it does.

Furthermore, what some distros want is to turn off kernel space VT's completly, so something else in user space need to manage such VT's, whether the init system is SysVinit or systemd. What this is all about, is that systemd is adding support for this so you can use user space consoles in early boot for logging in or having en emergency shell and what not.

Hermann has made all the necessary tools for the non-systemd distros, so they can enjoy most of the benefits. I have a hard time imagining that ultra-conservative distros like Slackware are going to use it though, so they can just continue to use kernel VT's.

Re:Just fucking leave it alone!

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes, you're right! Theo would absolutely approve of stuffing as much random hairy code into kernel space as possible - you aren't gonna find any support for this moving-things-into-userspace nonsense in OpenBSD, that's for sure!

Nobody deserves death threats.

[emil]

systemd managed to replace init, inetd, and some of cron in what appears to be a stable environment. This allowed systemd to work in docker and drastically improve Linux virtualization to leapfrog Solaris zones.

What systemd did not do was provide reasonable documentation. RedHat's v7 inittab has a website for a blog post that sucks. There is no general intro for users attempting to create crontabs executed by systemd, inetd entries for common services, and runlevels that control groups of processes.

systemd fell down hard on documentation, and the first blush with the unix admin crowd has not been kind.

These developers delivered working code in a radically new environment, but without documentation the architecture appears to discriminate against people who have been doing things the same way for 30 years. The authors, and their software, appeared cliquish and discriminatory. Had the software and the documentation enabled a gradual migration into a more powerful architecture, things would have been quite different.

In any case, this is no justification for people to be vile. The old crowd needs help into the new environment. This help needs to happen, and the insults and threats need to stop. Both sides need to work together to get us where we need to be.

Re:IN OTHER WORDS?

[hairyfeet]

Doesn't have a damned thing to do with Windows or binary files, it has to do with the fact that Debian has been made Red hat's bitch by way of ex RH and Ubuntu employees taking over the board. For those that want to know what systemd is REALLY about its about cloud computing, specifically RH is pushing cloud computing like mad and systemd is gonna end up being a "SVCHost" for Linux dedicated to managing cloud computers.

This is one time me and the FOSSies are actually on the same page, as just like windows 8 was forced from on high and gave the users a big fat greasy finger so too is systemd being pushed by corporate with exactly zero fucks given about what the end users want. Ironically despite all this "empower the user" talk Linux has always had this is one case where Windows users had more power thanks to the ability to vote with their dollars, thus getting Win 8 shitcanned in favor of a much saner and nicer Win 10. But this does not mean that all hope is lost in Linux land, it just means you are gonna have to organize and SCREAM BLOODY MURDER and refuse to take this bullshit. You especially have to organize all the volunteer coders and get them to walk away, because losing all that free labor and forcing Red Hat and friends to pay for every single dime's worth of work is the ONLY way most of you can hit 'em in the pocketbook. those of you that run non cloud based servers can of course tell them you will no longer use their products but considering how much time and money you have invested in your servers I really don't see that happening.

Finally you need a rally cry, something simple and catchy and on message to focus the narrative and rally the troops, a "fuck beta" for systemd if you will. And since old Hairy will ALWAYS stand for the users allow me to give you one as a show of solidarity in your plight. Its simple, concise, on message, and sums up in a single simple sentence WTF is wrong with systemd..

SYSTEMD...Its the Metro of Linux!

SYSTEMD is a BSOD

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

It's not Metro.

It's SVCHOST.EXE

But that's a little too arcane, for people who neither debug their own system, or who are not security specialists of one stripe or another.

How about "systemd is a BSOD" :-)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-bZId5j2jREQ/U-vlysklvCI/AAAAAAAACrA/B4JggkVJi38/w426-h284/bd0fb252416206158627fb0b1bff9b4779dca13f.gif

This Is Lennart's Defense?

[ewhac]

Every time the systemd thing comes up, I want to hate it, but I don't truly know enough about it to actually hold a defensible opinion.

One of the defects constantly levelled against systemd is its propensity to corrupt its own system logs, and how the official response to this defect is to ignore it. The uselessd page has a link to the bug report in question, which was reported in May 2013 and, over a year later closed and marked NOTABUG. However, it seems Mr. Poettering is getting annoyed by people using his own bug reports against him, and added a comment to the bug report today purporting to clarify his position.

Unfortunately, his "clarifications" serve only to reinforce my suspicion that systemd is a thing to be avoided. To wit:

Since this bugyilla [sic] report is apparently sometimes linked these days as an example how we wouldn't fix a major bug in systemd:

Well, yeah, corrupt logs would be regarded by many as a major bug...

...Now, our strategy to rotate-on-corruption is the safest thing we can do, as we make sure that the internal corruption is frozen in time, and not attempted to be "fixed" by a tool, that might end up making things worse. After all, in the case the often-run writing code really fucks something up, then it is not necessarily a good idea to try to make it better by running a tool on it that tries to fix it up again, a tool that is necessarily a lot more complex, and also less tested.

Okay, so freeze the corrupted data set so things don't get worse, and start a new data set. A reasonable defensive practice. You still haven't addressed how the corruption happened, or how to fix it.

Now, of course, having corrupted files isn't great, and we should make sure the files even when corrupted stay as accessible as possible. Hence: the code that reads the journal files is actually written in a way that tries to make the best of corrupted files, and tries to read of them as much as possible, with the the subset of the file that is still valid. We do this implicitly on every access.

Okay, so journalctl tries to be robust, assumes the journal data might be crap, and works around it. So we can assume journalctl is probably pretty solid and won't make things worse.

Hence: journalctl implicitly does on read what a theoretical journal file fsck tool would do, but without actually making this persistent. This logic also has a major benefit: as our reader gets better and learns to deal with more types of corruptions you immediately benefit of it, even for old files!

....Uhhhhh-huh. So, yeah, newer tools will do a better job of working around the corruption, and we'll be able to recover more data, assuming we kept known-corrupt logs around. But what I still don't understand is WHY THE LOGS ARE CORRUPT. And why aren't there log diagnostic and analysis tools? If you already know your logs can turn to crap, surely there are structure analysis tools around that let you pick through the debris and recover data that your automated heuristics can't.

And why do I get the feeling that implied in the above is, "You don't need to know the log structure or how to repair it. We'll write the tools for that. We'll release better tools when we get around to it?"

File systems such as ext4 have an fsck tool since they don't have the luxury to just rotate the fs away and fix the structure on read: they have to use the same file system for all future writes, and they thus need to try hard to make the existing data workable again.

....AAAAnd you lost me. Seriously, this is your defense: "Filesystems are more important than system logs, so they have to try harder?" I find this insinuation... surpr

Re:This Is Lennart's Defense?

[Rich0]

Just what kind of corruption have you experienced in journald? It appends records sequentially to log files, the same as any text logger. If you kill your syslog abruptly do you complain if the last line of the file is cut off midstream and doesn't contain a newline? If so, do you have utilities to recover the data that wasn't written?

As far as I can tell journald just appends to its file, and regurgitates the data which is valid on reboot. If the file was truncated, it starts a new file, but doesn't discard any valid data from the old one. That is pretty-much how every database/filesystem/etc works - accept completed writes, roll back incomplete journal entries.

Re:UseLessD

[benjymouse]

Or you could use what we've been using for the past 20-30 years that has been debugged, proven to work and not completely different to the rest of the world.

Like.... bash?