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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.
Why is everyone so mad about it?
Is it really just me that has a shitload of problems with the current VT?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
All systemd needs now is an integrated web browser and a registry!
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
[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.
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
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
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!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.