Joey Hess Resigns From Debian

An anonymous reader writes: Long-time Debian developer Joey Hess has posted a resignation letter to the Debian mailing list. Hess was a big part of the development of the Debian installer, debhelper, Alien, and other systems. He says, "It's become abundantly clear that this is no longer the project I originally joined in 1996. We've made some good things, and I wish everyone well, but I'm out. ... If I have one regret from my 18 years in Debian, it's that when the Debian constitution was originally proposed, despite seeing it as dubious, I neglected to speak out against it. It's clear to me now that it's a toxic document, that has slowly but surely led Debian in very unhealthy directions."

Comments

DebianNoob

[Anonymous Coward]

What directions is he referring to? What's seen as wrong with the constitution? Toxic?

Re:DebianNoob

[Anonymous Coward]

My impression of Debian has always been that they take themselves very seriously, especially compared to other distributions. They seem to have a very thought out management structure and inner politics that probably rival large companies. Years ago I remember reading some discussion and coming to the somewhat painful realization that open source now has and possibly even needs PHBes. My guess is that it has continued to (de)volve down the political line, and become the same broken mess s most political systems eventually become.

I've largely stopped following day to day open source politics, and mostly ignore what goes on with Debian, Mozilla, and more and more Apache, but seeing big names rage quit always peeks my interest (yeah yeah, I'm human too!). I'd love if some bored slashdotter could give a quick summary of what the heck is actually going on this time, or point at a (hopefully not too biased) article outlining recent Debian shenanigans.

Re:DebianNoob

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to peek, if your interest is piqued you can just look, it's pretty public.

Re:DebianNoob

[jockm]

Can you prove that? The quote here is so small and vague he could be speaking of a policy of eating while on conference calls, for all we know

Re:DebianNoob

[IamTheRealMike]

(posting to undo a moderation misclick on the above post, sorry)

Re:DebianNoob

[amiga3D]

Really. Could it not just be that it's toxic? Or at least he considers it to be so? As a resignation it seemed pretty mild to me, especially in the geek world where such things usually are laced with profanity and obscenities as well as venom.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

Based on what I've read....

His departure has to do with the interruptions to the release cycle by introducing arguments about technical minutia in sub-projects as requiring a GR vote to decide. Technical arguments being decided by the ignorant masses, versus the specific groups (which anyone from the GR can join) who have the specific job of making those decisions. At least that's one way to look at it.

This is not the first time and probably will not be the last that Debian technical decisions will be handed up to the popular vote, completely subverting the whole specialized delineation of teams within Debian. GR votes are being taken (again) for the specific purpose of avoiding losing a technical argument by appealing to a larger group, which also impacts the Debian release cycle. Normally, such votes would be delayed in the interest of the distro, but this is allowed by the Debian constitution. I would believe, such an act (appealing to the GR) was supposed to be limited to hotly debated and controversial topics (like systemd) but not implementation details (which is what is happening)...much less so close to the release date.

He is stating that he expects it to continue. He's not interesting in taking up this fight as a call to amend the constitution. He obviously feels alone in calling out that it's counterproductive to argue over details so close to a release. He's just done with a community that cares about who wins arguments or following strict process procedures rather than respectfully, making deadlines that users and commercial interests depend on (or at least use as an indicator of a stable project).

https://lists.debian.org/debia...

Re:DebianNoob

[geminidomino]

It's not proof, but if you look at the Init System general resolution thread on the mailing list, there's a loooong subthread where the logic behind the GR is appropriate under the debian constitution.

Re:DebianNoob

[Anonymous Coward]

interruptions to the release cycle by introducing arguments about technical minutia in sub-projects as requiring a GR vote to decide.

The current GR does not affect the current release.

Re:DebianNoob

[Hognoxious]

If it hadn't been, he would have clearly said so.

Re:DebianNoob

[gwolf]

Of course, you don't know Joey Hess. Being one of the most equanimous, quiet hard-working, involved-everywhere guys I have had the privilege to work with (I am a DD since 2003, and Joey has been one of my role models in the project... Of course, even if our skillsets are quite different) He is not quitting because of "not getting his way".

Re:DebianNoob

[petermgreen]

I disagree strongly about this being an "implementation detail", IMO it's a question of fundamental strategy. What this GR really comes down to is when the choice comes down to denying admins the choice in init systems or refusing new upstream versions bevause systemd's tendrils have dug too deep in the upstream project which side should Debian take?

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

> I disagree strongly about this being an "implementation detail",

I'm not making an argument against or for any position within the Debian groups. I was trying to understand and articulate the context (I'm wrong a lot). I'll submit that my personal opinion (being a non-Debian user since 2000) does not matter. I'm speaking about Joey Hess' position. If a distro uses systemd or not will be 1 factor in my decision making regarding what distros I choose to use. JH is not taking a stand about the Debian direction (evidenced by the process). He's abandoning Debian's current heading rather than trying to "right" the ship, toward what he thinks is proper.

Re: DebianNoob

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, rule by the rabble has a long history of success, and technical decisions are best made when dependant on which developer can rouse the larger number of ignorant peons.

Re:DebianNoob

[rev0lt]

(...) in a FOSS environment the USERS get a say in things?

Well, yes and no. Developers also use their own dogfood, and they're a non-trivial percentage of the userbase.

We know what is good for you, you filthy peasant" top down management bullshit that treats the users as ignorant children

As you frequently post lets-call-it-pro-microsoft-stuff (sometimes you hit the head of the nail, sometimes a finger), it's not too much different from what Microsoft (and other companies) try to do. The idea that "users will get used to" was big with Windows XP, and it was a major success. They try to repeat it ever since and fail miseably (although, I look at the metro interface I personally don't use (as an old fart windows user, I demand some consistency) and I think that with a couple of changes, its friggin awesome - light years ahead of what those guys at Canonical are doing.

Compare this to the Linux side where Red Hat is basically pulling a coup and taking over the whole show

Debian has no vote on - nor does it care - about Red Hat policies.

If RH truly thinks their way is better let it sink or swim on the merits, not because all dissent was crushed.

RH is a minority in the landscape where systemd affects systems. When RH (which is, both in business model and revenue, a small player in the IT panorama) starts to hinder, lets say - Oracle or CA interests, they'll be bough or put in line. The widespread adoption of systemd will force other, smaller distros to adopt it, because of software dependency - we've already seen this this Gnome3 and BSD support. It is perfectly normal that a sane person decides to leave because the project he dedicates his time to is no longer the project he joined, but a pawn of corporate interests (Debian is the "de facto" independant linux distro source, and most of the popular distros extend from it).

In short, this is not about the users. It never was. Its about power plays and politics. In Microsoft world, they'd be guidelines and early adoption sneak previews.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

> So in other words the massive egos are butthurt that in a FOSS environment the USERS get a say in things?

I think that's an unfair characterization.

Any USER can join the technical committee. How is it constructive to have a TC vote bypassed on an issue on the basis of a TC member similarly rejecting the process, as a method to bypass an unfavorable outcome? The toxicity is not the community, it's the process. Once set (by the constitution), it has been effectively unalterable. I do not DISAGREE with this process, I simply recognize the unfairness of it all, from his point of view.

Those "egos" are the egos of people who are part of the technical committee. As Joey asks, why even have one now? Well, because it's taken time to get to this point and it just happened to be close to a release. He thinks technical decisions should be limited to the TC and anything related to those decisions (like the following practices) should also be from the TC. It's not just about this one incident, it's about a consistent waste of time in the TC that he worked to be a part of. He doesn't want to be a USER level contributor either, so he's walking. It's just altogether unfortunate that the community no longer fits his tastes and it's not uncommon for people to leave commercial jobs under the same circumstances.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

I know this is off topic but...

> When RH (which is, both in business model and revenue, a small player in the IT panorama)

I continue to hear this and see absolutely no evidence of it. I see evidence to the contrary, in the US, India and Europe, over the last 20 years.
Generally, it's RPM/RH that is first listed. It's not alphabetical. This isn't because they are lucky. The simple explanation is that RH is the most frequently used and therefore put at the top as a simple matter of UI layout (most common choices go to the top of a list, within reason).

Let's just pull some random packages out of the web -

RH nearest top:
http://www.aerospike.com/downl...
http://dev.nuodb.com/download-...
http://wiki.nginx.org/Install
http://cassandra.apache.org/do... (rpm mentioned before deb)

Debian nearest top:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads...

This is a fun game, pick me a list that shows more Debian love!
I would like to keep a pulse on things but I just don't see this assertion (that RH is the marginal market) bearing out as anything but wishful thinking.

Re:DebianNoob

[gweihir]

More specifically to the decision not to delay the next release to await the results of the GR on whether packages are allowed to require systemd. I can't say I blame him. There is obviously some kind of coup in progress in Debian, some say by (ex-) Red Hat people. Lets see whether the project starts to bleed maintainers. Would not surprise me one bit, this is not a company were some people of questionable character take over, but the workers have to stay due to lack of better alternatives. This is a FOSS project and anybody can leave at any time.

Will be very interesting what happens in the next few months. Of course FOSS will survive, with freedoms intact, the question is just how large.

Re:DebianNoob

[jbolden]

That's well put and fairly characterizes the choices that Debian is going to be faced with going forward which is rare in the systemd debate. Agree 100% and well done.

That being said the bug he seems to be upset about is automatically switching old systems on upgrade.

Re:DebianNoob

[gweihir]

Indeed. It is basically a decision about whether Debian becomes a monolith (and installation without systemd is exceedingly painful or impossible) or whether it retains large freedoms for its users to configure things, like, for example, the init-system. Now, monoliths do have advantages (if done really well, something basically nobody manages), but they also have severe disadvantages, like the concentration of power and and with it, decisions not being based on technical merit anymore. For a commercial project that, it can still be worth it. For a non-profit venture, it is toxic.

Re:DebianNoob

[jbolden]

Can you explain what is he quitting over? (Briefly if you want) I'm having trouble separating the issues here and getting the context.

Re:DebianNoob

[gl4ss]

open source doesn't as much need phb's as much as it attracts them.

can't code, want to contribute? become a phb! if someone calls you out on it when you try to make some decision or another so that you can have your name on some decision or another, just call them toxic and quote some club rule!

Re:DebianNoob

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if you read his contributions to the thread, he's generally neutral to positive on systemd, and seems to consider most of the whining to be sore losers rehashing shit that's already been discussed ad nauseam multiple times.

He also specifically attacks the notion of using a GR to set technical directions, and he stated a profound dissatisfaction with people raising the GR 2 short weeks before Jessie was supposed to freeze for release.

He's not leaving "because of systemd", unless you're saying that he's somehow showing solidarity with the whiners by slagging off all the whiners abusing the GR process to make political points are being enabled by a toxic Debian constitution.

Re:DebianNoob

[gweihir]

Yes, you are right. He still is a casualty if the way systemd is pushed through.

Re:DebianNoob

[Eunuchswear]

Well, no.

He is a casualty of the way systemd is "resisted" -- by political (non-developer) manouvering, death threats, insults and lies.

Re:DebianNoob

[Eunuchswear]

Becomes a monolith? Before Jessie sysvinit was essential.

Re:DebianNoob

[execthis]

Dear Debian developers/committee members, et al: Please can you guys just go meet some place relaxing, share some beers together, enjoy yourselves, remember the beauty & magic that is Free Software and Debian in particular, and brainstorm together with your brilliant minds on the next steps forward?

Please. We love (and need) you.

Please, book a weekend or even a week or two at some really nice spa somewhere or a resort and just be yourselves and enjoy the fact that you are brilliant guys and important leaders of one of the most important projects on Earth.

Re:DebianNoob

[udippel]

Huh, what's a monolith, then? Maybe you mean 'monopoly'?
systemd, though, is a monolith, like pulseaudio.

And nobody argues about creating alternative to essentials, like sysvinit. Not at all. But never with the declared intention to supplant one monopoly with another one. Freedom is the freedom to plug in an alternative; not to have it forced down one's throat. And with the declared intention of systemd, sysvînit will not be any compatible plug-in alternative any longer. And it will be a monolith.

Nobody argues against a declarative, parallel, daemon initiation. But surely against one that has wider reaching consequences; up to graphical applications in userland.

Re:DebianNoob

[rev0lt]

I continue to hear this and see absolutely no evidence of it. I see evidence to the contrary, in the US, India and Europe, over the last 20 years. Generally, it's RPM/RH that is first listed. It's not alphabetical. This isn't because they are lucky. The simple explanation is that RH is the most frequently used and therefore put at the top as a simple matter of UI layout (most common choices go to the top of a list, within reason).

Here: http://investors.redhat.com/re...
You can also see the report from CA, where they make more in a quarter than a full year of RH: http://www.ca.com/us/news/pres...

This is a fun game, pick me a list that shows more Debian love!

If you rank popularity from the links of the packages, you provably are missing something. I'm a FreeBSD/OpenBSD user, some of the development of Nginx was done in FreeBSD, and you don't even see packages for it in your list. See the flaw in your methodology?

Re:DebianNoob

[turbidostato]

"Really. Could it not just be that it's toxic? Or at least he considers it to be so?"

Yes, certainly. But this doesn't make the parent poster's assertion any more wrong. How many people have _you_ seen talking about some organization as toxic while they are getting their way? It's usually only once they don't get their way that they see it toxic.

And looking at this case, it looks a bit strange that there's no reasoning neither on the resignation letter nor down the thread it induced.

Re:DebianNoob

[turbidostato]

"So in other words the massive egos are butthurt that in a FOSS environment the USERS get a say in things?"

No, it isn't, since here USERS don't get a say in things. Only Debian Developers do.

"Frankly its asses like this that will end up making a Debian fork successful,"

No it won't, because USERS don't produce forks, developers do.

Re:DebianNoob

[turbidostato]

"> When RH (which is, both in business model and revenue, a small player in the IT panorama)

I continue to hear this and see absolutely no evidence of it. I see evidence to the contrary, in the US, India and Europe, over the last 20 years.
Generally, it's RPM/RH that is first listed."

Microsoft 2014 sales Income: 86.73B
Oracle's: 38.28B
SAP: 17B
CA: 4.5B

And then, Red Hat, 1.5B

So yes, there's evidence that Red Hat is a small fish in the pool.

Re: DebianNoob

[turbidostato]

"Speaking as a CEO, I don't want my suppliers to be stupidly profitable"

All well and good, but that doesn't make Red Hat any bigger. It is still a small fish, which is what was considered here.

Re: DebianNoob

[amiga3D]

You aren't the typical CEO then. Most CEO's think that Microsoft is the shit. If everyone is buying it must be great. No one is buying Redhat so it must suck.

Re:DebianNoob

[gweihir]

Believe that if you want. It is not the reality.

Re:DebianNoob

[Eunuchswear]

I don't believe it -- Joey Hess believes it.

That's what he has written.

You can deny that if you want, but it is reality.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

> And then, Red Hat, 1.5B
> So yes, there's evidence that Red Hat is a small fish in the pool.

And Debian is 0. I'm not convinced this is a useful metric.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

> I'm a FreeBSD/OpenBSD user, some of the development of Nginx was done in FreeBSD, and you don't even see packages for it in your list. See the flaw in your methodology?

No, I don't. Reduced earnings isn't an indicator of reduced use. Poor Debian at 0!
EC2 alone guarantees Debian installations are vastly outnumbered, unless you can show me some data to the contrary.
There are some marketplace images for server setups that are specifically Debian.
I mean give me something, anything to point to, not just "red hat isn't making enough money".

Re:DebianNoob

[bhiestand]

open source doesn't as much need phb's as much as it attracts them.

can't code, want to contribute? become a phb! if someone calls you out on it when you try to make some decision or another so that you can have your name on some decision or another, just call them toxic and quote some club rule!

Is that really what has been happening?

I have never worked with a large open source project (beyond bug reports), but I always suspected they had a real need for project managers, technical writers/documenters, and various other support personnel.

Re:DebianNoob

[Masked Coward]

Technical arguments being decided by the ignorant masses, versus the specific groups (which anyone from the GR can join) who have the specific job of making those decisions. At least that's one way to look at it.

As your sig says, often wrong but never in doubt. You know only Debian developers are allowed to vote, right? That pretty much blows up your 'ignorant masses' characterization.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

> You know only Debian developers are allowed to vote, right?

Anyone can become one.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

I see:
https://www.debian.org/devel/j...
https://nm.debian.org/public/s...

I guess it can take years with sponsorship. That's a pretty hefty bar. I do think it's a little biased toward inactives, but that's common for this kind of system and I certainly don't think it changes the characterization of why Joey is out.

https://www.debian.org/vote/20...

Re:DebianNoob

[rev0lt]

Please re-read my comment. I don't think you understood it.
The day RH choices disturb any big company from their own ecosystem, they will be eaten alive. And I've shown you the numbers that prove it.
RH *is* a business, Debian is a community effort. Business get bought all the time. Community efforts live while the community is healthy. Debian is quite common because is a simple and easy to install as a barebones version. Not because its better somehow. Its the same dogfood everybody else eats. Btw, and since you mention EC2, imagine Debian adopted something that would disrupt EC2 funcionalities - it would be replaced quite quickly.

Re:DebianNoob

[rev0lt]

Its not a metric. It just means that many of the mentioned companies can buy out RH with their lunch money, if some disruptive change challenges their business model. And as an example, Oracle DB is *not* certified to run on Debian (it basically means you're even more dead in the water in case of problems). If RH introduced changes that disturbed the Oracle ecosystem, size does matter. And RH is small fish.

Re:DebianNoob

[Jack9]

> The day RH choices disturb any big company from their own ecosystem, they will be eaten alive.

If RH never made another release, there would be similar disruption.
That doom theorycrafting is irrelevant to my question.

> RH *is* a business, Debian is a community effort

That's also irrelevant. They are distros from a business standpoint. CentOS being interchangeable with Fedora since forever. How they came to be is a footnote.

My question was about relative usage and some way to measure that metric other than guesswork, as a challenge to the assertion that RH is "a marginal player". systemd adoption in RH is mentioned in 100% of the "discussions" on the topic. So someone here is showing bias.

If you were going to address the issue in an objective manner, you might note Debian, tends to identify itself when you run fingerprinting on servers (e.g. Apache and Nginx). Debian tends to be the most common identifier! Nobody believes the bulk of the responses (with no OS identifiers) are all non-RH (some will be slack, some debian, some gentoo, whatever), so that's an interesting metric that isn't definitive.

I think I understood completely. Attempting to derail into some form of "RH can be replaced" discussion, is of no interest to me.

This discussion didn't seem to pan out any better than previous attempts to verify that there is a more prolific distro.
Calling RH a marginal player is simply disingenuous, as of today.

Re:DebianNoob

[Hognoxious]

Since when does 5th place equal small?

Re:DebianNoob

[Andy Dodd]

No they can't. There is more to being able to buy out a company than merely having sales income.

Also, SAP and CA's sales income is irrelevant for comparison here, since they aren't in the operating system business.

The truth is, as far as platforms SAP and CA customers can run their software on, RH is a VERY big fish. If RH made a change that impacted Oracle or CA - Oracle or CA would have to adapt.

Re:DebianNoob

[rev0lt]

Also, SAP and CA's sales income is irrelevant for comparison here, since they aren't in the operating system business.

No, they rely on operating systems as a critical part of their business. The day that operating system is a liability, well.. then business sizes matter a lot.

If RH made a change that impacted Oracle or CA - Oracle or CA would have to adapt.

Are you kidding me? RH is the cheap stuff. Oracle pitches the Solaris solutions for the high-end customers (and that is the big reason they bought Sun), and they maintain their own RH-based fork - Unbreakable Linux. So basically, a prime example of what I said.

Re:DebianNoob

[rev0lt]

If RH never made another release, there would be similar disruption.

I doubt it. There is an OSS-based fork with many of the features RH clients actually use. Its called CentOS, and that alone is what drives the RH ecosystem. Very few customers actually *run* RH, and those who do usually do it for compliance and certfication issues (think about SAP and Oracle installs).

That doom theorycrafting is irrelevant to my question.

You made no question.

That's also irrelevant. They are distros from a business standpoint. CentOS being interchangeable with Fedora since forever. How they came to be is a footnote.

CentOS has a user base that is probably an order of magnitude bigger than RH. So proportionally, you're just agreeing with me. They are small fish.

My question was about relative usage and some way to measure that metric other than guesswork, as a challenge to the assertion that RH is "a marginal player". systemd adoption in RH is mentioned in 100% of the "discussions" on the topic. So someone here is showing bias.

RH is a company. There are already established metrics for that. Its a mix between revenue and net profit, usually. And as I've shown you, RH is a marginal player.

If you were going to address the issue in an objective manner, you might note Debian, tends to identify itself when you run fingerprinting on servers (e.g. Apache and Nginx). Debian tends to be the most common identifier! Nobody believes the bulk of the responses (with no OS identifiers) are all non-RH (some will be slack, some debian, some gentoo, whatever), so that's an interesting metric that isn't definitive.

No one cares about webservers, and I've never seen anybody buying linux (so, RH customers) to run Nginx. Webservers are a commodity, and can be run in whatever you want. There is nothing that makes debian or linux by itself more interesting than the rest. Many new-breed sysadmins are used to ubuntu, thats why they choose debian.

think I understood completely. Attempting to derail into some form of "RH can be replaced" discussion, is of no interest to me.

RH *can* be easily replaced. Its one of those companies that have no real added value in their stack, other than support. See the evolution of sales of RH and compare it to other players, and you'll easily find out that.

Calling RH a marginal player is simply disingenuous, as of today.

The numbers are there. Like it or don't - it is a marginal player.

Re:DebianNoob

[gweihir]

Look up th term "monolith". You seem to be unaware of its meaning.

Re:DebianNoob

[turbidostato]

"Since when does 5th place equal small?"

Since the 3th is more than 10x bigger that the 5th.

Re:DebianNoob

[Eunuchswear]

Made from one piece of stone.

Hardly even need to look it up.

Re:DebianNoob

[hairyfeet]

If you are #1 in a small market that still makes you #1 and frankly what is disturbing when it comes to RH is how much of their money comes from government contracts, specifically US government. I would frankly be amazed if the #1 server deployed in the US government and military wasn't RH and you know the old saying one doesn't bite the hand that feeds.

But if all you care about is income then frankly nobody should bother speaking of anything Linux at all as all Linux sales combined wouldn't even equal SAP, much less MSFT and APPL.

Re:DebianNoob

[RabidReindeer]

No need to peek, if your interest is piqued you can just look, it's pretty public.

Who gave you free reign? You need to tow the line!

Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

After all of the rhetoric regarding "community" you can see how Debian has fallen short. While I still like and use Debian currently I am seriously looking at other options. When Debian pushed Gnome3 and the community didn't like it they moved forward with it as the default desktop anyway. Now there is the systemd debacle. A large number of people have voiced their disapproval, but No, Debian is going to go down that route anyway. Perhaps this could be a real gain for the BSDs?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, he is very supportive of systemd, as evidenced by many of his mailing list posts. Here's one example: https://lists.debian.org/debia... Pure speculation: He is fed up with people like Ian Jackson abusing the constitution to push their agenda.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

The real crime seems to be the growing "get on board or GTFO" attitude, which flies strongly against Debians roots.

One of the problems with creating an increasingly political system is that it attracts politics and politicians, which in small amounts are necessary, but in large amounts frustrate the hell out of everyone.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[mvdwege]

In fact, someone on the Phoronix forums posted a bunch of links to Joey's debian-devel posts which seems to bear this out.

Especially the first one is a clanger. If you can't support systemd on technical grounds without getting threats, something is very toxic indeed.

And no, that first post is not directly related to the Debian Constitution. That the idiotic GR trying to override the Technical Committee decision two weeks before the Jessie freeze is inspired by this kind of drivel, and that the Constitution makes these kind of purely political overrides of the technical decisions possible is rather evident though.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jones_supa]

When Debian pushed Gnome3 and the community didn't like it they moved forward with it as the default desktop anyway. Now there is the systemd debacle. A large number of people have voiced their disapproval, but No, Debian is going to go down that route anyway.

GNOME3 and SystemD are a natural choice because the developer community behind them is so large. Hopefully that leads to software which has less glitches, less vulnerabilities, new features are implemented faster, documentation is up to date, and quality assurance works. These days open source projects are so complex that you really need the pure manpower. This is probably the direction which we are even more heading towards in the future.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

except nobody uses gnome3. what a bunch of wasted effort.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[KiloByte]

The GR doesn't override the TC decision, it enhances it.

The CTTE decision said "systemd is the default init for jessie", without saying whether non-defaults are to be supported or dropped. This is the part the GR is for.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

He was against the constitution from the beginning. More importantly, he seems to want Debian to be driven by developers and maintainers, people who do actual work, not a vocal minority that abuses bureaucracy and start endless politics.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aha, i get your point, like equally nobody uses a Linux desktop neither, what a bunch of wasted efforts is that! Right?..

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Golden_Rider]

In fact, someone on the Phoronix forums posted a bunch of links to Joey's debian-devel posts which seems to bear this out.

Especially the first one is a clanger. If you can't support systemd on technical grounds without getting threats, something is very toxic indeed.

And no, that first post is not directly related to the Debian Constitution. That the idiotic GR trying to override the Technical Committee decision two weeks before the Jessie freeze is inspired by this kind of drivel, and that the Constitution makes these kind of purely political overrides of the technical decisions possible is rather evident though.

From what I read there, stuff like https://lists.debian.org/debia... (trying to make technical decisions via politics when there actually is no disagreement between devs which needs any help with the decision-making) also contributed to his decision to quit.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Delicious Pun]

The real crime seems to be the growing "get on board or GTFO" attitude

Then they're all baffled when people get angry.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was kind of neutral about systemd until I realized that the only way to get centralized logging out of systemd boxes is to turn on syslog mode (journald has no concept of network transport).

At that point, I realized that the systemd developers aren't actually server admins.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[gmack]

You do not have to install gnome3 on Debian, I don't. As for systemd, I suggest looking through Debian's extensive documentation detailing why they chose systemd over the alternatives. At any rate the time to argue systemd was last year when Debian had a very lengthily consultation process. I also suggest looking up the systemd documentation for yourself considering the huge amount of FUD being spread about it and I find it telling that neither the Debian fork website nor the boycott systemd websites don't actually name any of their supporters.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[loonycyborg]

The problem is that users can't be allowed to decide which desktop environment or init system to use. They can only request particular features and then developers decide which DEs or whatever to use to implement them. That's the only way it can work. Otherwise you'll have no developers and maintainers, period. And who will implement stuff then?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[CRCulver]

You do not have to install gnome3 on Debian, I don't.

systemd on Debian is a dependency for most desktop applications even if one avoids Gnome 3. Installing GIMP, for example, will pull in systemd libs.

As for systemd, I suggest looking through Debian's extensive documentation detailing why they chose systemd over the alternatives.

During that "lengthly consultation process", nearly all of the for systemd was based on the advantages that systemd, as an init system, offer over competing init systems. In the months since Debian committed to systemd, Poettering has been increasingly vocal that he wants systemd to be more than an init system. That is why there is a renewed call for debate.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[CRCulver]

Sorry, that should have read "...nearly all of the support for systemd was based on the advantages that systemd, as an init system, offered over competing init systems."

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Mirar]

Gnome3, systemd, wayland, pulseaudio etc might (or might not) be good ideas. But they should probably not be introduced before they are completely bug-free -- or at least more bug-free then the thing they will replace. (And they should be better designed than the thing they are trying to replace.)

This has not always been the case. Actually, this has rarely been the case. They have been introduced as the new hip thing despite bugs and design flaws.

And considering that the *ix world is full of people who don't like change - it's one of the main selling points - changing things because it's hip, doesn't solve the problem, introduces new bugs and introduces the well known problem of update-your-legacy-system-or-don't-update-your-machine-ever-again doesn't really sit well with everyone.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[gmack]

If gimp pulls in systemd libs then a bug should be filed there. There is no technical requirement it needs to be that way according to the gnome folks.

During that "lengthly consultation process", nearly all of the for systemd was based on the advantages that systemd, as an init system, offer over competing init systems. In the months since Debian committed to systemd, Poettering has been increasingly vocal that he wants systemd to be more than an init system. That is why there is a renewed call for debate.

This is what I mean by reading things for yourself. I've been reading about his plans but you are mistaking the systemd init system with the overall collections of things he is working on. It's not as if the high speed DHCP daemon he has just written will end up in PID 1. His proposals so far is that there will be more optional daemons that either work better and at some point in the future I wouldn't be shocked if there were to be a debate over whether his addons should replace existing daemons but we aren't there yet.

 

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Delicious Pun]

I disagree. The point of being in a community is to... be a part of a community. As you describe it, there is no community, there are just two groups of people. Developers and users. If the users don't like what the developers are doing, the developers are free to leave. They will be replaced by people who respect others in the community. Users are important too. Even if they don't file bug reports. They are your promoters. More users means more promoters, more promoters means more potential developers. Those developers will replace the "my way or the highway" devs that are currently taking charge.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes no sense. In the past to get network logging you needed to install a syslog daemon. And with systemd you still need to install a syslog daemon. What's the big deal?

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the users don't like what the developers are doing, the developers are free to leave.

You've gotta be fucking kidding me. The opposite is true with most open-source projects, as it should be. Those who do the free work get to decide what they work on, and if they want to pander to user's demands. No developer would want to work for free in the way you're describing. Also, developers are users too.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[loonycyborg]

In a proper community people's jobs are specialized. If you hire someone to build a house for you you don't tell him tools from which manufacturer to use in construction, likewise you don't tell which initsystem/DE a distro maintainer should use, or which IDE/editor/compiler a developer should use.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[naasking]

When Debian pushed Gnome3 and the community didn't like it [...] Now there is the systemd debacle. A large number of people have voiced their disapproval [...]

You seem to be speaking for "the community", but I don't see any hard numbers suggesting that the majority of said community actually shares your opinions. Just because many voices cry out and cry loudly, does not make those voices representative of anything meaningful.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Delicious Pun]

I'm thinking that the Debian social contract needs to be replaced with "We do what we want. Like it or don't like it. It doesn't matter to us."

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[udippel]

Can nobody do anything about this chap on an ego trip?
First, he didn't do what was necessary for audio; but made a huge, convoluted "Eierlgende Wollmilchsau" from it (I guess, he knows what that is!) that pops up and tells me all the while that I have plugged in some headphone or some; but doesn't remember, ever, despite of all my efforts, that, no, I don't want the internal sound card after each reboot, thank you very much! So I have been telling my machine for the last 2 years, whenever I boot, exactly that, and again. After each reboot. Thank you very much!
He seems to like all the convoluted stuff - against all Unix philosophy, by the way - and the stuff that usurp the rest of the world. How can a maniac be such unstoppable?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[devent]

Installing GIMP, for example, will pull in systemd libs.

Some optional dependency of GIMP pulls systemd-libs. And who cares anyway, if it's just a library? You know that GIMP depends on a bunch of libs one more or one less who cares. A systemd-lib is not systemd.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[udippel]

You come across like a rather unthinking salesperson-type, sorry. Your nice words don't actually demonstrate that you know what you are talking about, sorry again.
You talk about features, documentation, and so forth. Would you know that the existing system init has been proven through more than one generation, fulfills its tasks splendidly, and has been without a glitch for me for the same time, is widely accepted, including by your perceived 'large community'. And then you equate a large number of people with quality, at least implicitly. I don't think you are a software engineer.

The start of the argument is silly, silly, silly. Why would system X be a good choice because there is a large developer community behind it? Then you must logically stick with Redmond. Or, even better, Android, with close to one million apps for download.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[devent]

Poettering has been increasingly vocal that he wants systemd to be more than an init system.

Who fucking cares? systemd is modular, Debian can just pull in the init stuff of systemd. How is that relevant that the guy who wrote a software peace that Debian wants to use want to add new features?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[CRCulver]

Who fucking cares? systemd is modular, Debian can just pull in the init stuff of systemd.

Even the init stuff of systemd requires the Linux kernel, so it is incompatible with Debian's commitment to a diversity of systems. In any event, systemd is not modular by any reasonable definition. All of those "separate binaries" expect to be talking to each other, and the uselessd developer found he had to go far back in the systemd versioning to be able to use just the init system components without the rest.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[loonycyborg]

Really? You really think you could tell them what tools to use building your house? Only by choosing a different team maybe. No matter if paid or no we're part of community, payments is just a way to manage scarce resources like time or materials.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[devent]

Since only 2011 Debian supports a different kernel then Linux (kFreeBSD) (Debian was founded in 1993), so it does not make any sense to argue that Debian should support other kernels for a "diversity of systems". I don't think there is any commitment of a diversity of init systems.
By your "reasonable definition" nothing on my Linux desktop is modular. IPC messages are the highest possible abstraction, then comes dynamic libraries, then static libraries.

What rest? Systemd core is just systemd, journald, networkd and logind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

As far as I understand uselessd is not using Kdbus, which is the future default IPC protocol of the Linux kernel.
If you need the features of uselessd, go for it. But it have nothing to do with your argument.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[devent]

That's just idiotic.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

You now have a massive piece of log-corrupting shit sitting between your events and your real log system because the systemd ball of tar is written by a hack that doesn't understand interfaces.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ArsonSmith]

So I can use more or less to view the logs? Maybe I was being lied to and I've been unable to find the docs for it but my understanding was that you couldn't view logs without a special tool. Also, I was told and haven't verified, that you can't log from systemd to a standard logging server like rsyslog or logstash without first going through journald? perhaps I was miss informed.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[petermgreen]

In a proper community people's jobs are specialized. If you hire someone to build a house for you you don't tell him tools from which manufacturer to use in construction

You absoloutely tell him what you want the walls made out of and where you want them, where you want the electrical accessories, what type of heating system you want and where you want ht bits of it, and so-on. All of those things are discussed between you and and your architect and submitted to planning/building regs for approval before the builder is hired.

You don't specify the brand of the tools but you strongly imply the types of tools to be used by the descisions you make. The level of minutae you go into depends on the particular building project, for a house what I mentioned is probablly most of what is on the plans, for something more critical you will likely have a higher level of detail.

At least that's how it's done round these parts.

likewise you don't tell which initsystem/DE a distro maintainer should use

If you are funding development of the distro you absoloutely should tell those things.

If you aren't paying then you can't directly dictate but you absoloutely can and should complain loudly if they make descisions you think are crap. If they ignore you and you can get sufficient developers to agree with you then a fork or derivative may be in order.

or which IDE/editor/compiler a developer should use.

You probablly don't care too much about the IDE/editor choice but if the project will have any longivity you absoloutely should be caring about (this may mean you dictate or it may mean you just sanity check depending on the situation) the choice of language, compiler, libararies and other things that will impact the long term maintenance, portability and overall viability of the software.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[petermgreen]

You do not have to install gnome3 on Debian, I don't.

True but if you were running a squeeze (or early wheezy-testing) system with gnome2 and upgraded to wheezy (to get newer kernel, newer apps etc) you would end up with a radially different user environment with no easy way back.

There was a fork of gnome2 but due to politics it didn't make it into debian until jessie (though it was available from unofficial repos earlier) and you still have to manually rip the gnome components off and replace them with their forks.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[gmack]

Systemd will forward to syslogd if you want it to so you can still use your standard tools to view the logs if you want.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[walterbyrd]

> You seem to be speaking for "the community", but I don't see any hard numbers suggesting that the majority of said community actually shares your opinions. Just because many voices cry out and cry loudly, does not make those voices representative of anything meaningful.

What about the other way around? SystemD advocates constantly try to dismiss those who criticize SystemD as a tiny handful of UNIX greybeards. I have yet to see any evidence of that being the case.

It very much seems to me that SystemD is pushed on all Linux by a tiny handful of Red Hat marketing execs.

Debian went with SystemD because they believed a systemd takeover was inevitable. Slackware is considering systemd for the same reason.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

I should add to this that Debian has built a reputation, over more than a decade, for being a conservative, rock-solid stable distro. By adopting new packages which are less stable than their predecessors, Debian, more so than other distros, seriously erodes its reputation.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[devent]

What do you think less or more are? special tools to read files.
Also journalctl -b | less works just fine.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[slackware 3.6]

I use Gnome 3 because I like it. I don't care how it works just that it works and is user friendly. I've installed Debian on lots of friends and relatives computers because it's so damn easy to use people who had never considered Linux said "ohh this is cool." Gnome make linux on the desktop a possibility.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Raumkraut]

Number of programs which can parse text-based log files: >100,000
Number of programs which can parse systemd log files: 1
Are you okay with this situation? It seems a lot of people are not.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Peter H.S.]

I was kind of neutral about systemd until I realized that the only way to get centralized logging out of systemd boxes is to turn on syslog mode (journald has no concept of network transport).

At that point, I realized that the systemd developers aren't actually server admins.

It is trivial to export systemd log files to such a centralized logging server by using "systemd-journal-gatewayd", it can even export the logs in JSON to preserve the rich metadata.
The details are here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/sof...

So to sum up; it is easy to make systemd work with centralized logging servers, and it support a wide range of formats and encryption and security features too.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[aliquis]

Reply didn't work in beta in Firefox.. Awesome.

GNOME3 and SystemD are a natural choice because the developer community behind them is so large.

Hopefully that leads to software which has less glitches, less vulnerabilities, new features are implemented faster, documentation is up to date, and quality assurance works.

You were saved by "hopefully"..

Because you know what more is large and

so complex that you really need the pure manpower

?

Microsoft and Windows among other things. .. or maybe that large complex software is part of the problem. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

Anyway I don't even know what it's all about. I assume one can still run KDE or Enlightenment or whatever in Debian (or maybe system tools / operating specific stuff need gnome stuff? Not the whole desktop I hope? =P. Though for more graphical & file management stuff maybe that's way more convenient.)

And if Gnome have some sort of special role in Debian I guess one could still view KDE and Qt as pretty relevant / large too.

Meanwhile I've actually been booting Windows 8.1 the last few months. Damn virtual memory (& possibly Chrome?) seem to be superior in Windows (could be because it reside on a 160 GB 7200 RPM drive with some amount of cache rather than my 3 TB 5400 rpm drive with more cache but I doubt that have all that much to do with it.)

Try running Chrome with 8 GB of RAM and 20 GB on swap on both systems and you'll see what I mean :) (Maybe the 20 GB is made up of different stuff?)

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is trivial to export systemd log files to such a centralized logging server by using "systemd-journal-gatewayd", "

That is a pull based system, ie: it allows you to retrieve logs from the generating server. It is in no way a replacement for push based logging to a central server.

The fact that you suggested this as a viable alternative demonstrates the huge disconnect between system admins and systemd advocates. It'd be nice if existing solved "problems" weren't re-solved without fully understanding the original problem.

It's like reinventing the wheel, based on you only ever seeing a bike travel down stairs. Then wondering why people complain about the fact that you decided a square wheel would be better. A square wheel may very well provide better traction on the stairs, but you've missed the bigger picture.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

You know I'd been wondering what his position was (was about to look it up while reading this thread) because there seemed to be an awful lot of people jumping to the conclusion that obviously this was systemd related and "look systemd is driving away developers!".

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

You mean a disconnect like the fact that you can pretty trivially 100% a couple of servers running feature extracting daemons processing text based logs at the moment for a small cluster of machines?

Where has this absurd notion that text logs are efficient come from? 16 redundant bytes for a 4 byte IP address? Another 5 for a 2-byte port number? Text based logs generate a huge amount of redundant network traffic. journal-gatewayd might not be the solution people are looking for, but it absolutely makes sense to separate log collection on the local machine and the network interface in some way, since no sane syslog configuration just blasts UDP packets into the ether and hopes they arrive, and network programming is an *entirely* different set of concerns to local programming.

Which on some level, makes HTTP GET just as valid as anything else, since the important parameter is "did the server get the data" not "have I sent it?". rsyslog in TCP mode is how you achieve this currently. But you're left with a lot of text data volume to handle for something like access logs. Of course rsyslog also reads systemd journals natively.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

Yeah, we shouldn't have released X11 until it was 100% bug free either...

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

Why are you not okay with this situation? Is there a risk that the systemd log viewer binary on your system will suddenly go away, and you will be unable under any circumstances to somehow get another one?

Is such a (possible, but extremely contrived) situation likely, and if you were worried about it, why did you install a syslog daemon? And why have you never been similarly concerned about how you'd view logs if your syslog daemon stopped writing them?

Also, you realize rsyslog reads systemd log files natively right? As in, not via the syslog protocol, but it parses the binary format and extracts text directly. So number of programs which read is greater then 1, probably greater then 2 (just not to my knowledge) and - oh yeah - the entire format is documented and freely available online.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You mean a disconnect like the fact that you can pretty trivially 100% a couple of servers running feature extracting daemons processing text based logs at the moment for a small cluster of machines?"

No. I see that you still don't see the problem with switching from a push to a pull based system, despite your tangents into text vs binary, etc.
You have illustrated my point.

"Where has this absurd notion that text logs are efficient come from?"
I'll entertain your straw man for a bit. You are talking about transmission and storage efficiency, these have not been a serious concern in quite some time due to increased bandwidth and storage capacity. And I say this as someone who works on a system that has 1TB for receiving uncompressed log data, and sees single systems sending well over 20GB a day.

With logs it is much more important for them to be:
1. Portable. eg: there is more than one size of byte and byte ordering. The generating systems architecture and platform can change over time and it should not impact the next point.
2. Archival. The file needs to be read back, maintaining all information, years from now, despite changing systems and requirements.
3. Accurate. There should be a minimum of processing over the entire life-cycle, whereby errors can occur.
4. Integration friendly. On large log infrastructure, the initiating machine's log format is only the first step of the log's life. It must be usable by many other tools.

" rsyslog in TCP mode is how you achieve this currently"
False. It is possible to lose messages even with TCP mode. This is why rsyslog introduced RELP. And if you knew about this then you'd also know that rsyslog supports compressing the log stream over the network, rendering the size efficiency argument rather moot. Since you should be encrypting your network transit anyway, you;d know that enabling compression is a single line config. (I've never seen an un-compressed encrypted stream)

"Of course rsyslog also reads systemd journals natively."
You're being intentionally misleading by saying that and completely ignoring the caveats and warnings about using this.
(See: http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/master/configuration/modules/imjournal.html)

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

" rsyslog in TCP mode is how you achieve this currently"
False. It is possible to lose messages even with TCP mode. This is why rsyslog introduced RELP. And if you knew about this then you'd also know that rsyslog supports compressing the log stream over the network, rendering the size efficiency argument rather moot. Since you should be encrypting your network transit anyway, you;d know that enabling compression is a single line config. (I've never seen an un-compressed encrypted stream)

RELP is TCP based with another layer of protocol over the top. And you're going to be doing disk buffering in any robust system based on it. And I see no one wailing and complaining about it being "too complicated" because hey, network programming is hard, which was my original point. The assumptions involved in sending reliable network messages are manyfold and varied, and depending what you want absolutely don't work if you don't have any type of local buffer.

1. Portable. eg: there is more than one size of byte and byte ordering. The generating systems architecture and platform can change over time and it should not impact the next point.
2. Archival. The file needs to be read back, maintaining all information, years from now, despite changing systems and requirements.
3. Accurate. There should be a minimum of processing over the entire life-cycle, whereby errors can occur.
4. Integration friendly. On large log infrastructure, the initiating machine's log format is only the first step of the log's life. It must be usable by many other tools.

Text logs are in no way portable. People think they're portable because they can read them (you know, if they speak English), but ubiquitously we all grep through a hundreds of thousands of lines of logs by looking for a string we think might be there. Writing a regex to reliably get a log is an exercise in massacring that text back to the broadest conceivable category of things it could be and hoping some version update doesn't change the format. Heaven help you if you have localization concerns.

This is why we have log aggregation systems - no one wants to keep tons of redundant data, they want to sort it into their indexed, databased format that actually provides useful information.

At which point it is very much worth questioning why we're outputing so much text in the first place, when we could output precise binary structs, checksummed and signed, use the bit-savings for redundancy if we wanted and then only render text when it's needed. Which can either be instantaneous if you're paranoid, or never, if you're an embedded device with space concerns.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

systemd has this exact switch. Ubuntu flavored systemd default configuration is to not write binary logs and parse everything directly to syslog.

Cue some example of seeing a half flushed log line in a file, as though someone actually got any information from that line.

It's becoming rapidly apparent to me that the people who complain no one listens to their complaints about systemd haven't realized they don't listen or attempt to learn about what they're complaining about.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

But they should probably not be introduced before they are completely bug-free -- or at least more bug-free then the thing they will replace.

Mature software is almost always vastly less buggy than newer feature rich software. In any cycle of improvement the less buggy software is replaced with more feature rich software.

And considering that the *ix world is full of people who don't like change

I don't know that. I think there is a some change resistance in Linux now that didn't used to exist. The Unix world used to love change. I think it is a generational shift since the early 2000s. But the Android user base which is the vast majority of the *ix world seems pretty happy with the changes. As do iOS and OSX users. And frankly most Linux desktop users like systemd. And frankly most server people are using cloud solutions which either have or will shortly be switching to systemd easily to take advantage of those features.

There is a vocal minority what doesn't like this change.

doesn't solve the problem

Of course it does solve the problem which means you are just making stuff up.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[gweihir]

Indeed, it does. Also, if anything is really controversial (and systemd is) a project like Debian must not move forward with it until a consensus has been reached.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

Instead of offering me an alternative and convincing me to switch of my own volition, systemd has become mandatory by virtue of shifting the ground from out beneath my feet. This is a bullshit way to do things.

That's called progress. I liked MySpace and didn't like the switch to Facebook. So what?

There is no catch-22. Gnome is led by RedHat. RedHat is moving in the direction of OpenShift. PaaS vendors want process management i.e. systemd. That's a clear cut chain of dependency. If you want to be on the Gnome codebase you follow RedHat's lead.

MATE is fighting the user interface battle they don't want to go after user space plumbing as well.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

I agree. Systemd is now about a "2nd kernel" or "userspace plumbing". Essentially a redesign of Linux.

The problem is I don't know what there is for Debian to debate. They don't have the upsteam influence. If systemd is expanding and large numbers of developers in upstream and going to be introducing dependencies on systemd what is there for Debian to debate? The most they could in a practical sense do would be to create a subset of packages that don't have systemd dependencies directly or indirectly and frankly that's pretty easy for anyone to do for themselves and just create a child distribution

IMHO the anti-systemd people are mostly admins and not developers so I don't think they have the manpower to pull off what they want.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

Actually there are already several programs and a bunch of libraries (ex: http://search.cpan.org/~lkundr...) that can handle the binary format. More are being written. The situation you are describing doesn't exist now and will rectify quickly.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

What about the other way around? SystemD advocates constantly try to dismiss those who criticize SystemD as a tiny handful of UNIX greybeards. I have yet to see any evidence of that being the case. It very much seems to me that SystemD is pushed on all Linux by a tiny handful of Red Hat marketing execs.

I wouldn't exactly call the OpenShift / OpenStack / GearD group in RedHat "marketing execs" they are some of the most advanced server admin developers on the planet. But if you want a group not RedHat advocates: Docker and CoreOS are huge systemd supporters ( Alex Polvi, Brandon Philips and Michael Marineau).

Debian went with SystemD because they believed a systemd takeover was inevitable.

Yes. And they are right.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

The point is not change but choice. I do not need any of that cruft for my 500MB servers.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Before upgrading Debian 7 to 8, pin systemd NOT TO INSTALL. /etc/apt/preferences.d/01systemd Package: systemd Pin: origin "" Pin-Priority: -1

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[rdnetto]

Regardless of what's running as PID 1, many administrators of Linux installations do not want any of Poettering's libs installed at all. With a codebase this polemic, it's understandable that there would be a call for removing systemd libs as obligatory dependencies.

In any event, it's not GIMP itself that has the dependency but an intermediate library. I simply used it as an example of a *nix desktop application that pulls in systemd libs on Debian even if one is trying very hard to avoid everything systemd related.

This is Debian we're talking about, not Gentoo (and I say that as a Sabayon user). For most packages, you're limited to whatever configuration the maintainer decided on (which is usually the one with the most features), since the alternative would be to have a separate package for each version. e.g. vlc and vlc-nox.
If you really want that level of control, Debian is not the right distro to be using.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[rdnetto]

I agree. Systemd is now about a "2nd kernel" or "userspace plumbing". Essentially a redesign of Linux.

The problem is I don't know what there is for Debian to debate. They don't have the upsteam influence. If systemd is expanding and large numbers of developers in upstream and going to be introducing dependencies on systemd what is there for Debian to debate? The most they could in a practical sense do would be to create a subset of packages that don't have systemd dependencies directly or indirectly and frankly that's pretty easy for anyone to do for themselves and just create a child distribution

IMHO the anti-systemd people are mostly admins and not developers so I don't think they have the manpower to pull off what they want.

Debian is probably the second most influential distro, after Red Hat. One example of this is how Canonical dropped support for upstart after Debian adopted systemd as the default. (And don't forget how many distros are derivatives of Ubuntu.)

If Debian imposes a requirement that packages do not depend on systemd, then that will have a significant effect. That said, some larger projects do have enough influence to block them from doing so. e.g. not being able to run Gnome would be a pretty big blow to them. Ultimately, distros and upstream projects have a symbiotic relationship, so the larger players on either side can influence the outcome.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[thegarbz]

I was kind of neutral about systemd until I realized that the only way to get centralized logging out of systemd boxes is to turn on syslog mode (journald has no concept of network transport).

At that point, I realized that the systemd developers aren't actually server admins.

Really? Because from what I understand they offered you the functionality to spit out a syslog so you can do those things it is you want to do that the system doesn't support yet?

Seriously this fetish the community has with every new thing being 110% feature compatible and complete with the old the moment it hits github is getting tired. The whining of the entitled is getting sooo old.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[thegarbz]

Mature software is almost always vastly less buggy than newer feature rich software. In any cycle of improvement the less buggy software is replaced with more feature rich software.

I appreciate the theory, but 2 of the 3 examples in the GP's post were not only buggy, they were outright broken early beta releases at best. If a distribution has to release information on how to disable Pulseaudio to fix show stopping audio issues then it probably shouldn't have been rolled out as the default install to begin with.

I think Gnome 3 and Pulseaudio are ok (I'm totally in the minority here). I actually like Pulseaudio. But I'm under no delusion that they were thrown at end users way before they were ready. Bugzilla and most distro forums have the ugly history of it all if you feel like a depressing evening read.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[thegarbz]

systemd on Debian is a dependency for most desktop applications even if one avoids Gnome 3. Installing GIMP, for example, will pull in systemd libs.

So? Direct your anger at the GIMP developers. Or work on an API compatible alternative to whatever it is that systemd provides that GIMP wants. None of this is the fault of systemd.

In the months since Debian committed to systemd...

The project description, wikipedia page, and the name itself "systemd" didn't give away that they always wanted it to be more than an init system? Poettering hasn't been increasingly vocal about what he wants, he's increasingly fighting back against what users think his project should be.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

In what way does it break the RFCs?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

And that is the default configuration provided by Debian.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

And that's why Joey Hess is quitting Debian.

Gosh, we seem to have come full circle.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

many administrators of Linux installations do not want any of Poettering's libs installed at all.

Insane.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

One example of this is how Canonical dropped support for upstart after Debian adopted systemd as the default.

That's not quite what happened. Upstart was having problems keeping up for a long time. Ubuntu had already decided to move towards systemd regardless and drop Upstart as a major focus. When Debian picked systemd it was no longer going to be easy to even support something else ...

If Debian imposes a requirement that packages do not depend on systemd, then that will have a significant effect

What effect? Gnome already does. KDE (dbus) is going to. Other packages already have. So what effect?

Ultimately, distros and upstream projects have a symbiotic relationship, so the larger players on either side can influence the outcome.

Exactly. And in this case many of the upstream projects are passionate about systemd. The distributions are not. There likely will be a non-systemd distribution aimed at classic server which just doesn't have a whole bunch of packages. I think the Debian fork (though more than likely it will just be a child distribution) if it is possible is a good idea. But I don't see what Debian can do given that upstream is committed.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

Your point is different that GPs. No more bugs than the mature system is often an unachievable goal in practical time frames. Not too many bugs is a judgement question. Gentoo, Arch are more cutting edge. RHEL and Debian stable are much less cutting edge. The balance there is something Linux distribution do well, given the limitations of how buggy upstream is.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[bungo]

Because he has supporters like myself who hate the convoluted Unix philosophy

In turn, you should accept that there is a difference between people who are using Linux as a desktop and need things like sound, and people who are using it in the server room.

I currently professionally support Linux systems. I like that it's similar to other Unix systems.

Let me see if I can even remember all of the Unix and Unix like operating systems I've had to support professionally...
- Pyramid OSx
- DG/UX
- DEC Digital Unix (OSF/1)
- HP MPE ix (MPE with a posix shell)
- HP/UX
- Xenix
- SCO Unix
- Solaris (Sparc, x86)
- AIX

Now, you can't say I'm resistant to change, as there is a large difference in how all of those systems are administered. I liked the fact that Linux was familiar and I could switch over to it.

What I don't like is that desktop related changes are encroaching on the server room. Fine, you like playing games or listening to music. Don't force me to go down the same path.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[devent]

systemd is open source and free. If you are so concerned then you can just convert all your logs to text.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[loonycyborg]

You probablly don't care too much about the IDE/editor choice but if the project will have any longivity you absoloutely should be caring about (this may mean you dictate or it may mean you just sanity check depending on the situation) the choice of language, compiler, libararies and other things that will impact the long term maintenance, portability and overall viability of the software.

"you" in this case being the lead developer. Anyone else who is doing this, is performing development work, and should be considered either a developer or an incompetent who is micromanaging something which is not his direct responsibility. For example, Debian's re-vote about init systems is definitely example of micromanagement, maybe not by a non-technical pointy-haired boss, but end result is the same.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

They could move forward as much as they want as long they do not make mandatory do use systemd. Which they do not need to. Must of us in server land do not need to install Gnome.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Very Very good good point. Minix, Xenix, SCO V, Ultrix, AIX, Solaris, HP/UX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, RedHat, CentOS, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Debian

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Or not use it at all, freedom of choice.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"I disagree. The point of being in a community is to... be a part of a community. As you describe it, there is no community, there are just two groups of people. Developers and users. If the users don't like what the developers are doing, the developers are free to leave. They will be replaced by people who respect others in the community."

Are you really so naive or just trolling? Because what you are saying is the exact opposite to reality.

And not because a matter of moral judgement, what's right and what's wrong, but a matter of making things happen.

A user doesn't make things happen, a developer does.

So it is not "If the users don't like what the developers are doing, the developers are free to leave" but "If the users don't like what the developers are doing, the *users* are free to leave" because what power has a user to make a developer do what he doesn't want to do? And what power has a user to make a developer resign while he's still doing what he likes to? Moreso on a purely community-driven project where the user doesn't even have the proxy of a corporation that pays the developer's wages.

"More users means more promoters, more promoters means more potential developers. Those developers will replace the "my way or the highway" devs that are currently taking charge"

No. Even if it happens the way you say, the new developers will be another generation of "my way or the highway" because the user still won't have any ability to make developers do what they don't feel inclined to do.

In other words: the only way for a user to make things happen is to stop being just a user and become a developer and once that happens, it will also be "his way or the highway".

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"You absoloutely tell him what you want the walls made out of and where you want them, where you want the electrical accessories, what type of heating system you want and where you want ht bits of it, and so-on. All of those things are discussed between you and and your architect and submitted to planning/building regs for approval before the builder is hired."

Or else?

Think on your "or else" clause and see if or how can be applied to a community-driven effort like Debian. Then you'll start to understand.

"If you are funding development of the distro you absoloutely should tell those things."

Absolutly. It's only you are not funding developers.

"If they ignore you and you can get sufficient developers to agree with you then a fork or derivative may be in order."

Good luck with that while, from my experience it shows and uttely lack of understandment of how human nature works. You won't get developers to agree with you. You'll develop on you own and once your code start showing its merits, then you might start seeing other developers going your way.

"Show me the code" is a known saying for a matter.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I read there, stuff like https://lists.debian.org/debia... (trying to make technical decisions via politics when there actually is no disagreement between devs which needs any help with the decision-making) also contributed to his decision to quit.

I will try to shed light on this, the point seemed to be that involving the public in the decision-making process resulted in the same old discussions being thrashed out by people who should not have been involved in the first place, because it would lead to the same old discussions taking place.

What that vote about the automatic switching did was to invite the public to decide whether that should happen or not, which is going to cause delays and noise and the developers had already decided what to do so it was unnecessary.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Or, you might check the issue tracker and you will find that network logging is on the to-do list."

And this quite says it all.

Despite still lacking basic features and obviously being a moving target, someone wants it as the default for such an important component as the init system for the Stable version of one of the most used and respected distributions known, among other things, for not adding variations once frozen (remember the thing about "moving target"?).

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Where has this absurd notion that text logs are efficient come from?"

From the vast army of sysadmins left with a broken server to see what happened and how to recover it.

"Text based logs generate a huge amount of redundant network traffic."

For one is not a "huge amount", for other, redundant is good here because it means it'll be easy to extract meaning out of a (slightly) corrupted stream. Try that from a 0 redundancy stream.

"Wht ime is it?" - What did I intend to say?
"89035213492" - Is this the number I intended to transmit?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Seriously this fetish the community has with every new thing being 110% feature compatible and complete with the old the moment it hits github is getting tired."

The strawman argument is what's getting tired.

1) No one asks for your petty project to be 110% feature compatible with anything when it hits github.
2) What people asks is for THINGS ALREADY RELIABLY WORKING, being at least as good as the old thingie PRIOR TO BE PROMOTED TO A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT.
3) For it to be accepted into a production environment, the new thingie has not only to be as good as the old thing but BETTER by a factor that makes it worthy the expenditure in relearning and readapting old systems and people to the new thing. And then add an extra margin to cope with the risk that in the end things may not end as expected.

I know it's in the human nature but what it's tiring is for each new generation know-it-alls to throw away the experience and knowledge of the ones that came before and then even telling they "find tired" when told, no boy, you don't know it all.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Yeah, we shouldn't have released X11 until it was 100% bug free either..."

Another strawman.

"...or at least more bug-free then the thing they will replace"

It was already there, in the parent post.

And even then, nobody was talking about "releasing" but being used in a production environment.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Perfect is the enemy of good. If you want stable, stay on Release N-1 or N-2. Don't hold others back from trying to make something better."

That would be good if those developers so proud of the shiny novelty wouldn't get back to you when pointed to bugs on the N-1 or N-2 releases telling "oh, upgrade to N because I don't have the time nor the inclination to fix bugs on N-2 (while certainly I had the time to introduce them to start with)".

And then, nobody is holding you back from trying to produce something better but from pushing it to production just because you THINK it's better.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

23.23.142.124

Did a digit go missing? Get flipped? Maybe it meant to say 231.23.142.124

It's redundant in the sense that it's useless. Not redundant in the sense that it's robust.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Electricity Likes Me]

"RELP is TCP based with another layer of protocol over the top."

You could say the same about HTTP or any other application level protocol,

I don't know, maybe my point was spelled out in the immediately following sentences which you didn't read?

Because you just went on to prove the entire point I was making by talking all about extra network protocols and daemons all created to make networked syslog reliable while you're in the middle of complaining about using a separate daemon to make journald network exportable.

At this point, I have no idea what you think the problem is other then "oh my god journald is new and scary". Because you've been explaining in excruciating detail exactly why you wouldn't use the raw logging protocol of a local system to actually communicate over a network because networks aren't reliable.

In which case, we return to the original issue: what exactly is the problem with using a special purpose daemon for exporting logs over the network? You know, the aforementioned separation of concerns which in any other thread on systemd is apparently the only thing people can talk about?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[juanfgs]

can you back that up with real statistics?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[gweihir]

Well, yes. But if it was not mandatory it would not be controversial either.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

If you can't support systemd on technical grounds without getting threats, something is very toxic indeed.

Under no circumstances has systemd been supported on technical grounds (those proposing it keep repeating this ad nauseam in the hope it will just be accepted as fact), nor has there been any extensive discussion in the manner he describes. systemd has been imposed as a de facto default almost overnight and the general consensus has been that it would be accepted with nary a whisper. Now that there is some pushback various characters are getting upset.

Given that this is an extremely core piece of software that a distribution is going to have to support come hell or high water it deserves a huge amount of scrutiny it hasn't got. You've also got to look beyond the code and ask yourself whether it is backed by a group of developers who are very, very, very responsive to security issues and bugs. The answer to that is a big fat NO.

"But desktop environments like Gnome were already requiring systemd before Debian switched to it; Debian cannot hold back the tide."

In every supposedly technical discussion that I have seen about systemd this is the default end argument. That is NOT a technical argument.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

In the past to get network logging you needed to install a syslog daemon. And with systemd you still need to install a syslog daemon. What's the big deal?

Have you stopped to think how utterly stupid that statement is? In the past I had syslog running as default. No work necessary. Now I have to run it as a separate daemon from the 'default' logging system just so I can get plain text logs, hoping systemd doesn't corrupt anything inbetween.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

You mean a disconnect like the fact that you can pretty trivially 100% a couple of servers running feature extracting daemons processing text based logs at the moment for a small cluster of machines?

I have no idea what that load of claptrap means (par for the course with this trail of systemd brain damage), but you obviously don't understand the importance of a push based system. You want to make sure stuff gets pushed as soon as reducing any possibility that logs get altered inbetween. The fact that anyone suggests pulling as a solution means that have no clue at all about system administration.

Where has this absurd notion that text logs are efficient come from?

Fucking hell. The issue here is lowest common denominator. Under as many disastrous circumstances as possible there are those of us who, you know, do fucking administration for a living who have to be able to read log files - and I mean have to. To put a binary logger in the middle of there means there are those of us who can use half a brain cell and work out why that would be a problem. That's the real elephant in the room, but I notice you throw the strawman of efficiency in there.

Of course rsyslog also reads systemd journals natively.

Doesn't help.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[mvdwege]

No. Systemd supporters give plenty of technical reasons for their support. In my case (for one thing) it is wanting event based processing of service management. Systemd offers that, sysV rc doesn't. Like it or not, that's a technical reason.

On the other hand, you anti guys keep bringing up things like this shit, or 'not Unix philosophy', or 'monolithic hairball'. Those are not technical arguments.

Do me a favour, and refrain from answering until you can actually muster a technical argument against systemd.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

23.23.142.124

Did a digit go missing? Get flipped? Maybe it meant to say 231.23.142.124

It's redundant in the sense that it's useless. Not redundant in the sense that it's robust.

Did systemd corrupt my logs or not? No idea. Can I get a portion of my logs back, or are they all lost? Nope, they're all lost.

I'm afraid you're really pissing in the wind with the your arguments now.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

Because you just went on to prove the entire point I was making by talking all about extra network protocols and daemons all created to make networked syslog reliable while you're in the middle of complaining about using a separate daemon to make journald network exportable.

You have no point at all apart from making a whole load of noise to make it look like you have one.

At this point, I have no idea what you think the problem is other then "oh my god journald is new and scary".

Not an argument I'm afraid, but this is the kind of non sequiturs that systemd critiques usually boil down to once its proponents have exhausted all the nonesense.

Sys admins demand logs they can read under as many circumstances as possible and the ability to take logs off a machine promptly in the event it is compromised. systemd fails conclusively on both counts. The point, and the end.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

That's called progress. I liked MySpace and didn't like the switch to Facebook. So what?

People switched to Facebook largely because MySpace was crap, nor was it an enforced change. People voted with their feet. How and why are we moving core and very important pieces of software in Linux distributions to systemd again?

There is no catch-22. Gnome is led by RedHat. RedHat is moving in the direction of OpenShift. PaaS vendors want process management i.e. systemd. That's a clear cut chain of dependency.

Good luck to them, but that has no relevance to other Linux distributions or those administering them. Again, this argument of "Red Hat is doing this therefore you have to" holds no water and whenever all else had been exhausted that's what we get. I also wish them luck with the inevitable security problems because they are going to be humdingers even if you had a bunch of maintainers who were extremely responsive to bugs and had a clue what they were doing.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

You mean a developer who finally brought seemless audio switching to Linux bringing it in line with other operating systems from the late 90s?

No, we mean a developer who took an audio system that just about ended up working through the days of OSS and ALSA, broke large parts of it, shrugged his shoulders and said that a lot of kernel drivers that used to work and were now largely unmaintained needed to be 'fixed' rather than maintaining a completely sensible approach of maintaining backwards compatibility. PulseAudio has now only improved since he started turning his attentions elsewhere.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

many administrators of Linux installations do not want any of Poettering's libs installed at all.

Insane.

Not if you understood what that software does or his past history.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

Systemd will forward to syslogd if you want it to so you can still use your standard tools to view the logs if you want.

Not an answer.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

Cue some example of seeing a half flushed log line in a file, as though someone actually got any information from that line.

When a binary logging system fails you lose a hell of a lot more than a line's worth of logs. Or are you just going to keep making yourself look like the idiot you are?

It's becoming rapidly apparent to me that the people who complain no one listens to their complaints about systemd haven't realized they don't listen or attempt to learn about what they're complaining about.

Blah, blah, blah, I will spout crap and try and muddy the waters.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

I agree. Systemd is now about a "2nd kernel" or "userspace plumbing". Essentially a redesign of Linux.

The problem is I don't know what there is for Debian to debate. They don't have the upsteam influence.

The problem is that they have to support it, because the evidence tells us that when the inevitable security problems come calling the 'upstream maintainers' won't be terribly responsive.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

No. Systemd supporters give plenty of technical reasons for their support. In my case (for one thing) it is wanting event based processing of service management. Systemd offers that, sysV rc doesn't. Like it or not, that's a technical reason.

I don't. I'm a sys admin and I don't believe that adding that required a completely new init system that has now morphed into something altogether very, very different that I will have to pick up the pieces on. Sorry, not a valid technical argument but then these things get very tricky for people because they can't actually pin down what systemd is supposed to do.

On the other hand, you anti guys keep bringing up things like this shit, or 'not Unix philosophy'...

I don't know if you brain cells have noticed, but Linux was built by Linus from the kernel on up with a Unix philosophy in mind that has served it very, very well in the server world and the functions it performs. After many decades of that philosophy and the lessons learned from it you would think people would have learned what does and doesn't work, but apparently not.

'monolithic hairball'. Those are not technical arguments.

Given that it's an extremely core piece of software then I'm afraid people are justifiably concerned about a monolithic piece of software with poorly defined goals and requirements that they'll have to end up supporting when its maintainers tell us all a security issue isn't their problem to fix. Sorry, but that very much is a technical argument, as well as one of maintainership. systemd fails on both counts.

Do me a favour, and refrain from answering until you can actually muster a technical argument against systemd.

I find that extremely funny coming from some moron who puts 'Unix philosophy' in quotes and nonchalantly dismisses decades worth of hard, hard lessons learned and quite obviously hasn't the faintest idea about working with a Linux system. But then, that's what we've come to expect isn't it?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Well put, and putting up to te point, what is it doing an uncompleted package as the default in Debian STABLE?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Well, who are you to say there are "right"? The beauty of Linux has always been choice. It is retarded to upgrade my 7.0 servers to 8.0 and be infected stupidity with systemd without needing it.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Are you implying the only point of systemd is being controversial? ;)

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Delicious Pun]

turbidostato, That was a hard pill to swallow. After some thought, I think that you are correct. Some people misunderstand what the open source community is (like I did). It's not like a family, it's more like a dictatorship. That's fine. It is what it is. I'm not angry anymore. In fact, it makes choosing what software to use easier. Technical merits only. Thanks for not being a dick to me. (Not being sarcastic.)

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

but that has no relevance to other Linux distributions or those administering them.

Of course it does. RedHat leads on a lot of products that are upsteam for many of the distributions, in particular Debian. Suse also supports this shift with their products. So yes it is relevant.

Again, this argument of "Red Hat is doing this therefore you have to" holds no water

No one has to do anything. But there are tradeoffs. I was objecting to the "catch-22".

I also wish them luck with the inevitable security problems because they are going to be humdingers even if you had a bunch of maintainers who were extremely responsive to bugs and had a clue what they were doing.

Do you really believe that RedHat doesn't know what they are doing? Do you really find that plausible?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

The problem is that they have to support it, because the evidence tells us that when the inevitable security problems come calling the 'upstream maintainers' won't be terribly responsive.

Systemd is part of RHEL. Debian isn't going to have to worry. RedHat is going to be all over security issues.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[thegarbz]

I do accept it. What I don't except is the notion that the Unix philosophy is fundamentally required as a server admin.

I also really like you using Solaris as an example there given how much systemd has in common with Solaris's init system.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

Well, who are you to say there are "right" [ that a systemd takeover was inevitable]?

A guy whose been in the Linux community for 19 years and Unix before that.

The beauty of Linux has always been choice.

And it will still be about choice. There are going to be non-systemd distributions just like there are all sorts of other specialized distributions.

It is retarded to upgrade my 7.0 servers to 8.0 and be infected stupidity with systemd without needing it.

Then don't upgrade.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Dont be daft. I pinned systemd and upgraded to 8.0 without any problems, which just shows there could be a choice, at least for now. If you do not value the presence of others in Debian, it is your problem too.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Some people misunderstand what the open source community is (like I did). It's not like a family, it's more like a dictatorship."

Yes, a dictatorship of a kind. It's usually known as 'meritocracy' since the one that makes it, it's the one that dictates what's done.

"in fact, it makes choosing what software to use easier. Technical merits only."

Well, then I'd say you didn't get the (full) point. Given the almost unencumbered power the developer gets on the codeline, it does matter who the developer is when you are going to invest into any given program.

As an example, back in the nineties Postfix and QMail were strong contenders in the SMTP arena. Postfix led by Wietse Venema and QMail led by D.J. Bernstein, both of them brilliant people on their own merits. Main difference? Character. While both were (are) hard workers (the only way to make sure where the codeline is going in this environment is to write it yourself at least most of it, remember?) and strongly opinionated, which is good to lead a project, Venema is quite open to criticisms and positive into helping people (that shows to have done his homework) and Bernstein is, well, just strongly opinionated.

When I decided to move out of Sendmail I tried thoroughly both programs and probably QMail was a bit stronger back then but since I expected to invest a lot of my time in that area (which, I did) I still ended up favoriting Postfix (and I still do) because of Venema. Now Postfix is stronger than QMail, which is basically stagnated.

Moral of the story: people matters.

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Delicious Pun]

You make good points. Thanks for your insight.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[gweihir]

;-)

I take it you do not actually need an explanation what happens when you negate an implication.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to rain on your parade, installing gimp does not drag in systemd-sysv (the package that is actually the systemd init) or even the systemd package (which doesn't not actually give you systemd as init unless you manually configure it to do so).

$ aptitude why gimp systemd
p gimp Suggests gvfs-backends
p gvfs-backends Depends gvfs-daemons (= 1.22.1-1)
p gvfs-daemons Depends udisks2
p udisks2 Depends libpam-systemd
i A libpam-systemd Depends systemd (= 215-5+b1)

But then we're used to not letting the facts get in the way of a good rant...

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[mvdwege]

Actually, that was a valid technical argument. You just disagree, but you don't even have the decency to admit it.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Hognoxious]

And frankly most Linux desktop users like systemd.

I suspect that your typical Hipbuntu ponce doesn't even know what it is.

But no doubt you have figures to prove me wrong.

Even if you were right, there are systems other than desktops.

And finally, why make it mandatory? I can't think of a good reason for that, but I can think of two bad ones.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

But because Systemd offers tantalizing APIs to program developers, it can rapidly become that a program update refuse to function unless it has Systemd and its sub-systems running.

Systemd is insidious at its core.

So your argument against systemd is that it is useful.

Interesting.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[CRCulver]

Installing GIMP brings in libsystemd-* packages, which many users do not want, just as they do not want systemd as PID 1.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

Systemd will forward to syslogd if you want it to so you can still use your standard tools to view the logs if you want.

Not an answer.

Why not?

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

I suspect that your typical Hipbuntu ponce doesn't even know what it is.

People like the effects of all sorts of things.

But no doubt you have figures to prove me wrong.

Yes. The strong support for things like queued directories for example.

Even if you were right, there are systems other than desktops.

That's true though you are responding to my comment out of context. The dominant server platforms, PaaS also favor process management and are enthusiastic about how systemd enables it. No one is claiming that systemd is best for all use cases, just that it is far better for many and generally not much worse for all but a few. And thus meets the criteria one would want for a standard.

There are going to need to be distributions that don't have process management, some embedded systems for example can't spare the RAM and thus may be a bad place for systemd. And those should naturally migrate towards non-systemd distributions. There is no reason those distributions can't be child distributions of Debian. What Debian has determined is that Debian itself will not be a non-systemd distribution.

And finally, why make it mandatory? I can't think of a good reason for that, but I can think of two bad ones.

For upstream because built in process management allows applications to perform complicated interactions without having to write their own process managers. Moreover if there is a shared process management framework then applications can cooperate between themselves in an actor framework. As more and more applications utilize systemd features they pick up direct or indirect dependencies on it.

That's like saying "why is libc mandatory"? It isn't. But a lot of applications depend on the standard-C library to accomplish their tasks. Many that don't directly do so indirectly. At a certain point a distribution just considers it part of the base. It certainly is possible to create operating systems that don't need libc to retain "choice" but no one does.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

Of course there could be choice otherwise there wouldn't be a debate. The debate is not whether it is possible to avoid systemd. It will always be possible to avoid systemd. Many distributions do it, and I expect that there will always be some who do. The question is whether the maintainers want to incur the cost, which are going to exponentially increasing in time / effort to make avoiding systemd a practical option for system-admins. And they decided no on that.

There may very well and probably will be ways to get non-systemd to work. It is just become a dependency on more and more software going forward.

As for people leaving Debian. I doubt it. Where are all the anti-systemd people working to break the dependencies in Gnome? Where are all the anti-systemd people in creating a non-systemd version of Arch or Fedora? Why the long discussion about a Debian fork rather than just creating a child distribution and doing it? The anti-systemd party doesn't exist in the sense of being willing to do the work they are asking others to do.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ruir]

Doubt as much as you will. Why create a non-systemd fork when it is easier to migrate to another distro. And I will repeat that, last time I checked servers do not run systemd. If you want to enforce systemd on the desktop side, I really do not care, but leave the decision to myself what to install on my servers.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[jbolden]

And I will repeat that, last time I checked servers do not run systemd.

  In CoreOS, systemd unit files are used not only for system services, but also for running Docker containers.
  https://blog.openshift.com/gea...

etc..

Re: Gnome3, systemd etc.

[turbidostato]

"Without users, all the developer does is mental wanking."

No. It is the users the ones that without developers only can restort to mental wanking.

Developers do move from mental wanking to working software.

And given that they usually scratch their own itch, with developers come users: themselves. Which usually means enough users, since their itch is now scratched. Users without developers can't say that.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ThePhilips]

Because somebody or something has to start the syslogd too.

You naive people do not even grasp how deep that jar or worms, known as the boot process, goes...

Wise men of old wrote it in shell for lots and lots of good reasons.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

Because somebody or something has to start the syslogd too.

What the fuck is the relevance of that? syslogd gets started by magic in sysvinit?

You naive people do not even grasp how deep that jar or worms, known as the boot process, goes...

Wise men of old wrote it in shell for lots and lots of good reasons.

I may be naïve but I've been debugging problems in the sysv boot process since 1994.

Haha, the random quote is:

For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[ThePhilips]

Because somebody or something has to start the syslogd too.

What the fuck is the relevance of that? syslogd gets started by magic in sysvinit?

No.

But as long as your shell doesn't randomly crashes, and one of the first lines in the rcS is something like 'rsyslogd &', and rsyslogd doesn't crash - the syslogd will be definitively and certainly started.

You can call it magic, though, if you want. Because that's not something systemd can guaranteee.

I may be naïve but I've been debugging problems in the sysv boot process since 1994.

Ditto, since 1997. Though, I have to admit, I have spent very little time debugging them: they 99.999% of time it just works. And it also work very well in edge cases like brining up a server from the dead, after catastrophic hardware failure or a simply broken upgrade.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[Eunuchswear]

But as long as your shell doesn't randomly crashes, and one of the first lines in the rcS is something like 'rsyslogd &', and rsyslogd doesn't crash - the syslogd will be definitively and certainly started.

Not on UnixWare. Look in /etc/inet/config

# grep syslog /etc/inet/config
2:/usr/sbin/syslogd::y:/etc/syslog.conf::

(Now look for where that gets interpreted!)

Nor on Linux (Debian Wheezy), look in /etc/init.d/rsyslog. which means init reads:

l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2

from /etc/inittab, and the 256 line shell script /etc/init.d/rc runs the compiled binary /sbin/startpar which eventually runs the 137 line script /etc/init.d/rsyslogd which uses the compiled program /sbin/start-stop-daemon to start rsyslogd.

Or, if you have systemd installed then /lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service says:

[Unit]
Description=System Logging Service
Requires=syslog.socket
Documentation=man:rsyslogd(8)
Documentation=http://www.rsyslog.com/doc/

[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n
StandardOutput=null
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Alias=syslog.service

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

No, it wasn't, but then that's the kind of argument we've come to expect isn't it? 'Yes it was'. There is no technically valid reason to start replacing large and well tested parts of an OS in order to get 'event based processing of service management', which doesn't even mean anything.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

RedHat is going to be all over security issues.

Past history of the maintainers says otherwise.

Re:Gnome3, systemd etc.

[segedunum]

Of course it does. RedHat leads on a lot of products that are upsteam for many of the distributions, in particular Debian. Suse also supports this shift with their products. So yes it is relevant.

PaaS concerns have no relevance to the vast majority of system administrators out there. We require an init system amongst other things that work and where things can be pieced together when things do go wrong. 'Process management' is not a reason for a poorly defined piece of software such as systemd attempting to replace long used and very well tested pieces of software in areas where it has no business being

Do you really believe that RedHat doesn't know what they are doing?

No.

Do you really find that plausible?

Yes. The maintainers of systemd have demonstrated consistently how unresponsive they are in this and other projects.

What is Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of Debian before - is it based on Ubuntu Linux?

Re:What is Debian?

[dotancohen]

I've never heard of Debian before - is it based on Ubuntu Linux?

Debian is destined to be merged into Ubuntu, it seems.

Re:What is Debian?

[thegarbz]

I've never heard of Debian before - is it based on Ubuntu Linux?

Yep, Ubuntu makes a move and they adopt it.

How did the Constitution Fail?

[Dr. Evil]

This can be a warning for other groups.

The Debian constitution looks like nothing more than normal club bureaucracy. Without it, I would expect Debian wouldn't have survived as long as it has.

https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

Without specific concerns about such a constitution, I'm inclined to not make much of this. People change, projects change, people leave, people join. It doesn't matter how vital the participant, things change.

This is the only hint of what's wrong, I don't see how it has anything to do with the existence of a constitution: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/11/msg00196.html

No offense to anyone involved... I'm more interested in learning what's wrong with the constitution so that I can avoid similar problems in my own clubs.

Re:How did the Constitution Fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a relatively uninformed opinion, but I think it is political-esq structures just evolving into their natural form.

As soon as you start having a board of directors and bi-laws and votes and such, you head down that road. This kind of behaviour is enticing to some people by itself, who naturally want to make it more formalized, and eventually you wind up with a model train club which is more heavily managed and has a more impressive org chart than many businesses.

Debian _loves_ its resolutions and committees and votes and "seconding" stuff and all that, and the community seems to have attracted a fair bit of politics. It's only fair that it would eventually become very political, and eventually people would get pissed off about that.

As to how to avoid it, somehow keeping perspective and reigning in the politics and politicians seems to be the best approach. Establishing early on that governance will be as minimal as possible is a good idea, and has actually worked for some clubs I've been involved with.

Re:How did the Constitution Fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

The longest lived linux distribution has no constitution. It's based on the idea of making sure it works well for the leader of the project. Surprisingly, Slackware is gaining, not losing, users due to this.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Patrick Volkerding seems to prefer something other than systemd.

Re:How did the Constitution Fail?

[gurnec]

What are the options, then?

1. 1. A small handful of individuals who manage to work things out in an amicable way amongst themselves.
2. 2. A project headed by a benevolent dictator for life (e.g. Slackware).
3. 3. A governance model that is not dependent on a BDFL, and can scale better than "a small handful of individuals".

Even though option 2 works well for some projects, it's not always ideal. This doesn't seem to be a problem with a simple solution (and it probably doesn't help that not many techies are great at politics).

Re:How did the Constitution Fail?

[swillden]

Indeed, soon they will be petrified. Perhaps even naked.

Other way around, I think. If you got a bowl of steaming hot grits dumped down your pants, wouldn't your next action be to remove them? Petrification would come later.

Re:How did the Constitution Fail?

[gbjbaanb]

no, option 2 only works if the dictator is benevolent - if not, then other options should be chosen.

Turns out the worst option is democracy, but its also the best compared to all the others.

Personally, I like the checks and balances of several people who have power over each other in a circle - like a chairman 'owns' the chief executive but otherwise has no power, the ceo 'owns' the product direction, and introduce a third (the users?) who have control over who gets to be chairman. Between them, they are always in fear of losing their job unless they keep the other group happy... hmm, maybe I just think fear is the best and only way to keep the people in charge honest :-)

Yep

[Wizy]

Thanks systemd.

Re:Yep

[grcumb]

Thanks systemd.

BINGO. In spite of Joey being on the 'winning' side of the systemd debate, his resignation seems to be a direct reaction to the schism that systemd has driven into the linux community. As someone far brighter than me said:

the systemd debate is rarely a technical argument for either side, instead it is an ideological and cultural war waged by two opposing demographics that inhabit the same general sphere of Linux and FOSS. This isn’t about technical merits, it’s about politics.

Read the whole piece. It's one of the best round-ups of the state of the debate.

(And by 'debate', I mean 'debacle' of course.)

Re:Yep

[thrillseeker]

... and the winner writes in the history books that their way was the better technical choice.

Re:Yep

[walterbyrd]

IMO: the article is wrong. Many of the reason that systemd is hated are technical. And those technical reasons have expressed, and then ignored, many times.

Re:Yep

[walshy007]

You do realize that not all problems are the same.. right?

And that to different problems, the different properties of different choices can have varying suitability to that task.

tl;dr. systemd is not some omniscient "I will solve every problem" solution. There will be times where it is less suitable than a different option. People who recognize this don't want to have to throw the baby out with the bath water (from dependencies in other software that aren't really necessary) when choosing to use a more suited option to their task.

The anti-systemd integration people seem to still want to be able to choose the best tool for the task, not be forced along a certain path without necessity. Systemd may have plenty of good uses, but to assume it is the best tool for the task no matter the task is just folley.

I think this whole thing would be a non-issue if you could swap out systemd with another system and still have everything function easily.

The pro systemd people seem to never realize that other people may have differing requirements than they do, and dismiss anyone who does as making "a technically inferior choice". I find it very presumptuous to assume that you know every detail of someone elses criteria for a task you've never heard of.

Re:Yep

[Electricity Likes Me]

IMO: the article is wrong. Many of the reason that systemd is hated are technical. And those technical reasons have expressed, and then ignored, many times.

Name 1 that isn't something about binary logs.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly complex for an init system, violates tried-and-true modularity (it doesn't matter if systemd is 70 pieces when they all expect and require each other), lack of portability to other systems like the BSDs and illumos, concerns around the usage of PID 1, tying desktop environments (and even CD-burning software) to the init system removing any choice from users in their init systems, and ... oh, you said name "1". Sorry.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it seems that the pro-systemd camp is waging an ideological war. One where everybody who disagrees is painted as a technologically backward Neanderthal.

Any issues brought up are dismissed as being non-technical ideology. You do realise that having a modular framework where modules are indeed interchangeable is a technical issue. It seems that the systemd devs are only focused on nitpicking (complaining about 16 additional bytes used on an IP addres in binary vs text logs) and making things more 'efficient', but at the expense of being modular.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If systemd was a drop-in replacement for init and I could remove systemd without affecting any other subsystems, you would not get the resistance you're getting now.

Re:Yep

[gweihir]

I have read it. I disagree with it. For me it is a purely technical issue, the politics only comes in when I see that some people try very hard to make everyone use this thing which I do not want to use for technical reasons.

Re:Yep

[gweihir]

No need. If you were truly interested, you would very easily be able to find a lot of them. You are obviously not interested. Stop pretending.

Re:Yep

[gweihir]

It is fascinating how the systemd fanbois never seen to have heard any of the technical reasons against it, when they _must_ have heard them all by now. My guess is that they are directly lying and this is simply a well-known manipulation technique employed whole-sale. It does fit the propaganda that systemd comes with.

Re:Yep

[Electricity Likes Me]

This list isn't a technical complaint, it's a bullet point list which provides no information on what the actual problem is supposed to be.

"overly complex" is a subjective term. Compared to...what exactly? init scripts aren't simple, and they're modular seeing as how daemon dependencies are a real thing. And I'm curious exactly which 70 pieces of systemd can't live without each other, because I genuinely don't know. I do know that it can't be all of them, since I run systemd and don't use the dhcp, network or cron replacements. So, logind maybe? Journalctl is kind of indispensable, but so is syslog on anything else.

Same issue with PID 1. What concerns? What is in PID 1 that is a problem? Why shouldn't it be there? Because the amount of functionality people keep implying is there (the aforementioned 70 daemons) distinctly are not. Whereas, having my init process be cgroups aware and able to use that functionality to provide isolation seems like a pretty good idea to me, seeing as how solid jailing support is sorely missing from Linux.

I'm happy to concede the lib dependencies are an issue. I don't know enough about the underlying plumbing concerns to know if it's avoidable, or who should be blamed - i.e. a lot of systemd is actually a Gnome pull in, which then just flows on to Gnome apps. Which would make it a Gnome problem, more then anything else.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure FUD. Joey fucking supports systemd, you clown!

Re:Yep

[jbolden]

I think this whole thing would be a non-issue if you could swap out systemd with another system and still have everything function easily.

That's like saying the whole thing would be a non-issue if you could swap out libc with an entirely different structure and still have everything function easily.

Systemd provides lots and ever increasing functionality. It is not just some small component but a core part of the architecture.

Re:Yep

[thegarbz]

Overly complex for an init system,.

Depends. By the time you add the many other helper programs onto sysvinit to achieve parallel startup, system monitoring and reduced duplication in init scripts systemd is far simpler.

violates tried-and-true modularity (it doesn't matter if systemd is 70 pieces when they all expect and require each other)

There's only 3 components which rely on each other. The rest are optional.

lack of portability to other systems like the BSDs and illumos

No one has raised this as an issue, and based on the response people have given I think many people see this as an advantage for BSD.

concerns around the usage of PID 1

Interested to hear your technical solution of where else to put an init system? Maybe make it a graphical application and start your init system after the user logs in? Yes I like this. I think we should try and design an init system which doesn't do any of the init part.

tying desktop environments (and even CD-burning software) to the init system

Systemd doesn't do any of that. You must be complaining about gnome developers.

oh, you said name "1". Sorry.

Yep still waiting to hear one. Haven't heard one yet.

Re:Yep

[devent]

I think this whole thing would be a non-issue if you could swap out systemd with another system and still have everything function easily.

There was no complains with sysvinit in the same regard. People just used sysvinit because it was the default one and nobody complained "but I want to replace sysvinit with xxxx and still have everything function easily".

Now the default one is systemd, who cares. And if developers of upstream projects like Gnome find systemd so helpful that they use systemd's features and thus Gnome can't be used anymore with some inferior system, well, that is called progress. The replacement systems must then keep up and offer similar features.

Linux should go always with the technically superior, and always went with that in the past. That is the main reasons I like open source and Linux, there is no politics but only the technically superior wins. Linus build a monolithic kernel because it is technically superior, Xfree was replaced with Xorg, and will be replaced with Wayland. The sound stack was replaced with PulseAudio. And so on.

Re:Yep

[beaverdownunder]

While you may think of your examples as 'advancements', many people (myself included) do not.

Your examples also do not affect the way a headless server boots. systemd does. And not in a good way.

Re:Yep

[devent]

Well, many people disagree with you. That's life.

Re:Yep

[Hognoxious]

One side accuses the other of waging an "ideological and cultural war", while claiming to have made their decision on technical terms.

FTFY.

Re:Yep

[grcumb]

IMO: the article is wrong. Many of the reason that systemd is hated are technical. And those technical reasons have expressed, and then ignored, many times.

I think you misunderstand. The technical arguments are real; of that there's no doubt. But the reason this particular issue could not be resolved entirely in the technical arena is because of the nature of the change. Poettering and his ilk are expressing a fundamentally different vision for Linux through the design and implementation of systemd. In its essence, systemd is kind of an anti-POSIX. It is premised on the primacy of Linux, it espouses a holistic (as opposed to piecemeal) approach, and while it's liberal about third party libs and utilities playing in its sandbox, it shits in everyone else's.

An example: If their version of libpam detects that it's NOT running in a systemd context, it does nothing and simply returns a success token, which is probably the least obnoxious thing to do, but which still could cause some significant issues, depending on the circumstances. The obvious alternatives of integrating more generic behaviour into the library, or using someone else's, just don't pass muster with Team SystemD, because that's pretty much the opposite of what they believe to be important.

So although the conflict is playing itself out tactically on the technical level, this really is a schism between two significantly different FOSS philosophies.

Re:Yep

[grcumb]

I think this whole thing would be a non-issue if you could swap out systemd with another system and still have everything function easily.

There was no complains with sysvinit in the same regard. People just used sysvinit because it was the default one and nobody complained "but I want to replace sysvinit with xxxx and still have everything function easily".

It's pretty astounding, really, that you could feel so comfortable stating the exact opposite of the truth.

If you had actually paused long enough to RTFA, you would have found that people have been complaining about sysvinit - and writing their own supplements and drop-in alternatives - pretty much for as long as it's existed.

You've fallen exactly and precisely into the hole that the article warns systemd supporters are most likely to fall into.

I'm not suggesting this as evidence that systemd opponents are right. I am suggesting that systemd supporters, in spite of their protestations of open-mindedness and good intentions, are consistently, persistently wrong about the reasons why things are the way they are in the Linux world. They would never have invented and implemented systemd in the way they have if they weren't bull-headedly insistent on ignoring history.

... Which explains, of course, why you couldn't even be arsed to read the fucking article.

Re:Yep

[devent]

You missed the point completely. The point is that people complaining that Debian changed the default init system and that there is currently a GR to make it mandatory for upstream developers to make sure their packages run at least systemd plus something else. Which means that the upstream devs have to work to support something they don't have any interest in doing so. At that only because some complain that they should be able to replace systemd for whatever reason. That is akin to demanding that upstream devs must make sure that their packages compile with gcc + something else, or that their software must run with Linux+ something else, because some want to replace the Linux kernel.

I did not wrote that some people replaced sysvinit, or patched it or whatever. The current issue is the GR and the decision of the TC.

See for example
https://lists.debian.org/debia...

Yet nobody has proposed a
GR forcing support for kFreeBSD or the Hurd; the people working on them
have simply *done the work*, and in some cases successfully convinced
others to do the same.

(And analogously, non-Linux kernels such as FreeBSD often have
substantial shim layers providing Linux APIs for the purposes of porting
software.)

Re:Yep

[devent]

Only one side pushes ideological arguments like "systemd is not the UNIX way" or "systemd is pushed by Pottering on users" or idiotic arguments like "PID 1 should not be complicated like systemd"

Re:Yep

[devent]

Ok.

Re:Yep

[grcumb]

You missed the point completely.

I missed part of the point, yes. But...

The point is that people complaining that Debian changed the default init system and that there is currently a GR to make it mandatory for upstream developers to make sure their packages run at least systemd plus something else.

Which is kind of a sour grapes reaction to the fact that systemd is a pretty much of an all-or-nothing proposal. Back in the day, I worked on a distro that was based on RedHat, but which used DJB's service management system in order to handle the status of a couple of particularly bedeviling services. It wasn't pretty, so I have sympathy both with sysadmins who don't want to see things change utterly, and with systemd devs who don't want to have to try to shim service management onto the existing pile of cruft.

But....

People just used sysvinit because it was the default one....

They did not. They bitched and moaned and wrote their own alternatives.

... and nobody complained "but I want to replace sysvinit with xxxx and still have everything function easily".

They did, actually, if only implicitly. This is why none of the would-be replacements ever really took off. People do want any sysvinit replacement to be more or less transparent. And their expectation has yet to be met. You can argue the merits of systemd, you can claim that it's worth the pain, but you cannot with a straight face ignore a lot of history that led to the place we are today.

It's been tacitly understood that when introducing an incompatible system, you're swimming against a very strong tide. The refusal of both camps to achieve a workable compromise is a problem of mutually incompatible visions. The willingness of both sides to impute irrationality on the opposite camp without pausing to reflect on their own stance is a primary source of the continuing rancour.

Re:Yep

[ruir]

You can be pushed it the term. I just upgraded a couple of servers with sysinit, forgot to pin systemd to -1 in one, and it sysinit was replaced with systemd without any warning.

Re:Yep

[devent]

If I understand you correctly, you upgraded from Debian Wheezy to Jessie (which isn't even released yet) on a server and wondered why a bunch of stuff have changed? Or are you running unstable or testing on a server? So, your point is that you are a noob that shouldn't administer servers.

Re:Yep

[devent]

The refusal of both camps to achieve a workable compromise is a problem of mutually incompatible visions

That is why there is systemd-shim

Re:Yep

[ruir]

So I am not entliled to have production and testing networks? Do you really make an effort to be an idiot or you dont need to?

Re:Yep

[devent]

You complained that after upgrading your systems replaced sysvinit with systemd. If it's only on a testing network, who cares. Also, shame on you for not reading the news regarding Jessie. Like it's not all open and announced that systemd will be the new default init system.

Re:What does he mean?

[dotancohen]

What does he specifically mean?

He means that Debian, like many other FOSS projects, needs Giving Trees to drain.

Joey was one such tree, and all that is left now is a stump. Others are at various stages of being just a trunk, or perhaps having a few branches left. The Giving Trees are being chopped down faster than they are being planted.

Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I've spent way too much time over the past month reading threads on the developers' list related to Joey's proposed vote. Basically, he was advocating a policy which stated that no package shall be dependent upon one particular init system, the situation which has been in place all along. Unfortunately, what it's really come down to is total commitment to systemd or not, not only for Debian but essentially for the Linux community in general. There are many developers who are modifying packages to totally depend upon systemd and its ever expanding list of services, and they have made it clear that they will not consider alternatives. What's become equally clear to me is that the developers in general, and the systemd proponents in particular, are completely unconcerned about the impact upon the user community, the server segment which has almost no concern for improvements such as reduced boot time, or pretty much anything outside of the development community.

    Perhaps in the long run this will all work out, but as a long-time (17 years) Debian user and longer-time (30 years) UNIX guy, I'm very skeptical. Too many things being aggregated into a single system, too many dependencies upon large packages which are almost certain to prove susceptible to security and reliability defects, and a lead developer with a poor track record, monstrous ego and an alienating personality. At this point, it seems that a fork of Debian is almost inevitable, though that effort appears to me to be more likely to simply dilute the overall effort than bring any resolution.

    What's perhaps most frustrating to me is that systemd is but one of several changes to the ecosystem which are being made with little regard for the consequences. We've seen how well the Gnome3 desktop has been received by the user community, with essentially no concern from the developers. The loss of a desktop manager is an inconvenience, however there are many applications based upon GTK which are essentials, and these are being adversely affected. Another turn in the wrong direction, in my opinion, is Wayland, which breaks many highly useful (to users) capabilities provided by X11. I'd be OK if Wayland continues to be an alternative to X11, however I suspect that, like systemd, it will become an avalanche once Red Hat and any other major distribution adopts it as a default.

    As I wrote above, perhaps in the long run it will all be good, and the consequences of people like Joey Hess departing will not be detrimental. We shall see.

    -- MC --

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[ruir]

I have been using Debian since 1996, and *BSD occasionally. Now I am waiting for Monday and FreeBSD 10.1. Will be testing it in the next months. I do not want to reach Debian 9 and having systemd shoved down my throat. Had the unpleasant experience of having to pin systemd to -1 to not having it installed by default when updating a couple of Debian servers to Jessie.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[raxx7]

Joey Hess did not propose such a vote, Ian Jackson did.
In fact, Joey Hess endorsed an alternative which basically states "we need no stinking GR".
https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#amendmentproposerc

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Burz]

As a (primarily desktop) Linux user since 1998, the unfolding of this debacle is starting to look like an example of why Linux distros in general lack appeal in the desktop space. Desktop/laptop users can't 'make do' with server architecture; there isn't enough veritcal integration of the powerful features we need. When layers represented by systemd and wayland must be considered swappable, the more talented users turn off to the possiblity of building stable user-facing applications on that platform.

One bit of advice is, don't be such primadonnas. Like the laptop users, you'll have to explain to the world which workflows and features are getting broken by these recent changes. OTOH, if all that's getting 'broken' is your philosophy then you might want to take a step back and consider that a better (if larger) one may have replaced it.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[0100010001010011]

Is there a good *BSD that has figured out binary package management yet?

Not that I don't love being able to compile everything from scratch but I've stuck with debian for so long because apt-get "just works".

I think in 8 years of use I've had a handful of issues with it (or aptitude/dpkg) where as I've had many more with Windows dependencies.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[udippel]

Why AC? I would have liked to know who is behind such thoughtful lines.
And I have no mod points to make myself heard through your words.
Yours is an insightful and fully seconded message; since what we have been advocating from the early years of GNU onwards, was first and foremost freedom; and secondly modular architectures.
I have been teaching this to my students throughout the years, and I have poked fun at the 42 levels of dependencies gobbled together in Redmond. Today I'd blush if any of my students ever came back asking about freedom and modularity. When an oversized init is needed, this and none else, to use a drawing application. Good Lord! What has the early spawning of services to make with late applications!?!? And worse: There is zero - nil alternative as drop in. Welcome to the software Redmond V2.0! Okay, it is not from Redmond, but is intoxicated with its spirit.
The sad part is not, that it is; but that a bunch of people seemingly went crazy about this rotten philosophy. Like 'All your code are belong to us - because you can't run it without us!'. That's what I have been fighting for the last twenty years of my life: Applications not running on Linux as excuse to not run Linux. Now, in my graying years, applications don't run on Linux because of Linux. Do I need to carry on by drawing the next parallel, the one between DRM and systemd and Wayland?

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[geminidomino]

I asked a similar question a few weeks back. It seems that FreeBSD's "pkg-ng" still has a few rough edges but is coming along pretty nicely.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[shutdown -p now]

I've set up FreeBSD on a laptop to try it out, and was pleasantly surprised at the current state of affairs, compared to both Linux, and where FreeBSD itself was several years ago. Binary package management makes perfect sense now, and if you want to tweak stuff or install bleeding edge software, ports are also easier to use. Sound just works (granted, it always did in BSD-land, compared to Linux), and so does wireless. And rc.conf is still by far the easiest way to manage system configuration, at least for a single-user desktop.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[steveha]

Another turn in the wrong direction, in my opinion, is Wayland, which breaks many highly useful (to users) capabilities provided by X11.

If Keith Packard thinks Wayland is a good idea, I'm inclined to trust him. And, he does.

Perhaps you don't fully understand what Wayland is or why the senior X11 developers think it is a good idea. Please read through this and see if it changes your mind:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=x_wayland_situation&num=1

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you around for the upstart vs systemd debate? No? Not your cup-o-tea? Well you missed the boat.

For one thing, Apple and Ubuntu both have shown that better runtime management IS necessary and it works. This journey began with OS X getting launchd. Laptops and desktops must have robust integration between power-management and streamlined loading of code, for instance. We need reliable and fast boot, sleep, wake, etc. Systems must respond to events on more than a superficial level.

Vertical intergration isn't "vendor lock-in". That's ridiculous. It does, however, expand the definition of what the minimal system installation is. That's just too bad. YOU convince the rest of US that Debian should drop desktops and laptops as targets just so tinkerers don't have to think of clever ways to go back to sysv init.

BTW, I've have quite a lot of scripts become useless over the years because /sys, /proc and /dev interfaces keep changing. Multiple versions of libraries have to be kept around in most repositories. User interfaces don't just change, they are ritually shat upon to keep the neckbeards from getting nervous. So I think your tautology about modularity enforcing stability is false, at least it is when the culture is geared toward geeks trying to find ways to set themselves apart from the crowd... poppin wheelies for their friends and to hell with conforming to any of 'lusers' expectations.

As for X11, it can die a peaceful death. Its network transparency features are actually inferior to what's available under Windows and OS X (going on 15 years now). I want an efficient way to share my windows or screens in a teleconference (no, VNC is not efficient). This is an important use case for PC users, but the X11 project doesn't know what use cases are. Mir and Wayland will be more interface centric (counter to your assumption) and less protocol centric than X11.

Lastly, I'll point you in the direction of Canonical. Find any other distro with comparable app development guides, SDK and API documentation, and (not least) HCL. Want to find a nice system to run Fedora (gag)? Go to the Ubuntu HCL! Actually (re-)tested whole systems. Don't waste your time on Fedora or Redhat (or Debian) sites. Canonical are the only ones left among Linux distros who are trying to walk the walk of a true PC platform. I mention all this to indicate that Ubuntu may have become more important to Debian (and many others) than you realize.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Burz]

I see... No 'large infrastructure' projects within the hive.

Read these Linus quotes: http://linux.slashdot.org/stor...

He is absolutely correct.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Yaztromo]

At this point, it seems that a fork of Debian is almost inevitable, though that effort appears to me to be more likely to simply dilute the overall effort than bring any resolution.

I'm pretty sure Debian is already the most-forked Linux distort out there. Wikipedia lists 117 distros (on my count) based on Debian.

Yaz

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[ruir]

The point is getting out of Debian ;)

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[ruir]

Granted, the greatest advantage of Debian is the excellent package management. But it is not an advantage when it works against our wishes i.e. installing a framework we do not want.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[ruir]

The biggest advantage of Unix/Linux has always been *choice*. As far as I knows, Debian has had stable versions for 20 years without systemd.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[ruir]

And I forgot, desktop and servers are not the same. Install all the shit you want on your desktops, but leave the servers alone. The point is the servers is to have a minimalist approach.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[jbolden]

Joey Hess was pro-systemd. Your entire article is wrong.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[ruir]

My concerns are not the desktop support and sound, is having servers with unnecessary shit installed.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Eunuchswear]

Why AC? I would have liked to know who is behind such thoughtful lines.

He's posting AC because he's a liar, misrepresenting what Joey Hess's position by 180 degrees.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Eunuchswear]

Why?

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[juanfgs]

, the more talented users turn off to the possiblity of building stable user-facing applications on that platform.

You mean the more vocal slashdot commenters. I don't see developers running away en masse from Red Hat, Canonical or any real development projects.

The anti systemd grup is the linux hipster "my distro is harder than yours" types that has plagued LUGs, IRCs and Mailing Lists from the beginning. It's hardly the majority of developers

They are just a loud bunch, Linux will move forward steadily as it always has. If SystemD is a failure as they said, probably will be replaced in the future by a better thing.

Re:Unfortunate, but not surprising

[juanfgs]

Progressives (feminists and faggots) started using linux, that's what happened.

Pro-choice hillbilies? the world really has gone mad

Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care what skill you may or may not have, all developers are the same: Random and often wrong.

I say this as a developer myself for 30+ years. We are esoteric, egotistical, opinionated, and often, very often, wrong when it comes to the overall picture, prediction of future trends, and proper leadership. This is why I always try to seek out leaders that can guide my skill to success. I know for a fact that I suck at understanding the high-level world.

Re:Whatever

[organgtool]

Please speak for yourself. We developers are often horrible at recognizing what users want, but we are often excellent at recognizing poorly engineered software and systemd reeks of poor engineering. I'm all for tighter integration of components in the operating system so long as they make sense, but systemd tightly couples all kinds of components that should be optional and, in general, pisses all over basic engineering principles such as KISS. I started out very neutral in the systemd debate, but the more I learn about how it is implemented, the more I understand why there are so many people who vehemently oppose it.

I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[ruir]

updated to jessie and installed systemd by default, had to roll back VM and pin systemd. Fuck Debian.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[CRCulver]

Virtually all your Slashdot comments are in defense of systemd. Could you please disclose your relationship to the the project?

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[devent]

I have no relationship. Just using happy Fedora 20 with systemd. I just want to hear a genuine error of systemd.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Anonymous Coward]

You are paranoid and delusional.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Anonymous Coward]

actually it's about ethics in *NIX init systems.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut down your machine. Now mount /var/log on a machine running Fedora 18. Now tail -50 /var/log/* to find out why your first machine won't boot.
When you've done that, you can speak again.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[csirac]

For me, it's keyscript in crypttab which completely stopped my systems from booting. They're not keen to ever implement becase apparently shell scripts are intrinsically racy (for what it's worth my own keyscripts have a 10s timeout and fall-back to askpass if the crpyt token doesn't become available. I've never had one of my servers reach this time-out, the hardware config rarely ever changes). I wrote about some of the infinite permutations possible to support the use-case of just having a 4-line shell script, but it just seems that systemd is religiously opposed to shell scripts. Eventually, someone pointed out that I could pass keyscript args in the kernel boot parameters which seems to be a partially satisfactory solution for now.

For what it's worth, I do like the declarative nature of systemd for starting processes, socket activation etc. and I have migrated most of my stuff to systemd. It bothers me that debugging dependency issues is still so hard (ever tried "systemd-analyze dot"? the output is completely worthless as a debugging aid). Still, I am uneasy about the dogmatic anti-shellscript religion, I worry about the project's overall approach to security when simply accidentally running systemctl as a non-root user causes it to segfault, and it doesn't seem right that a change in pid1 should even remotely impact userland applications at all, let alone as deeply as systemd has.

At the end of the day, choice of default init system isn't going to make me switch from my favourite distro of the last 14 years (apart from a 2 year excursion to Ubuntu), but I think some of my own hostility toward systemd has been a result of the instantly dismissive remarks whenever I've tried to explain a problem I've had with it - by now I'm realizing that perhaps everybody is just too tired to tell the difference between a valid systemd complaint and yet another "get off my lawn" argument. In any case it's made me realize I should really diversify my tastes a little, currently playing with FreeBSD (again) and NixOS - that has to be a good thing.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Anonymous Coward]

An update installed systemd on a few of my systems running Debian Jessie (testing).

One of these systems had an issue that needed a manual fsck to boot. The OS dropped into single user mode, with rootfs mounted RO, and a root login. All good... except, when I put in the root pword, then tried to run fsck (no echo of what I typed since systemd's logind did not reset the terminal after login), I got bad command, and a new login prompt. I tried a few times, then typed reset. I got *super* lucky, and the reset worked. Super lucky because the first character or two or three (but mostly just one), was being eaten on everything I typed. I played with this a while, and sometimes what was echoed back was not what I had recently typed. Once, it was the root password with some garbage pre-pended that was echoed back (hmmmm.... apparently some ready buffer exploit issues in systemd's logind).

I wanted to see if this was a one-off, so I rebooted, and same issue. This time, I typed commands with an extra character prepended to them at the root password prompt. They were executed as root. Awesome! Don't even need to waste the effort to exploit the poor buffer handling in logind.

So, now I ran ffsck /dev/mapper (when prompted for the root pword).... and fixed my host. Then I did a apt-get install sysvinit-core, which replaced systemd with something that had been working just fine.

But, now my system took *forever* to startup. Systemd pulled in udev under its life the universe and everything umbrella, and apparently are hostile to other inits, since now, udev hangs waiting for dev to populate *forever*. Duplicated this on several hosts, physical and VMs.

Oh, and now my unprivileged containers no longer work. Apparently systemd f'd with cgroups too. Fuck!

So, I install systemd back on one system to see if I can get unprivileged containers to work again. Nope. They are broken now. But also, when I wanted to force an fsck on the system, and ran fsck -rF now, I got an error back. Yes, systemd fucked up reboots. You can't ask for an fsck anymore. Wondered if it was just systemd. Tried on one of the hosts with sysvinit-core, and sure enough shutdown -rF now works fine there. It is just more fucking systemd breakage.

Now, I am annoyed this crap affected me at all, but I could forgive pretty easily, if apt-get install sysvinit-core actually brought things back to the previous, working, state. But, no. Systemd fucks up everything else, so even purging that crapfest from my systems does not bring back a working system because everything else was fucked up to accommodate that royal piece of shit.

So, you are a fan, huh? No explaining taste.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[jbolden]

and it doesn't seem right that a change in pid1 should even remotely impact userland applications at all, let alone as deeply as systemd has.

I think part of the problem is the anti-systemd people keep saying that systemd is about init. Think of systemd as a process manager not an init system. One of the states that needs to be managed is initialization but that is just one of the many types of process management it does. userland applications use process manager.

That being said I think diversity will be good. I hope the Debian non-systemd fork exists then everyone can stop freaking out.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Eunuchswear]

Woooosh.

Your "Euro/Brit dry/dark humour" appears to be offline.

(Brit humour is, per pterry, mostly fart jokes).

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Eunuchswear]

That being said I think diversity will be good. I hope the Debian non-systemd fork exists then everyone can stop freaking out.

The Debian non-systemd fork is called Debian. systemd is the default. It, unlike sysvinit used to be, is not marked "essential"

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Eunuchswear]

Whats the bug report number?

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[ruir]

nah, I just put the tag there as a warning to see if I had less idiots with half a brain like you commenting on obvious sarcastic comments.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[jbolden]

The people are objecting to package dependencies. And there are some of those creeping in for Jessie more than anticipated which is part of the upset. Moreover as upsteam is adding dependencies that number is going to increase rapidly.

I'm pro-systemd but let's not pretend that the chains of dependencies aren't present.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[devent]

So, your issue is that systemd does not support a feature you relied on. That is a valid complain, but hardly limited to systemd. Even the Linux kernel throws out old drivers and changes the kernel APIs from time to time, and userland applications change their features much more frequently.

The original topic was "updated to jessie and installed systemd by default, had to roll back VM and pin systemd. Fuck Debian."
If ruir had a substantial argument like you have, I wouldn't have replied at all, but modded +1 informative.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Eunuchswear]

You made a "serious" (if stupid) reply to a joke comment.

Woosh.

(You run gimp on 200-500Mb servers? Brave man).

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[CRCulver]

Damn, son. It would be bad enough were you someone involved with systemd that has come on Slashdot to shill for it. It is sadder still if you are someone with no involvement with the project who has simply latched onto systemd as a consuming idée fixe.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[Eunuchswear]

The people are objecting to package dependencies.

Some people are complaining about dependancies on systemd-libs, claiming that merely having Poetterings code on their hard disk will somehow cause them problems.

If upstream make their package depend on systemd then either that dependancy isn't needed, in which case just remove it, or is needed for some feature, in which case the user would have to install systemd whether it was the default or not.

Or the people who don't want systemd could implement the same feature in sysvinit or upstart.

Joey Hess was working with other Debian developpers to do this, and has quit the project because of what he sees as the toxic behaviour of the people who insist on making this a political decision, imposed by non-developpers, rather than a technical one.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[CRCulver]

Fine if you think that way about systemd, but you don't think it's creepy that systemd is the only thing you post on Slashdot about? This site features submissions on a variety of topics every day. There's more to life out there than systemd.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[devent]

I'm interested in Linux, and the other topics don't interest me so much.
And I was reading the emails on debian-voting about the TC, and the GR proposed by Ian.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[jbolden]

If upstream make their package depend on systemd then either that dependancy isn't needed, in which case just remove it, or is needed for some feature, in which case the user would have to install systemd whether it was the default or not.

What they asking for (or let's say with Ian is pushing for) is for Debian package maintainers to try and remove these dependencies. For example Brasero uses systemd to detect when a CD/DVD is inserted. In theory Debian could just remove that functionality and use another daemon or change the way Brasero works. Where that is not possible eliminate the package. Do I agree with Ian, no. But that's what he wants.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[juanfgs]

And what problems did you had?

He almost became mainstream.

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[ruir]

Congratulations CRCulver, you have detected a burner account. Someone who created an account to burn karma. If I were a slashdot admin, I would cross logs and kill all the accounts related to this one using the same IP address. (I know there are technical limitations to this solution, yep, please try to answer to what I am implying, and lets not get lost in the smartass technical details).

Re:I will be changing to FreeBSD too

[WuphonsReach]

There's definitely going to be some teething pains. Which is why I'm not rolling out anything production on RHEL7 until 7.2 or 7.3 comes out next year.

But I am looking forward to having (1) log file to dig through instead of two dozen or more. And being able to easily pull that to a centralized log server (and pull is more secure then push). I'm also looking forward to not having to write monit / nagios scripts to restart services if other services restart.

Re:translation

[ruir]

It is not about systemd really, it is about they forcing systemd down our throats, which is quite a different thing. The power of Unix/Linux/Debian has always been about choice.

Um,

[mrflash818]

Um, !

Unfortunate, but not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You outlined your scepticism, thought processes, and the "general concern" standpoint that is so often lost in political vs. technical (or "politechnical") battles involving the "monolithic systemd" approach and I share your sentiments completely. Maybe that's because, like you, I'm an "oldish UNIX guy" (1990 and counting), and a lot of us have been around long enough to see the negative effects of "change for the sake of change" (which, in my opinion, systemd suffers greatly from); a lot of software today suffers from that driving force, so I shouldn't exclusively pick on systemd.

The author of uselessd said "many of the more technically competent people with views critical of systemd have been rather quiet in public, for some reason". The reason is that most of us in those positions do not have the time, energy, or interest to partake in long-winded uphill battles when our jobs, responsibilities, and lives tend to already be inundated with energy-depleting tasks; the last thing we need is to voluntarily enter into a near-religious debacle when we could just switch distros or flavours (e.g. Linux vs. BSD) and continue to do what we've done for a long time (and continue to do it well). Thus, our scepticism is justified -- we are not "against" change, we just don't make hasty decisions.

Good Bye, Joey, and it is a pity!

[udippel]

Being too busy to try to figure out what Joey had in mind, I sympathise with him. Had to do with him some moment in time, with some bug/feature, and he was most helpful; and he came across as someone who'd live and die for Debian.
If he was with systemd or against it; to me the difference is nihil.

I do in a number of projects see the seniors leave, abandon, and being replaced by kids from another generation; with sometimes almost opposite ideas, motivations, and approaches. We, the old, (formerly, at least) long-bearded, left-leaning, nerds of the earlier years are on the way out. No tears, we have been able to set down a foot, or only a grain of sand (in my case); and the youngsters have to carry on, have to shoulder what it takes.
That I am not always very content with what goes on, stands on another page. It probably has to make with age, too.

Re:Good Bye, Joey, and it is a pity!

[csirac]

Though I never was aware of him before, I do use debhelper all the time. It's a shame it's come to this. For what it's worth, my impression is that he sees the recent GR proposal two weeks from jessie freeze as being the last straw for him in a long line of suffering from administrative/bureaucratic interference with getting real work done (don't know if he "liked" systemd, but it seems he wants the Debian project to stop wasting energy on debating it endlessly, especially given that endless debates were apparently already had last year).

Re:What does he mean?

[the_B0fh]

Unfortunately, systemd has become mandatory because of Gnome. Since Debian is based on Gnome - guess what, systemd is now default, and because of the way systemd is written, it basically kills anything else that it tries to replace.

Since when does init needs things like a web server bundled in?!?!

Re:What does he mean?

[Eunuchswear]

Since Debian is based on Gnome

WTF?

Debian is not based on Gnome.

systemd

[jesdynf]

systemd is designed to prevent duplicated boilerplate in init scripts -- but it won't support arbitrary verbs in its init scripts so best practice is to put those functions in auxiliary scripts elsewhere. Which will mean you have to duplicate long sets of the same functionality in both places. Yay for systemd!

systemd is designed to minimize how long you spend booting. Given how often I reboot, if systemd costs me even one more minute to deal with over the course of a year, systemd has actively failed to save me time.

systemd brings binary logging to Linux, which is good because I was talking to Nobody Ever, and Mr. Ever had a lot to say about how big a help the Windows Event Viewer is in sorting out issues.

I guess Debian was a great thing to learn Unix on and I'll really miss it.

Re:What does he mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd has become de facto mandatory, practically overnight. We weren't having this debate every other day last year.

This is a clear sign of something immature being shoved down our throats. My point is simple: it has not followed the traditional path of gaining third-party acceptance before becoming enshrined as a de facto standard in one of the most major distributions around. This (and I am NOT trolling) is much like Bennet Hasselton using Slashdot's front page as his personal blog; it is an option unavailable to the rest of us, and it is unclear why he should be so specially privileged.

There is no clear and compelling reason for replacing a host of services (69 services!) with entirely new code under the aegis of "making an init system" (one service). First and foremost, the amount of unaudited code is staggering. This is a security nightmare. The NSA is busy laughing all the way to the bank, because they didn't have to lift a finger to vastly increase the amount of attack surface on the average Linux system.

More importantly, it has been allowed to work itself into a position where we are unable to avoid it without sacrificing features we use routinely (and this applies across many groups of people with varying interests and use patterns). This is a clear loss of freedom of choice. Calling it "not mandatory" is disingenuous at best and an outright lie in many cases.

Re:What does he mean?

[the_B0fh]

You are right, I misspoke - Debian uses Gnome as default. Which changes nothing about the discussion - systemd is becoming mandatory, in essence, even if, in theory, it is possible to use other inits.

Re:What does he mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it does replace 69 services

And since when is unaudited code NOT a technical gripe?

Lightweight? Bullshit. Yet another systemd fanboi who spouts rhetoric and flat out lies and ignores technical complaints. There's so many fucking things wrong with systemd that you can't even list them in a post on Slashdot. Like the fact that the journal gets corrupted and Poettering considers it not a bug. Like the fact that it was rolled out without network logging support--but the logger you're forced to use in between an external logger is known to corrupt logs. These things are technical gripes and an absolute deal-breaker for environments which need auditability.

Fucking idiot.

Ok, here's a genuine error of systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one. I switched to systemd as init on my laptop running debian sid. Within a few days I had lost control of the system because PID 1 crashed. It crashed for a trivial reason: because a CUPS update left a dud symlink, then restarted CUPS! I had to resort to a magic sysrq sync & reboot, which I have otherwise used only in the event of a hardware or driver fault.

In more than a decade of administering servers for a living, I have yet to have a system fail because of a problem with PID 1. With /sbin/init as PID 1, there is no involvement from PID 1 when a daemon is restarted. With /sbin/systemd as PID 1, complex code is run in PID 1 when a daemon is restarted. As demonstrated by the symlink issue, this code is fragile in ways that compromise the reliability of PID 1.

I do not tolerate unreliable systems, including systems which must be rebooted for reasons other than kernel updates. It is clear from this experiment on my laptop that systemd is not a suitable PID 1 replacement. I don't want it on my laptop, my servers, or my routers. Thankfully debian still supports sysvinit, with startpar making my laptop with SSD boot in less time than it takes me to enter my password.

Re:Ok, here's a genuine error of systemd

[ruir]

interesting. As I said I had to pin systemd to -1 because the update from 7 to 8 by default installs systemd in a server without X or whatsoever. I am not that worried with the laptop, I just want a minimalist set of software on my servers.

Re:Ok, here's a genuine error of systemd

[Eunuchswear]

What's the bug number?

last usable Debian was squeeze

[geroy]

I still have a lot of servers with Debian Squeeze and I am not planning to upgrade them. This is the last version of Debian that is usable for server. There will be distributions without systemd I hope (like voidlinux which is still in early stages of developement)

Re:last usable Debian was squeeze

[ruir]

I have servers with wheezy, and now a couple with Jessie and I still do not have systemd, even if I had to pin systemd to -1 in Jessie, but it is still doable. I would not stay tied to such an outdated distro. What are you migrating to? I am strongly considering FreeBSD.

Re:last usable Debian was squeeze

[Eunuchswear]

root can crash linux, shock horror.

Film at 11.

Re:last usable Debian was squeeze

[Khyber]

My point is it shouldn't be that easy. In fact, who the fuck would make a loop device and use it for swap?

Yet, linux allows you to do so, and dies spectacularly.

Re:last usable Debian was squeeze

[Eunuchswear]

cat /dev/zero >/dev/mem

Re:last usable Debian was squeeze

[geroy]

I am exploring some other linux distributions as well as BSD. http://voidlinux.eu/ seems pretty nice but still in early stage of developement. It uses 'runit' as init system, packaging system si something like NetBSD pkgsrc. Other option is to replace all my linux boxes wth NetBSD (as I am using it since 2.0 version) :) Debian is dying, I can clearly see this now and I wonder when stupid people took over leadership of Debian???

Re:What does he mean?

[gweihir]

The thing is, Debian works absolutely fine with other Window Managers, like FVWM. It works fine with user-compiled kernels. It works fine if you massively customize the init-system and other parts. All that goes away if you let systemd in as the only fully supported option. Suddenly systemd tells you what kernel you can use and what Window Manager. It tells you what you are allowed to customize and what not. It keeps changing, because the project is at best in Beta at this time. And so on.

Re:What does he mean?

[gweihir]

Indeed. If it could compete on merit, it would. It cannot, hence the underhanded tactics employed. And it is still in development, as all the changes show. You do _not_ make something under active development the default init system.

Re:What does he mean?

[gweihir]

For me, the not-caring about corrupted logs was the kicker. Nobody with even the least bit of interest in security and stability will _ever_ tolerate something like that. The logs are critical and _must_ be complete, if technically possible.

Poettering is an incompetent hack or has a nefarious agenda. (Personally, I think he is a pansy for others with the nefarious agenda...)

Re:What does he mean?

[ruir]

Last time I noticed I do not all systemd on all of my servers. Do you say now is mandatory to install it?

Re: Systemd enables fine control of system resourc

[ruir]

I am against system, however the point of all this is that the *kernel* is becoming the hypervisor.

Re: What does he mean?

[gweihir]

Well, if the language is deserved, nobody will be sorry to see you go. People not listening to valid concerns when they are voiced in a reasonable manner, eventually get shouted at and rightfully so.

Re:What does he mean?

[rdnetto]

Last time I noticed I do not all systemd on all of my servers. Do you say now is mandatory to install it?

systemd is the default init system, etc. in Debian Jessie.
It is currently undecided if other init systems will be supported, and whether users upgrading to Jessie will be automatically switched to it.

If other init systems are not supported under Jessie, and you wish to avoid systemd, your only choices will be to continue using Wheezy (until it's no longer supported), or to switch to a different distro.

The decision to support other init systems will be posted here: https://www.debian.org/vote/20...

Re:Debian and derivatives have always been POS

[ruir]

Disclaimer I hate systemd. However, choose and been into debian for ages because it is one of the most linux distros out there with a sane packet management package. The fact that the core files are also text is a stroke of genius, I have done so much shit like repairing strange inconsistencies by hand or migrating live from 32 to 64 bits that would force me to a complete server reinstall on redhat, for instance.

Re:systemd

[ruir]

if you have servers with wheezy, pin systemd to -1 before upgrading them.

Re:systemd

[jbolden]

systemd is designed to minimize how long you spend booting

systemd is designed to give Linux a full featured process manager like you have on mainframes. Speeding booting is a side benefit.

___

As for your comment about arbitrary verbs systemd should be handling each process, that's its job. There shouldn't be any functionality in both places after conversion.

Re:What does he mean?

[ruir]

I 3as being sarcastic, and made a tipo. I do not have graphic/Gnome on my servers, only text mode, so why should I ever need *Gnome* dependencies? This week I upgraded two servers to Jessie and pinned systemd to -1 before the upgrade, and still fine without systemd. I do not appreciated Jessie tried to migrated me to systemd after I had an alternative installed and not any single dependency tough - without the package pinning. I may however take the breathing time Jessie gives me to migrate to FreeBSD.

Re:systemd

[thegarbz]

Let's number the responses:

1. For your complaints about lack of arbitrary verbs in init scripts I don't really see much of this as a problem. When systemd's settings do what they are supposed to there is no duplicate functionality elsewhere. This is true for the distros I've seen it used. Far LESS scripting to start the system.

2. Systemd is not about boot time, actually I saw at least one example showing it's slower than upstart. But if you think that's the reason systemd exists you have a lot of reading to do.

3. Binary logging is a useful feature IMO. But hey you can't please everyone. Oh wait you can, a single setting change will give you standard syslog compatibility. Who knew!

Re:What does he mean?

[turbidostato]

"> Last time I noticed I do not all systemd on all of my servers. Do you say now is mandatory to install it?

systemd is the default init system, etc. in Debian Jessie.
It is currently undecided if other init systems will be supported,"

Point being that, being Debian what it is, and even more because of its constitution, once systemd enters the show other init system will not be supported no matter what a ballot says because systemd is very pervasive and no Debian Developer is under the obligation of add a single line of code they don't want to.

Re:What does he mean?

[ruir]

Now I wonder what a immature package is doing in Debian STABLE

Re:What does he mean?

[segedunum]

WTF?

Debian is not based on Gnome.

I'm afraid it is if you accept systemd and accept the whole list of hard dependencies that haven't existed in the past.

Re:What does he mean?

[segedunum]

Wow, another long post on systemd spouting ideology and rhetoric without nary a valid technical complain....but the project also aims to provide lightweight implementations of what it considers "core" functionality.

What a load of ideological and and rehtorical claptrap.

None of my systemd systems use systemd cron or DHCP for example, even though those daemons exist.

Why do they exist?

Re:What does he mean?

[Eunuchswear]

So now you're claiming that systemd depends on Gnome?

Get a grip.

Revoutionary without a cause

[Bent Spoke]

If you take a step back, it's even more tragic than that.

Pulse purported to "fix" problems that weren't even problems for the vast majority of users, at the expense of undermining the integrity of the whole OS (not just sound).

Now, systemd purports to fix efficiency problems with using shell scripts, even though (on machines of 20+ years ago) shell scripts worked perfectly fine on CPU's a 1000 times slower, and text logging worked perfectly fine on disks a 1000 times smaller.

Re:Revoutionary without a cause

[thegarbz]

Pulse purported to "fix" problems that weren't even problems for the vast majority of users

Which is why the world thanked him by rushing to make it the default so Linux can finally have a sound system worthy of being part of a modern OS.

A lot of people lack a use case and then extrapolate that it must be the "vast majority's" use case too. Linux audio was a bucket of shit before pulseaudio. Linux audio was a bucket of shit while pulseaudio was teething and unstable. Linux audio now is actually quite usable and can handle such incredibly unlikely edge cases like someone plugging in headphones to a headphone jack thanks to pulseaudio.

Re:link to bug

[Eunuchswear]

Thanks. I see it's fixed now.

Modularity & Hygiene & Complexity & sy

[Paul Fernhout]

From what I read here, systemd is a lot less modular by bundling in a lot of services. Linux has had the virtue of modularity at is core, as exemplified by narrow-focus command line tools piped together to get work done. Modularity is something like cleanliness. If you leave crumbs all over your kitchen all the time, it generally isn't itself the problem. The problem is when roaches and mice move in and you can't get rid of them due to the crumbs you still leave everywhere. Granted, cleanliness (and modularity) can perhaps go too far (the person who scrubs the kitchen flour every five minutes). So, what is a healthy balance here? I don't know enough about the details to weigh in on that. You ask for specific problems, and while a reasonable sounding request, that is also a bit like asking people to send pictures in of specific roaches and mice. The specific problems are important of course, but what is at stake is the bigger picture, not stamping out each individual roach. What matters is increased risk. The more general issue is the management of risks from complexity, whereas modularity is one of the best (but not the only) approach for doing that.

I've seen how lack of modularity can damage other software communities -- particularly the early Squeak community, like I wrote about here
http://lists.squeakfoundation....
"I sympathize. I think the biggest issue of Squeak is issues with modularity and managing complexity. These issues translate to frustration for maintainers (and users :-). Anyway, I had related frustrations to yours many years ago and they are why I ended up doing a lot in Python and Jython on the JVM in the last decade, even to the point of working on PataPata. ... I think the most important single issue in maintaining any large system is managing complexity (documenting intent maybe comes next, including well-named variables and methods and functions). This has never been a priority for Squeak IMHO. ...
There are several ways to manage complexity, which include:
* modularity (namespaces, packages like Java or GNU Smalltalk or Debian, letting someone else do that hard work by leveraging libraries or VMs or languages, like Squeak does by using a C compiler to generate the VM)
* cleverness (brilliant redesign, like traits was hopefully going to be)
* laissez faire, and also to each his or her own image (that is what we have now, and it is not that bad an idea, if the *core* is small and well thought out, like Spoon, so the *image* instance becomes the *module*. But alas, it is not, witness how confusing Morphic is to unravel).
Modularity is the one way to manage complexity which seems to work best in practice, although the others have their role. However, if Squeak images could easily talk to each other and share some state, and we had Spoon-like remote debugging and development, then we could have just one application per image, and that would be easier to maintain (it would be modular to a degree but in an unusual way). But I would still suggest such a system built on well-though out (clever) modules would be more powerful and easier to use than a mess of spaghetti code, even if we had only one application per image."

With roots back to here in 2000:
http://lists.squeakfoundation....
"Squeak complexity in 2.8 has become a complex cat from the simple kitten complexity of 1.13(?) in 1996. Back then, Dan Ingalls wrote on 10 Nov 1996 those prescient words: "The Squeak team has an interest in doing the world's simplest application construction framework, but I suspect that we will get sucked up with enough other things that this won't happen in the next two months (but who knows...)."
Squeak 2.8's complexity is now quiet (in terms of walkbacks) and stealthy (in terms of growing between