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Removing Libsystemd0 From a Live-running Debian System
lkcl writes The introduction of systemd has unilaterally created a polarization of the GNU/Linux community that is remarkably similar to the monopolistic power position wielded by Microsoft in the late 1990s. Choices were stark: use Windows (with SMB/CIFS Services), or use UNIX (with NFS and NIS). Only the introduction of fully-compatible reverse-engineered NT Domains services corrected the situation. Instructions on how to remove systemd include dire warnings that "all dependent packages will be removed", rendering a normal Debian Desktop system flat-out impossible to achieve. It was therefore necessary to demonstrate that it is actually possible to run a Debian Desktop GUI system (albeit an unusual one: fvwm) with libsystemd0 removed. The reason for doing so: it doesn't matter how good systemd is believed to be or in fact actually is: the reason for removing it is, apart from the alarm at how extensive systemd is becoming (including interfering with firewall rules), it's the way that it's been introduced in a blatantly cavalier fashion as a polarized all-or-nothing option, forcing people to consider abandoning the GNU/Linux of their choice and to seriously consider using FreeBSD or any other distro that properly respects the Software Freedom principle of the right to choose what software to run. We aren't all "good at coding", or paid to work on Software Libre: that means that those people who are need to be much more responsible, and to start — finally — to listen to what people are saying. Developing a thick skin is a good way to abdicate responsibility and, as a result, place people into untenable positions.
every so often, I try out the various 'desktops' that linux distros offer.
every time, I give up, dislike all the procs running, mem wasted, cpu cycles wasted and all the crap that comes with the desktop. feels like bloat that should not be there, not for a 'simple' linux install.
I always laugh when people look at my display. I use a red/orange color to highlight the active window and grey for the inactive ones. there is no trash icon, no iconbox, no drag/drop. a short menu appears when you click into space (no clients under) and then pick which foreground rxvt opens up (all with black bg's).
I keep things simple. but I've been using this layout for literally over 25 yrs (starting with twm and using mwm for a short while, when motif was still popular).
not having a desktop is great. in all that time, I just have not been limited (at all) in what I can do, and things seem to be fast when I just run a term window, type what I want and it instantly runs.
unix was supposed to be simple. systemd is an abortion and one that most of us do not want.
good to see this protest post with a hand-tweaked system; but the fact is, we should NOT have to flip over backwards to remove a stupid should-not-be-there-anyway daemon and its evil libs.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
In conversations with certain friends that do computer security for a certain not nice agency, I've heard that the sudden proliferation of SystemD has been a real boon for them. Specifically, the way that the project is taking on more network connected tasks is very helpful to what they do.
One guy even suggested that he thought someone on the dev team was on their side. He thought that the way that SystemD is helping them get access, combined with the way it's suddenly at the core of every distribution, seemed like something they would do. I don't really believe that, but it is suspicious that such an important part of the system was handed over to a relatively young, constantly changing project with no real bounds on its scope.
Posting anonymously (and behind seven proxies) for obvious reasons.
It got me to put FreeBSD on my to do list for 2015.
debian uses simple release engineering like unstable -> testing -> release. there are other projects that work in a similar way, freebsd is fairly similar. they have commonly done gigantic system-wide break everything for months type changes in freebsd current.
they don't need to fork to test experiental things, they just do it in unstable first. then when they can't find problems, it goes into testing. eventually testing becomes a release.
considering systemd has been in debian in an experimental capacity for nearly 3 years, i think they've done enough testing to consider it stable.
it's nothing like debian/kfreebsd, because changing to a completely different kernel is nothing like changing an init system. not to mention that debian/kfreebsd was expected to have a very long steep development curve with a very small audience, whereas systemd is something that is already proven to be a fairly stable thing. redhat has been using it by default for half a decade.
i'll never use systemd, though. not because i don't trust its stability. the way it works and is configured reminds me of DJB software. makes sense, works well enough, but is wrong on a level that is difficult to explain.
Perhaps there is an underlying secret purpose in implementing SystemD, similar to the hidden purpose in saying TrueCrypt is insecure and trying to get people to use Microsoft encryption software.
Red Hat is about to learn this the hard way.
I think they already know. The dozen or so times I've talked to them since October about systemd-created problems, their employees seemed completely fed-up. Their patience is done. They know they screwed their customers, and their support is having a very hard time keeping up with attempting to help customers. Swallowing stderr and higher-priority syslog messages makes it very difficult for them to troubleshoot problems.
In general, we already have a system that embraces many of the design principles observed in systemd and actually does a decent job of making the concepts work: Windows. Even with a great deal of talented investment over the course of decades, when a Windows system goes off the reservation in certain ways, no one will be able to bring it back because of how complicated the integration of the various components.
your post is particularly insightful - i hope it is recognised as such by moderators. i wanted to emphasise what you said, because NT 3.5 and 4.0 used a recursive login system based on DCE/RPC function calls. a "domain" logon was (is) actually no diffferent from a "local" logon: the only difference being that the SAM database was running locally (and was marked in the registry as being the same name as the machine). as a result of this, there were actually simple registry hacks for NT 3.51 to turn a workstation into a Primary Domain Controller!
so thanks to DCE/RPC, all that happened with a Domain Logon was that the incoming function call would make an (identical) recursive *outgoing* login function call to the nearest PDC/BDC/Trusted Domain. that Trusted Domain Controller would, in turn, on receipt of the incoming function call, make an (identical) recursive outgoing function call to the nearest PDC/BDC... and eventually, through this chain, the answer would be "login success or fail".
incredibly neat, and technically brilliant... but the actual number of people in the world who really truly understand that must be limited to under a hundred people at most. *not all of them* work at microsoft....
Instead of being vulgar, maybe you should ask yourself why so many distributions are switching to systemd.
Oh, I know: Because Lennart Poettering managed to make his friends doing GNOME development make GNOME depend on systemd, some now and seemingly more in the future, leaving the distributions with the choice between breaking GNOME and accepting systemd.
And the "do something, fix the problems" talk you're spewing: I helped developed an alternate init system that is used by some couple of million installations. Systemd is attempting to occupy the entire space, destroying the possibility of different systems working.
So yes, I in my opinion did my part to deal with this problem area. What have YOU done, apart from supporting the destruction of the existing ecosystem? Contributing code to systemd while not contributing the same code to compatibility layers counts as supporting destruction, as does posts like your above.
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/...
re all,
Here is a pre-alpha sneak preview of Devuan at the current state of
affairs. It is my valentine to Franco: despite we probably never met in
person, I love him. He is really dedicated to this project and putting
hard work in it. I also fell in love with another VUA, whose name I
won't tell, but he is the one hosting the gitlab, running very well.
http://mirror.debianfork.org/d...
http://mirror.debianfork.org/d...
http://mirror.debianfork.org/d...
do not use this in production, this is an internal preview (not even an
alpha) for the Devuan enthusiastic community and for those wondering if
we'll really make it: yes we will.
Journalists and DWN editors reading: please do not link this. We will :^) Let it be a private valentine
have another more public release soon
Also please note that this is not yet rebranded, so it says Debian
almost everywhere. Didn't find the time for that yet.
default user is 'devuan'
password is always 'devuan', also for root
sources are those of Debian 8 RC1 jessie
plus the mods here: https://git.devuan.org/groups/...
and packed with the SDK https://git.devuan.org/devuan/...
happy hacking
--
Jaromil, Dyne.org Free Software Foundry (est. 2000)
We are free to share code and we code to share freedom
Web: https://j.dyne.org/ Contact: https://j.dyne.org/c.vcf
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Confidential communications: https://keybase.io/jaromil
---
Pretty fucking boss.
Call me a tinfoil hatter if you want (just as anybody who said "they are monitoring our calls!" before Manning) but am I the only one that finds it funny that after Snowden lets out all the 3 letter agencies best spy tricks out of the blue a guy employed by Red Hat, who makes more than 85% of their money from 3 letter agencies, suddenly decides out of the blue "This crucial part MUST be replaced by this big creeping mess that will touch more and more systems!" and just as suddenly every.single.major.distro. just instantly jumps on this bandwagon even if it means telling their own users to fuck off? Even distros that are normally positively glacial about major changes like Debian? Doesn't that strike anybody else as odd?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> The funny thing is the people working on OpenRC threw in the towel over a year ago.
Are you *sure* about this?
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:OpenRC shows a modification date of 2015-01-24
http://packages.gentoo.org/package/sys-apps/openrc shows that OpenRC had a stable release on 2015-02-05. (Indeed, my amd64 server is running 0.13.9, built on that date.)
I would point you to recent OpenRC commit history, but g.o.gentoo.org is terribly slow at the moment, and the github repo doesn't seem to be all that official.
Same here. As I posted in the last systemd-related story (slightly edited):
At this time I see:
- No technical merits of systemd that are important or critical, just some convenience issues
- Systemd is in hurried development, a stable feature set is nowhere in sight
- The development leads are known incompetents with inflated egos and no communication skills
- There are a number of design decisions that are very, very bad for security and stability
At the same time I see:
- Systemd is pushed strongly with emotional (not factual) arguments
This is a coordinated and targeted propaganda campaign. A campaign focused on technical merits is not even attempted seriously.
- Systemd opponents are ridiculed, insulted and their arguments are not taken seriously
- Systemd is getting very hard to avoid
I can only deduce that there _must_ be one of or a combination of the following going on:
- Linux was getting too hard to hack and the intelligence community is pushing for systemd to fix that
- Linux did not generate enough support revenue Red Hat and this is intended to fix that by decreasing reliability
- Red Hat wants total control over Linux and systemd is their attempt to establish that
So if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, the most probable explanation is that it is a duck and hence I conclude that something nefarious is going on and the last three items are the most likely candidates IMO. I cannot believe that two known incompetent hacks with bad personalities can screw over a whole large tech-savvy community all by themselves. They must have significant, coordinated help, with significant propaganda and manipulation experience. Whether it is military PsyOps or just commercial PR, the effects are the same. And they are massively negative and destructive for Linux and its community if not repelled decisively.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This systemd pdf article is pretty unremarkable except for what is written in big font in the 2nd page:
Since systemd launches all processes, it can easily spy on all the process outputs and transmit that to whichever TLA it wants. This is a major spying attack.