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Haiku OS Will Get New Service Manager

Posted by Soulskill on from the probably-won't-be-as-contentious dept.

jones_supa writes: Axel Dörfler writes in his blog that he is working on a replacement for Haiku OS's current shell script based boot process. It would be replaced with something more flexible, a solution similar to OS X's launchd and Linux's systemd. While there is still a lot to do, the new project called launch_daemon is now feature complete in terms of being able to completely reproduce the current boot process. Since the switch to their package manager, there was no longer a way to influence the boot process at all. The only file you could change was the UserBootscript which is started only after Tracker and Deskbar — the whole system is already up at this point. The new service manager gives the power back to you, and also allows arbitrary software to be launched on startup. Alternatively, you can prevent system components from being started at all if you so wish. Furthermore, it allows for event based application start, start on demand, a multi-threaded boot process, and even enables you to talk to servers before they actually started.

93 comments

  1. This sounds like systemd to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another one bites the dust.

    1. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same here. Sad but true. Good engineering is apparently not desirable anymore.

    2. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by CurryCamel · · Score: 1

      No no no.
      The summary even says: "The new service manager gives the power back to you"

    3. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      "Since some time, I am working on a replacement of our current shell script based boot process to something more flexible, a similar solution to Apple's launchd, and Linux's systemd."

    4. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nobody has convinced me that systemd is actually bad, as opposed to different.

      All the bitching seems to be people just hating different and others marching in lockstep.

      So WAH!

    5. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why Haiku OS will never get anywhere. They keep wasting time on stupid shit like this instead of improving stability and compatibility.

    6. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Freedom is Slavery!

    7. Re:This sounds like systemd to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SysV init hasn't been "good engineering" since the early 90s at least. It is the dumbest possible way to change system states. What, you thought that init was just how your computer starts up? What do you think "init 5" does, exactly?

      On the plus side for SysV, you have deterministic behavior and a useful error message when things break. On the negative side, the performance sucks, the interpreter has no knowledge about what it's executing and can't take much in the way of sensible action if things screw up, the scripts are only portable in theory, and (big one) the system cannot guarantee that a service is started when it needs to be started, and is not guaranteed to be able to find that process again when it needs to be shut down. Yeah, it doesn't happen often, but it shouldn't even be possible. Whoever thought up this "double-fork and write a pidfile" process was on crack.

      People have been trying to replace SysV init for twenty years now, if not longer. Even OpenRC relies heavily on C libraries, for good reason -- and isn't C part of the Unix Way? You hack something together in Bash, then rewrite it in C -- sound familiar? Your scripts suck, they have always sucked, and no one wants to maintain them any more. Writing them in lowest-common-denominator Bash didn't help anything either. SysV init is dead, and none too soon.

  2. One of Many to Come by pipingguy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why does this happen?
    Bad existing manager?
    Hopefully this one not suck.

    1. Re:One of Many to Come by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      non existing manager , currently Haiku run the UserBootscript after the full GUI startup. want more flexibility: recompile...

  3. Nice to see it still going by Monoman · · Score: 1

    It's nice to see the team still working on Haiku.

    --
    Keep the Classic Slashdot.
    1. Re:Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I downloaded the VM and am reading Slashdot in WebPositive now. No javascript in the browser, it seems. Not much software, but it's got bare functionality and is snappy. I can't find HaikuDepot, which the docs say should be in /boot/system/apps; having that would help, I think. The mail client is pop-only; with IMAP support I could see this VM becoming a sandboxed playground for stuff I'd like to segregate off my work machine.

    2. Re:Nice to see it still going by NicePics13 · · Score: 1

      Sounds like an older build.. download the Anyboot image: http://download.haiku-os.org/n...

    3. Re:Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not encouraged when I see "x86 GCC 2".

      x86?! Jesus Christ, that platform was obsolete back in 2005! We've had x86-64 for well over a decade now, and it has been the standard even for shitty consumer-grade hardware for just about as long.

      GCC 2?! That's even worse than x86! My God, the latest release of GCC 2 was on March 16, 2001! GCC 2.0 was first released on February 22, 1992! Even GCC 3, which has long been considered obsolete, saw its latest release almost a decade ago, on March 06, 2006. GCC 5 was released earlier this year.

      I know you'll give "compatibility" as the justification for why it's still targeting a long-obsolete platform, and using a long-obsolete compiler system. But that's just a failed excuse at this point.

      If Haiku is to be a relevant operating system in 2015, then it needs to get its shit together. It needs to target the CPU architecture that has been in use for the past decade. It needs to use a compiler system released this century. This "x86 GCC 2" bullshit needs to end. We need to see "x86-64 GCC 5" or even "x86-64 LLVM/Clang".

    4. Re: Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Will switching the compiler make development any faster?

      Priorities

    5. Re: Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering how fast Clang compile times are, yes switching to Clang will make development faster.

    6. Re:Nice to see it still going by jaklode · · Score: 1

      I'm not encouraged when I see "x86 GCC 2".

      x86?! Jesus Christ, that platform was obsolete back in 2005! We've had x86-64 for well over a decade now, and it has been the standard even for shitty consumer-grade hardware for just about as long.

      GCC 2?! That's even worse than x86! My God, the latest release of GCC 2 was on March 16, 2001! GCC 2.0 was first released on February 22, 1992! Even GCC 3, which has long been considered obsolete, saw its latest release almost a decade ago, on March 06, 2006. GCC 5 was released earlier this year.

      I know you'll give "compatibility" as the justification for why it's still targeting a long-obsolete platform, and using a long-obsolete compiler system. But that's just a failed excuse at this point.

      If Haiku is to be a relevant operating system in 2015, then it needs to get its shit together. It needs to target the CPU architecture that has been in use for the past decade. It needs to use a compiler system released this century. This "x86 GCC 2" bullshit needs to end. We need to see "x86-64 GCC 5" or even "x86-64 LLVM/Clang".

      Well, fine, take the 4.4 version: http://download.haiku-os.org/n... or the 64-bit 4.4 version: http://download.haiku-os.org/n... They just won't be able to run BeOS binaries, as the ABI changed from gcc 2 to gcc 4. I'm sure 5.0 binaries will come eventually, but gcc 5 is relatively new, so it will take some time, as new gcc releases have and cause tons of bugs.

    7. Re:Nice to see it still going by waddlesplash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We aren't trying to be a "viable operating system" for the masses. Yet. That comes in R2, after we drop compatibility. If you want the latest not-really-greatest slidy transparent Operating System of the Future, we aren't it. We have much different goals (like: actually being usable! Actually being configurable!) Not the "systemd takes over the whole operating system" or "Ubuntu writes their own window manager" crap that Linux has to deal with. In that sense, we're lightyears ahead of Linux, the only forks we have are the POSIX fork() function. :D

    8. Re:Nice to see it still going by waddlesplash · · Score: 2

      You have to use the nightly build to get HaikuDepot, it's not on the alpha release. And the nightly's web browser runs JS with a JIT and YouTube to boot.

    9. Re:Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm assuming they are short on funding....anyway that system is fast as hell...

    10. Re:Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the information. It's good to see Haiku developers reading slashdot -- and responding! :)

      I'm grabbing the nightly anyboot. I remember BeOS fondly and am glad to see that you're continuing the work.

    11. Re:Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same anonymous coward here. Yep, the nightly works with YouTube even. Straight out of the box, without running the installer -- I just downloaded the AnyBoot ISO and shoved it into VMWare. IMAP works in mail. Very nice. You guys rock.

    12. Re:Nice to see it still going by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As somebody who ran BeOS for many years, I was very excited when I first heard about Haiku, back when it was OpenBeOS or whatever its original name was. But that was almost 15 years ago! Ridicule Linux all you want. Unlike Haiku, Linux is seriously usable today. No, it isn't as nice to use as BeOS was, but it's still better than Haiku. I can't say that Haiku is a total failure like Perl 6 is, but it hasn't been a success, either. BeOS was a couple of decades ahead of its time. But the way Haiku has been dragged out for so long, whatever edge it may have had over other OSes has evaporated. OS X now provides a great UI with a firm UNIX underpinning, like BeOS used to. Linux + X + Xfce is pretty good, too. Haiku? Well, it's something I try out once a year in a VM, and typically notice that it hasn't really progressed much at all since the last time I tried it. I mean, when was R1 released? Two or three years ago? You talk about R2, but if that's still years out, it does us no good. We need to see something really usable and modern from Haiku.

    13. Re:Nice to see it still going by Ramze · · Score: 2

      The irony is that BeOS was designed specifically to take advantage of modern computer hardware of the day and cared nothing for binary compatibility with other OSes, and today Haiku is clinging to an ancient compiler and a dead x86 architecture... in the name of compatibility with BeOS apps, no less. BeOS itself moved from Hobbit to PowerPC to Intel x86 with little care for compatibility.

      What made BeOS exciting 20 years ago was it promised to give users better multimedia support and responsiveness. Other OSes have caught up with the innovations and surpassed them. (Multithreading, multiprocessing, multitasking, journaling file systems, etc.) Some users liked the GUI and lauded it as a clean and a great interface. I hated the yellow tabs. Still, that's just personal preference -- Mac OS X has a clean and polished interface that suits that purpose today. In fact, the death knell of BeOS was when Apple declined to purchase BeOS and bought NeXTSTEP instead... because it was superior and led to today's OS X.

      Point being that BeOS offered new, cutting edge features and better functionality on the same hardware than other OSes at the time. It seems that Haiku is the last of the BeOS clones and it's not progressing at a rate that will ever offer users significant benefits over modern OSes today.

      What does Haiku have to offer? I mean - when it's finally released in a few decades or centuries at this rate and our ancestors get to enjoy it on their x86 or even AMD64 emulators?

      There's a nice bit of fluff at : https://www.haiku-os.org/about , but that doesn't really answer the question. The key strength compared to Linux seems to be that a single team is developing and integrating everything with a common goal. Why couldn't that same team (or one as dedicated) simply fork a Linux distribution and all software it uses to customize and integrate towards the same common goal?

      Seems a waste to re-invent the wheel creating new drivers and struggling to build on the Haiku platform for backwards compatibility without any clear, solid, user-recognizable benefit.

      I get that it's interesting as a project and great practice for coders, and I truly wish Haiku well in its continued development... I just don't see the point if the development will never release outside of Beta with support for modern hardware. If Linux still struggles to get decent drivers, I can't imagine Haiku ever getting proper support.

      Haiku seems like another stagnant AmigaOS, Syllable Desktop, or other relic. ReactOS at least has some benefit to Linux and potentially former Windows users by furthering WINE development even if it never makes it out of alpha (going on 17 years now btw.)

  4. Yay bandwagoneering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't care which euphemisms are bandied out this week. A solid OS doesn't need lots of "flexibility" hard-coded where a shell script would have done.

    But then, very few mainstream OSes count as "solid" these days. Not windows, not osx, not linux, not even FreeBSD. So Haiku wants to run with the big boys. A pity.

  5. Haiku OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wat's dat shit?

    1. Re: Haiku OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dat why I sayin!

    2. Re: Haiku OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Open source verse of BEOS.

  6. Oxymoron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Something similar to OS X' launchd AND Linux' systemd" - really, these two are like apples and oranges (pun intended). Don't drag the briliant launchd down by comparing it to a monstrosity like systemd.

  7. Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The people complaining about systemd aren't complaining because it's different. They're complaining about it because it's utter shit!

    For crying out loud, systemd's most vocal opponents are career sysadmins with the most experience. These are the people who are least bothered by change! They're completely accustomed to it. Change has been the story of their careers. In fact, they're the biggest supporters of change, when it's done right.

    When you're a professional admin who has dealt with various versions of Windows, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, OS X, Linux, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and many other OSes each week for years or decades, change itself is a total non-issue.

    People have a problem with systemd because it has so often done something that no init system should ever do: prevented the operating system from fully booting.

    Read through the mailing list archives of the major Linux distros that have switched to it. Read through the bug reports. It's disturbing how many problems people report with it. It's especially disturbing when a project like Debian, which for so many years prided itself on a very high level of reliability, has its reputation tarnished thanks to its awful transition to systemd.

    The opposition to systemd has never been about change itself. It has been about changing to something that experience shows is rife with serious problems.

    The opponents of systemd would gladly accept change, but this change needs to bring improvements, not problems.

    1. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by kthreadd · · Score: 2

      All non-trivial software packages have bugs. There's nothing unusual about that and that's why we should used it, to find bugs and problems so that we can fix them. Most people will agree that systemd adds a number of important features to GNU/Linux that the old alternatives didn't offer. Adopting systemd will over time lead to a better system. Will there be bumps on the ride? Sure! Four years ago Fedora started out, took a lot of heat for it. Over time more and more distributions have switched to it, exposing it to more users with different use cases. The systemd that we have today is in many ways not the same systemd that you got back then.

    2. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problems with systemd go far beyond mere bugs. They are flaws with its design philosophy and architecture. These aren't fixed with simple patches and some testing! The only way to fix these is by completely throwing away what's there, and starting from scratch, doing things completely differently. When you start doing this, then you end up with the sorts of init systems that we've been using very successfully for so many decades: init systems that are truly modular (a bunch of non-portable, highly dependent libraries and daemons like systemd consists of is not true modularity), that do not use binary logs (practice shows that text logs are the only sensible option), and that only focus on providing an init system (unlike systemd which tries to handle logging, logins, network configuration, time-setting, virtual terminal support, and so many things totally unrelated to an init system). Maybe Linux does need a new init system. But that init system sure as hell isn't systemd, or anything like systemd!

    3. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that most people would agree that systemd adds anything important, or that the boot system needs anything at all. Systems have been booting properly for some time now so there isn't anything worth changing. Most people, even linux nerds, don't interact with the boot system.

    4. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...and that only focus on providing an init system (unlike systemd which tries to handle logging, logins, network configuration, time-setting, virtual terminal support, and so many things totally unrelated to an init system). Maybe Linux does need a new init system. But that init system sure as hell isn't systemd, or anything like systemd!

      I wish people could stop just for a second to think of systemd as an init system. It's not. Even the systemd web site says it's not, it says "systemd is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system." Treat it like that, a number of essential system components, one of them happens to be an init system. It's not the init portion of systemd that handles all the other things you say it does, systemd does. The init system itself in systemd handles only init and nothing more.

    5. Re: Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by kthreadd · · Score: 1

      What makes you think that systemd is just about booting the system?

    6. Re: Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by PPH · · Score: 2

      That's the other major problem with it. systemd has turned Linux into such a tangled mess of interlocking dependencies specifically because it gets into everything from logging to GUI lib dependencies.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    7. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by waddlesplash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I kind of regret letting the comment about systemd slip through my fingers now :( Haiku's new launch system is like systemd in that we took the *nice* parts of systemd. Not the crap that is the binary log files, or the take-over-your-whole-OS thing. We hate it as much as you do.

    8. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Well said. Besides its architectural and design problems, systemd does not have any reasonable level of stability for a productive release. They are still busily adding features to it! Maybe in 5-10 years, if the feature-set is kept mostly stable in that time, it would be ready for prime-time, but decidedly not now.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    9. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      And that is the problem. There is no need for a "suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system." There are well-working components that have stood the test of time that already offer this functionality. There is zero need to break what works well here and people with actual system administration experience do not like it when people try to do that.

      In addition, there is countless software for Linux that must also run on other UNIX-like systems and the systemd-philosophy seems to be outright hostile to that idea.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    10. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      After 15 years of doing Linux system administration, I do not see any need for a new init system except in special situations. And you know what, I am fine with there being alternatives. I am not being fine with being pressured to move to systemd. That is a hostile and destructive act, nothing else.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    11. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      I feel for you, that sucks. On the plus-side, you have learned what to not compare your work to.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    12. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by arth1 · · Score: 1

      All non-trivial software packages have bugs.

      Which is why the init process needs to be trivial.

      Sure, shell scripts are slower, but you can easily fix any bugs you find in them, or modify them with very little risk. And they don't take down your hole system.

      Boot time is a non-issue for sysadmins. When it takes more than five minutes pre-boot just to enumerate the RAID disks, whether you save 15 seconds at boot time is irrelevant. If anything, running things serially is a boon, as you avoid hidden race conditions and can step through the boot and shutdown, correcting things as they occur. With systemd, all your eggs truly are in one basket.

    13. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      "The people complaining about systemd aren't complaining because it's different." - yes they are.

      "They're complaining about it because it's utter shit!" - no its not.

      "For crying out loud, systemd's most vocal opponents are career sysadmins with the most experience." - no, its the trolls like you with no knowledge of systemd that are the loudest

      the rest of your post is as full of crap as the first bit, go to Devuan if Debian has screwed the config.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    14. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Palinchron · · Score: 1

      Most people will agree that systemd adds a number of important features to GNU/Linux that the old alternatives didn't offer.

      This is very true. Most people will also agree that it accomplishes this at the cost of significant downsides inherent to the design of systemd, and sacrificing important features that the old alternatives do offer. The controversy is about whether the upsides are worth the downsides.

      Adopting systemd will over time lead to a better system.

      Depending on your position regarding the aforementioned tradeoff.

      --
      The lesson here is that a sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from government. --ultranova
    15. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      yet more rubbish trolling by someone who knows very little about systemd and what is and isn't dependent. stop spreading crap - systemd, journald and udev are the only dependents, everything else is optional.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    16. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      "And that is the problem. There is no need for a "suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system."" - why not, elements of the system are improved, developed and replaced all the time e.g. what was around before sysvinit?.

      "There are well-working components that have stood the test of time that already offer this functionality." - you can say that for virtually every bit of software on your system, i'm sure the init system before sysvinit also had well working component that stood the test of time.

      " there is countless software for Linux that must also run on other UNIX-like systems and the systemd-philosophy seems to be outright hostile to that idea." - thats a choice for the developers of that software if they decide to make use of systemd without offering you a configuration option. There is nothing wrong with Linux looking after its own interests

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    17. Re: Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      List all the dependencies then, i only see 3. If you can't configure a system with config files, thats not systemd's problem, its a learning curve for you.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    18. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Are you going to be able to create a log reading tool like journalctl? Once you've used journalctl a few times, you'll see the binary logging is appropriate. e.g. I know i'd rather my admins use journalctl to extract logs for a specific time span using one line rather than spend time writing and debugging scripts to extract logs from all separate files, merge and sort them into order before looking into the problem. journalctl is basically a time saver that has more data than current logging systems and time coded logs that reflect time zones correctly.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    19. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 2

      " systemd does not have any reasonable level of stability for a productive release." - now you are just making things up.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    20. Re: Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You must have been sleeping for the last couple of years and thus have missed what is going on.

      Systemd-the-init is just an init. What makes that interesting is that it makes it really easy to consistently apply cgroups to everything it starts. Yes, you can do cgroups manually, but then they are neither convenient to use nor consistently applied.

      That is a big thing as this enables other programs to make good use of those cgroups. What you call an entangled mess is a traditional layered architecture: systemd-initnisnat the base, other things build on he functionality that provides and offer more services on top of that. That is why "gnome depends on systemd": Gnome depends on logind, which in turn depends on systemd-init.

      Finally we have an init system that provides a meaningful service that other applications can make use of! No other init system does that, which is why no other init system gets used for anything.

    21. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      you can still use your shell scripts within systemd but as most standard init scripts are pretty much identical, they seem an unnecessary duplication of code. Boot time is a side product of systemd not a target but it does benefit those that load and kill VMs a lot, perhaps not an issue for your systems.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    22. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      "Most people will also agree that it accomplishes this at the cost of significant downsides inherent to the design of systemd," - can you back up the "Most people" statement? its just a vocal few (as usual) who know very little or nothing about systemd. i've yet to see breakaway Red Hat, Suse, etc non-systemd systems like Devuan (which no longer seems to make an news).

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    23. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Palinchron · · Score: 1

      I don't think anyone will dispute the claim that (for instance) platform independence is an important sysvinit feature that systemd has sacrificed, and that (say) being a single point of failure for dozens of mostly-independent subsystems is a significant architectural downside of systemd. I make no claims as to the relative importance most people attach to those downsides versus the real upsides of systemd, but downsides they be.

      --
      The lesson here is that a sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from government. --ultranova
    24. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Why should it be platform independent, how many of these other non-linux platforms have implemented cgroups which is the core for systemd? Even sysvinit is only platform independent to a point because almost every linux distro puts files in a different place so i can't safely copy a redhat startup script to another distro without making some mods to directories etc, systemd cures that problem. Systemd is no more a single point of failure than the kernel or init or disk controller etc. Its just a learning curve for everyone, if people actually researched what systemd did, didn't do and comprises of, most of the negative comments would disappear (apart from a few trolls).
      It would help if they understood that the systemd project includes the 3 main components of systemd, journald and udev (which are dependent on each other) and is a collection of *optional* executables which can replace the current executables if you want to. They should have called the project something different to stop the confusion.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    25. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because. Unix. Philosophy.

    26. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

      Are you going to be able to create a log reading tool like journalctl? Once you've used journalctl a few times, you'll see the binary logging is appropriate.

      What's pathetic is that you are so unfamiliar with Unix that you can't write your own log analysis script yourself, so you think binary logging is a good idea.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    27. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      you can still use your shell scripts within systemd

      That's not the issue, but I am unsurprised to see you get this wrong because your reading comprehension is for shit and you are willfully disingenuous when it comes to systemd. The issue is not being able to use shell scripts, the issue is the additional unnecessary complexity of systemd. See, all you need is init and some very small shell scripts, of about the same complexity it would take to replace you.

      Boot time is a side product of systemd not a target but it does benefit those that load and kill VMs a lot, perhaps not an issue for your systems.

      It doesn't really. Saving four or five seconds off the boot is quite irrelevant.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    28. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that why you couldn't use the same sysvinit script on both debian and redhat systems? There never was platform independence with sysvinit, in fact Linux was the only system left using sysvinit all other unixes used other forms of init.

    29. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by kthreadd · · Score: 1

      Of course you can, but it's not convenient. There are almost as many ways to format log entries as there are programs that write them; doing a one-off script that parses a particular log file format is not that hard, making it work well with every log file is. When people say "binary logs" they should be aware of that we're not talking about a full SQL style database here. It's pretty much a text file with a couple of standardized fields so that journald can index it properly and so that we don't have to care about date formats (which can be different under different locales), with or without time zone etc.

    30. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Nothing disingenuous about my comprehension, it's only the few anti that have that problem. I see the reasons for bashing systemd are changing. Once it's shown you can still use scripts you have to find another spurious angle. Why have loads of duplicated code in all those scripts? They all do basically the same thing. So what do you do to monitor those services started by the scripts? Manually watch them or add another binary to watch and restart them? Computing is all about automation, nothing wrong in getting the OS service management More automated.

      Saving seconds on boot in commercial context is always beneficial. The more time generating money or increasing customer service the better. Have that argument with your commercial manager.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    31. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Linux kernel, GUIs - explain the Unix philosophy on those

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    32. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 2

      It's pointless explaining to posters who are so anti, they're not going to change their mind even if everything turns to gold. He obviously didn't fully understand or read what I wrote. He totally ignored the rest of my post which addressed his comment.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    33. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Just in case my post you replied to was too long to read.. here is the rest of it

      I know i'd rather my admins use journalctl to extract logs for a specific time span using one line rather than spend time writing and debugging scripts to extract logs from all separate files, merge and sort them into order before looking into the problem. journalctl is basically a time saver that has more data than current logging systems and time coded logs that reflect time zones correctly.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    34. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Important features that nobody want or asked for. We want init to startup the system in a stable and predictable way. Period! The old systems did this with friggin bells on! Systemd does NOT! Any more questions?

      (If you want the glory that is Windows, GO FRIGGIN BUY MICROSOFT STOCK! Don't destroy every other OS in a feeble attempt to become billionaires!)

    35. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Linux looking after its own interests" - Linux has gone sentient?!?! PULL THE PLUG! NOW! NOW! PULl it...n....

      "Would you like to play a game? (Y/n)"

    36. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      straw poll round the office last week out of the technical people (we work in a sys rescue and security dept for a backbone provider), 4 dislike systemd, and one is ambivalent. But he's also the guy running ubuntu because it "comes with nice friendly gui's for everything"...
      We'll run what we're forced to by the idiots in marketing who buy and standardise on systems, that's how its been since time immortal in IT. But away from the behmoth, Id say almost none really want it on their systems (I personally have openrc on gentoo on all my machines at home).
      I can't log in my 6 digit uin because I've lost control of it since dice took over so anon coward I'll have to be, although I signed up when freshmeat still had the transparent logo with the zombie crawling through it if you want to know how long I've been active in unix/linux circles, but take a step back, read all the comments here pro and anti, and it appears you seem to be the only consistent loud voice trying to shout everyone down. Quietly think about if you need to look and coldly analyse if those people do actually have a point and try not to get too religious about it.
      If its any good, it'll get adopted, if not, redhat will force it all down the corporate throats as a end run round the gpl anyway but meanwhile in the free world...

    37. Re: Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > The problems with systemd go far beyond mere bugs. They are flaws with its design philosophy and architecture. These aren't fixed with simple patches and some testing! The only way to fix these is by completely throwing away what's there, and starting from scratch, doing things completely differently.

      Ah, another armchair developer.

      > When you start doing this, then you end up with the sorts of init systems that we've been using very successfully for so many decades:

      You are referring to the systems that were all made obsolete by systemd?

      > init systems that are truly modular (a bunch of non-portable, highly dependent libraries and daemons like systemd consists of is not true modularity),

      Yeap, armchair developer. Sorry, you do not even see far enough to understand why your simple little world got overrun by systemd.

      > that do not use binary logs (practice shows that text logs are the only sensible option),

      Journals is basically an implementation detail. Nothing worth the breath to discuss this even.

      > and that only focus on providing an init system (unlike systemd which tries to handle logging, logins, network configuration, time-setting, virtual terminal support, and so many things totally unrelated to an init system).

      Systemd is gaining a lot of ground because it is a mostly decent init system that provides a service for other stuff to use besides starting daemons: Cgroups management. Yes, cgroups are a kernel feature and they are a pretty simple concept, they can be done outside of init as well. But systemd made them easy to use and fully integrated them into the init system. This enables services like logind and others. Developers want to use that stuff, so they make their code depend on systemd (directly or indirectly). And that is where the whole system around systemd comes from and what provides the value of systemd. The init system is not even important.

      > Maybe Linux does need a new init system. But that init system sure as hell isn't systemd, or anything like systemd!

      "Linux" will go where the developers go. Systemd has all the mindshare at this time, so systemd is where Linux will move towards for the next couple of years. Devuan and void Linux and whatever else is not using systemd are going to be harder and harder to maintain as more and more developers will rely on systemd being there and will just use the features that (or its surrounding ecosystem) provides.

      How to stop this? Come up with a compelling offer to developers that is better than systemd. "Better" could be cross platform, or easier to use for developers, or closer to "unix philosophy" or whatever. It does not really matter.

      But so there is only denial ("sysv init had no problems") and conspiracy theories ("the NSA is pushing systemd") and not even an attempt to even think about the problems systemd is addressing. That is the part that makes me sad about the whole topic.

    38. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You actually have something to contribute besides propaganda? Because you are just lying through your teeth here. But I guess as a systemd-shill, you are being paid to do so. Still makes you a bad person.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    39. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Megol · · Score: 1

      you can still use your shell scripts within systemd

      That's not the issue, but I am unsurprised to see you get this wrong because your reading comprehension is for shit and you are willfully disingenuous when it comes to systemd. The issue is not being able to use shell scripts, the issue is the additional unnecessary complexity of systemd. See, all you need is init and some very small shell scripts, of about the same complexity it would take to replace you.

      Cute insult. If it had come from someone significant that is, now it's just as pathetic as yourself.

      And while you could be sort of right in an embedded system most people complaining aren't using Systemd in that context. In a dynamic context like a desktop machine/notebook computer/workstation your idea of "small shell scripts" really goes out of the window.

    40. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the problem with the systemd detractors: First it was some criticisms, then other people jumped on parroting the same criticisms but peppering the post with ad hominems until ultimately all the posts end up like yours: a half dozen paragraphs of ranting with no actual information on what you are ranting about. There's no objective facts in your post, just name-calling and rabble-rousing. Indeed the title of your post is exactly that!

      Yes it doesn't do things "the UNIX way" and some people have gotten upset about that, then even more upset when the wider community didn't care about it. If any significant portion of the Linux community is indeed very anti-systemd then there should be plenty of resources to maintain existing systems and if those systems are better then that is what people will use.

      A popular criticism is that software developers will come to rely on systemd and programs will not be portable to UNIX/UNIX-like non-systemd architectures for example FreeBSD, OSX and Linux distros that do not include systemd. Can you give an example of what fundamental requirement is there for developers that is so difficult to work around to make the program work in a non-systemd environment?

    41. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am not being fine with being pressured to move to systemd. That is a hostile and destructive act, nothing else.

      Then don't use it. If the level of anti-systemd hysteria is actually representative of any significant part of the community then there are plenty of resources to simply maintain an existing non-systemd distro, it is free software!

    42. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We'll run what we're forced to by the idiots in marketing who buy and standardise on systems, that's how its been since time immortal in IT.

      Yes yes and you won't push back because your manager is an idiot and will side with the marketing idiots who choose to standardise on a system produced by those idiot Linux developers which will then be used by the idiots that call your office for support...man everybody is an idiot except you amirite?

    43. Re:Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Once it's shown you can still use scripts you have to find another spurious angle.

      You can call script snippets, but they are not allowed to do the same as init scripts did, including calling each other, detaching, or prompting. You're shoehorned into the limited context of systemd.

      Why have loads of duplicated code in all those scripts? They all do basically the same thing.

      The answer is in your one word "basically". There is a word for "95% the same", and that's "different". There's another word for not dealing correctly with the 5%, and that's "broken".

      So what do you do to monitor those services started by the scripts? Manually watch them or add another binary to watch and restart them?

      When something needs to know the status, it calls the start/stop script with a "status" parameter. And for most jobs, you don't need to monitor anything. Some tasks are one-time jobs, and others are monitored from the outside.

      And if there needs to be a watchdog, you use an actual watchdog. One that fits the task at hand, not one that can't handle special requirements. One that's capable of things like asking "is the master up?", and not just "am I up?". One that's capable of negotiating with neighbors on who should propagate to become a master. One that isn't interested in whether a process is present, but whether a service is present. One that allows for systems to have different runtime configurations. including dynamic changes, like ensuring services are not running, but present and configured to start when needed. Like adding/removing services without requiring a reboot.

      The great thing about init scrpts is that they give you the freedom.

      Computing is all about automation, nothing wrong in getting the OS service management More automated.

      You got that too wrong. What matters the most to businesses are reliability and costs. Whether that is achieved through minions or hardware or licenses is irrelevant.

      Automation is only good if it can be relied on. And when the unexpected happens, as it is wont to, that it can be troubleshot and repaired with a minimum of impact.
      If it means a week of production downtime when things go wrong, because nobody can troubleshoot and fix what's wrong, it's not a benefit.

      A good sysadmin plans for the unexpected. Not just for sunshine days, or things that can be anticipated. Sure, plan for that too, but don't rely on it. Things will go pear shaped, and that's when you need a human to be able to troubleshoot and fix things, with a minimum of impact to the customer. Who, quite frankly, doesn't give a damn about automation and other methods, but whether the product is available, and how long it will take to fix it when it isn't. Not how. That's the domain of the sysadmin.
      And the experienced sysadmin says loud and clear that systemd is utter shite, that puts all the eggs in one basket, adds restrictions, and is too abstracted to troubleshoot in any meaningful way when things go wrong.
      I see systems set up by other admins that have important jobs started through at, cron or even remote runners, to avoid systemd, and regain control. Even a /dev2 system that avoids systemd-udev trampling all over the place like an elephant in a china factory. I cannot blame them one bit.

    44. Re: Hogwash! Poppycock! Rubbish! by PPH · · Score: 1

      List all the dependencies then,

      I started counting Gnome apps but I gave up.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  8. Missing editor, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    to write new haikus with, during the boot process.

  9. Just mutteriing out loud by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    I always thought that system startup should be controllable by the user, but that dependencies ought to be mapped graphically so that you have some idea of what ELSE you're going to be knocking out by stopping, for instance, system interrupts or the RTC.

    That said, I'm pretty fond of init.d and crew. :/

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:Just mutteriing out loud by waddlesplash · · Score: 2

      We are, too. We get it: systemd sucks. So when we say "inspired", we meant it -- that it's inspired, not a direct clone of it.

    2. Re:Just mutteriing out loud by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Could it be a direct clone? Has Haiku implemented Linux cgroups or a compatible cgroups?

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    3. Re:Just mutteriing out loud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, there is no cgroup equivalent in Haiku as of now. But if it were, it would definitely be a nice feature to be copied.

  10. Coffee break by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ahhhh, nice. Another cup of coffee, while we wait for Haiku not getting released for another decade.

    Ahhhh, nice. Another Hurd.

    1. Re:Coffee break by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it's incredible. Not only does it never get released (apparently). It's also a very very buggy OS from what I can tell. It doesn't recognize my brand new Lenovo's WiFi adapter, and the 1440p screen is stuck at some weird vesa resolution, I think. Moreover, it took only a couple of hours of random testing for the partition to get completely corrupted (!)

      Sigh.

    2. Re: Coffee break by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're kind of an idiot if you think an alpha release of an OS, especially a niche one, is going to support anything in your new laptop. Especially since it requires a driver from FreeBSD. Is your wifi card running an open source firmware? Does it have video card not made by nvidia or amd that's actually got an open source driver?

      Maybe you were joking? I hope you were. If not, just stop talking, and go learn how to use your computer first.

    3. Re: Coffee break by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your response is a perfect example of why open source operating systems never manage to capture even the slightest portion of the desktop/laptop market.

      The other AC pointed out some very real and serious problems affecting Haiku.

      The only reasonable response you could have given would have been, "I'm sorry to hear that your experience has been so awful. I will commit some fixes right away."

      But, no, you decide to treat that user like total crap. Right away you start off with an insult ("idiot"), followed by a string of irrelevant excuses ("alpha release", "niche", "new laptop", "driver from FreeBSD", "open source firmware", "open source driver"), followed by more insults ("you were joking", "just stop talking", "go learn how to use your computer").

      When you're acting as a representative of the Haiku project, even if you're an unofficial one, and you reply in such a manner, then you make the entire Haiku project look really bad. Now instead of seeing Haiku as an operating system that takes bugs seriously and continuously strives to offer a better experience, we instead see it as a questionable project with a community that treats its users like dirt.

      Way to go. You've tarnished the reputation and image of the entire Haiku project with your disrespectful response.

    4. Re: Coffee break by armanox · · Score: 1

      Except his response (until the insults) is fairly reasonable - the OS is alpha quality at best, and is not suitable for production use. He also points out that the project is lacking in drivers and firmware currently. Furthermore, he comments about having issues with a 1440p display - there is a fair chance the developers do not have access to a 1440p display to test with (not exactly a common display resolution). Finally, I doubt marketshare is a goal of the Haiku project (and there are many projects (see the GNOME desktop) that claim that marketshare is not a goal of theirs).

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    5. Re: Coffee break by Kagetsuki · · Score: 1

      I'd argue that the reason for low OSS OS adoption on the desktop has much more to do with the target market. Haiku can basically exist as a little niche OS with very few users who only care about their specific hardware configurations because at the end of the day it's an OS for people who were fans of BeOS. It doesn't have some killer feature or some market it's aiming to grab.

      Linux on the other hand can be made into what you want. While there are some vendors who build out to catch the desktop market there are a limited number. Furthermore, there is the question of weather or not most devs would want a larger desktop market in the first place. Why have more bug reports, more uninformed support requests, more complaining users when you don't actually monetarily benefit. If we're going to start encouraging a market where Linux will rule the desktop we need to find some way to properly pay the developers of the software that allows it to be a desktop OS.

    6. Re: Coffee break by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but... a bog standard Lenovo laptop not booting an OS 15 years in the works? That's pretty lame. That's what you get for making your own kernel and, for the most part, your own driver infrastructure. The FreeBSD wifi stuff runs on top of a really bad IP stack too.

      I owned a company who developed audio interface/conversion software for BeOS and want nothing more than Haiku to succeed, but I gave up hope a long time ago really.

  11. No no fucking answer from a nay-sayer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The people complaining about systemd aren't complaining because it's different. They're complaining about it because it's utter shit!

    For crying out loud, systemd's most vocal opponents are career sysadmins with the most experience. These are the people who are least bothered by change! They're completely accustomed to it. Change has been the story of their careers. In fact, they're the biggest supporters of change, when it's done right.

    When you're a professional admin who has dealt with various versions of Windows, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, OS X, Linux, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and many other OSes each week for years or decades, change itself is a total non-issue.

    People have a problem with systemd because it has so often done something that no init system should ever do: prevented the operating system from fully booting.

    Read through the mailing list archives of the major Linux distros that have switched to it. Read through the bug reports. It's disturbing how many problems people report with it. It's especially disturbing when a project like Debian, which for so many years prided itself on a very high level of reliability, has its reputation tarnished thanks to its awful transition to systemd.

    The opposition to systemd has never been about change itself. It has been about changing to something that experience shows is rife with serious problems.

    The opponents of systemd would gladly accept change, but this change needs to bring improvements, not problems.

    You're still whining what not giving any specifics.

    And I've been on distro mailing lists before; all the cock-suckers did was bitch about top-posting and netiquitte, so you can take your distro mailing lists and shove them up you ass.

  12. They're still working on this? Really? by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

    It's been over 2.5 years since their last "alpha" release. I figured it had been abandoned completely by now.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  13. Re:They're still working on this? Really? by Z80a · · Score: 1

    It will be THE OS of choice on the world Post-skynet but pre-Reploid maverick era.

  14. Re:They're still working on this? Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is a dead project. The original goals (accurate BeOS clone with binary compatibility) is gone. Last time I checked, the OS forces on you a completely new filessytem hierarchy where every non-document folder (including configuration folders) is virtual, read-only, and unavailable to the user. Of course, no BeOS software can be installed or is compatible at all.

    Considering what they did to the software installation concept, I'd expect their new boot system to be much, much worse than systemd.

  15. Re:They're still working on this? Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Iam a long term BeOS/Haiku user. I dont have a problem with the PM stuff and i still use some old software in the non-packaged area, but sad to say BeBits and haikuware got shutdown by the owner to promote his haiku fork. After the 2 main software sources got shutdown, there is no reason to change something the way PM works, because we have (almost) no unpackaged software anymore...

    As long as the boot system boots the system iam fine with it.

  16. Re:They're still working on this? Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What, do you want releases every six weeks like Firefox?

  17. Re:They're still working on this? Really? by Megol · · Score: 1

    You are sadly wrong. If Haiku didn't still have the goal of being a BeOS clone instead of a modern OS inspired by BeOS we maybe could have had a useful system instead of the half-ready mess that it is now.

    But improvements of the bad parts of BeOS isn't the problem.