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Systemd Rolls Out Its Own Mount Tool (phoronix.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the daemons-that-mount-files dept.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: I'm surprised this hasn't surfaced on Slashdot already, but yesterday Phoronix reported that systemd will soon be handling file system mounts, along with all the other stuff that systemd has encompassed. The report generated the usual systemd arguments over on Reddit.com/r/linux with Lennart Poettering, systemd developer and architect, chiming in with a few clarifications.
Lennart argued it will greatly improve the handling of removable media like USB sticks.

36 of 541 comments (clear)

  1. heck with linux.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    we should all just install systemd and be done.

    1. Re:heck with linux.. by sconeu · · Score: 5, Funny

      Systemd would be a a great OS... all it needs is a decent init system.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  2. Obligatory parseltongue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lennnnnnnarrrrrt Potttttterrrrrrr

  3. SystemD? by Nethead · · Score: 5, Funny

    I keep hearing about this SystemD thing. Is this the OS that Linux runs on?

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    1. Re:SystemD? by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think it is like Emacs without the editor part.

    2. Re:SystemD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That would be funny if it weren't true.

    3. Re:SystemD? by lucm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it is like Emacs without the editor part.

      Emacs has been around since 1976 -- I've used it almost daily since 1985. Let's see if systemd is still here and useful in 40 years.

      You're like the senior management at Blockbusters who saw Netflix as a minor niche player who presented no threat to them. Or like the managers at Polaroid who thought digital cameras were just a fantasy.

      Systemd is a cancer and it will keep spreading until the host is dead. Just like cancer it's not malicious, it sincerely believes it knows better than the healthy cells it's infecting, but that doesn't make it less lethal.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    4. Re:SystemD? by DeVilla · · Score: 5, Funny

      /me waits for a low 4 digit UID guy to extoll the virtues of "ed".

      You've got me boxed in a corner here.

  4. Does not replace mount by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    From Lennart's reddit comment:

    "first of all, this doesn't replace util-linux' mount tool. Not at all. It just tells systemd to mount something, going through systemd's dependency logic. For the actual mount operation PID 1 will fork off util-linux' mount tool like it always did."

    Big fucking deal.

    1. Re: Does not replace mount by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So it's subsumed the auto mounter. That is no better.

    2. Re:Does not replace mount by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We really don't want systemd to do its "dependency logic" for mounts. Case in point: have a btrfs RAID, physically remove one of its disks and mount with -o degraded. A basic operation that doesn't involve an init daemon and is impossible to get wrong, right? Not on systemd. If your RAID happens to be in fstab (ie, any real case other than when running from rescue media), systemd will helpfully instantly unmount it again. There's no known workaround for this bug other than commenting out the mount in fstab (or upgrading to sysvinit...).

      I don't get how one could possibly screw this up. So systemd runs a daemon statting all your mountpoints just so it can unmount them if it believes some dependency isn't met?!?

      Other cases where it messes with filesystems are not better. Where rsyslog goes to great lengths to ensure logs survive a system crash, sometimes even in annoying ways (like disk spinup on laptops) and uses append-only plain text logs that are readable even when heavily corrupted, systemd not only makes corruption and total data loss nearly guaranteed, but even goes out of its way to disable data consistency features (checksums, protection from torn writes, transactions) because "performance" and spams you with warnings if you manually turn them back.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re: Does not replace mount by silanea · · Score: 5, Interesting

      [...] I get that the Unix way is to have lots of little utilities and services doing specific things, but it actually turned out to not be the best model. [...]

      This is where most of the disagreement lies: It has not turned out to be the worse model. SystemD supporters are mostly concerned with the desktop (re. the user-does-stuff-with-thumbdrive rationale given for the mount manager). On the desktop, the SystemD approach makes a certain amount of sense. Though I have to strongly disagree on the notion that its implementation is anywhere near clean, hardened or tested, but given the timeframe and the ever-increasing scope that is to be expected and will likely improve over time - hell, all the alternatives it is trying to replace were shit when they came out. On the desktop SystemD is an improvement over the status quo, not the only possible venue, maybe not the ideal one, but it is here now and it mostly works.

      But many Linux users care first and foremost about one use case, and one alone: the server. And on the server the UNIX way is the right way. The only sensible way, actually. On the server things like auto-mounting a thumbdrive so a user can diddle with it are not a thing. As are most other things SystemD is trying to do. Here SystemD is only one thing: a superfluous, possibly dangerous OS on top of the OS.

      The balance between desktop and server has been turned over. I think it is great that the desktop is receiving more attention, don't get me wrong. But not at this cost.

      --
      Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
    4. Re:Does not replace mount by TemporalBeing · · Score: 4, Interesting

      From Lennart's reddit comment:

      "first of all, this doesn't replace util-linux' mount tool. Not at all. It just tells systemd to mount something, going through systemd's dependency logic. For the actual mount operation PID 1 will fork off util-linux' mount tool like it always did."

      Big fucking deal.

      Well, IMHO, it just means one more thing to go wrong. I recently had to diagnose why my agent - started via a /etc/init.d script - would not start after having been killed using "kill -9" on a systemd-based system (Deb8); running the program and daemonizing it directly worked just fine, but the init script wouldn't start it. Reason? Systemd had some state somewhere that would only get cleared if "service myservice stop" was run. Only then would the init script work.

      Expect this to be similar where you'll have systemd mount something during boot, and then for some reason it gets unmounted in a way systemd didn't expect and now you can't remount it because systemd thinks its still mounted but won't tell you that.

      systemd is just a piece of crap that needs to be removed.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    5. Re: Does not replace mount by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes it is better as a read of the link would quickly show. It allows a user to plug in a USB stick, mount the device, mount the FS, schedule an fsck and reduce the danger if the user unplugs the stick without an explicit unmount.

      Neither you, nor the link, have described anything “better” (or for that matter, “new”). It's also pretty clear that you didn't actually read the link, or you would know that very little described in the link will actually protect anyone from pulling a flash drive out before it's been cleanly unmounted. The problem with slow flash media is (and has always been) that a considerable amount of "written" data is buffered before actually being flushed out to disk. There is nothing systemd-mount can do about that. If the flash drive is no longer plugged in, you can't flush the unwritten data to it, because it's physically not there anymore. No amount of on-access fscking is going to bring that data back. What an on-access fsck will do, is try to make sure the filesystem is at least mountable. Nothing more. It doesn't decrease the danger of an unplug without unmount at all, it tries to tidy up a bit after the real damage has already been done, and does so without letting the user know the scale of the damage. Out of sight, out of mind. A very Lennart solution.

      Now, take the rubbish about unsafely unplugged USB drives/on-access fsck out of the equation for a second, and what does systemd-mount actually provide? It provides better systemd integration. Nothing described in the link is unique to systemd, not even the possibility of on-access fsck. We've gone from a system where we can fully script every aspect of the start-up process, to one where you need to write code to integrate well, and half of the smaller jobs are being undertaken by the project itself because nobody can be bothered. What a gross monster we've created.

  5. Wrapper, not replacement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a new wrapper around the existing mount tool. Systemd is changing how it mounts things to standardize that portion of jobs, and it's also handling auto-mounting of external media, like your desktop environment probably already does. has done for ages.

    1. Re:Wrapper, not replacement by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yep. That won't stop the hivemind from shouting against it, though. According to Slashdotters, everything must be done as it's always been done, regardless of any externalities.

      Meanwhile, I have a server (based on an ugly inherited design) that has to figure out its remote filesystems based on the network structure, as determined by a user-run script. The process I inherited was to boot the server, run the script, then mount the filesystems it reported needing. Then and only then could the main daemon be started manually.

      Fuck that.

      An upcoming rework will automate the process with scripts, but it seems like the sort of thing that falls right in systemd's wheelhouse. Systemd's goal is to start the system services, which would reasonably include my daemon. It therefore also seems reasonable that systemd could have access to mounting functions, to ensure the system is ready to start that daemon.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re:Wrapper, not replacement by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

      According to Slashdotters, everything must be done as it's always been done, regardless of any externalities.

      Which is kinda ironic for a forum once centered around new technology. We've gotten old :(.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    3. Re:Wrapper, not replacement by lgw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Systemd objections are not about "any change is bad". They're about "this change is bad".

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    4. Re:Wrapper, not replacement by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. We didn't mind simpleinit, or upstart or openRC or slackware's BSD-init - all of these were different init systems in the past. We didn't mount autofs or any of a dozen mount helpers added on top of the unix basic during the years.

      To suggest that the opposition to SystemD is generically opposing change is to ignore that the people opposing it have been embracing change in all the areas where it plays for decades and are STILL embracing change in those areas - we're just not embracing THIS change because we believe it's badly designed. Having this many basic tools in a common code-base with massive interdependency that makes it near impossible to swap tools out with other tools or run any of them without running all of them... THAT Is a terrible design.

      Hell, we don't even do that on the desktop where it may almost make sense. For over a decade KDE has had performance improvements if you run KDE apps in a KDE desktop - but never, once, did we have a KDE app you couldn't run under Gnome or OpenBox or any other DE you want. The coupling was always weak - use the features when available, don't depend on them. And vice versa - all the apps ran under all the desktops. You didn't struggle to run gimp or libreOffice if you chose KDE as your desktop - despite neither of them being written for it. In fact, there were patches you could install to integrate them better which were entirely optional.

      That's a good design.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    5. Re:Wrapper, not replacement by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know it's weird, but there is literally not a single thing on your list that Linux hasn't been used for successfully and doing successfully for the better part of 20 years. None of these are new problems. So since systemD is only 6 years old and most major distro's didn't adopt it until the last 3, I guess all of us were just suffering some mass delusion when we watched all this stuff working beautifully back in 2000 when nobody had ever concevied of systemD - and progressively get better every year since.

      Now nobody is saying that there cannot be better solutions for this - what I can tell you is that a better solution CANNOT come from a massive bunch of tightly coupled tools with opague interfaces that are so utterly cross dependent that none of them can run (at least without massive hacks) unless you also run all the others.

      The ONLY way to EVER do a good solution - especially at the system level - is to build it out of lots of LOOSELY coupled tiny bits that don't care how you put them together or what you put them together with (including pieces that the creators never knew existed).
      That design has allowed an OS first compiled in 1969 to scale to the largest supercomputers and the smallest embedded devices alike, to survive 50 years of computing history jumping from platform to platform and architecture to architecture, resilient across one major revolution after the other - because it could adapt to any need and any use-case. Because you never had to redesign it to meet a new challenge, you just had to add a few small tools to the mix, and put the others together in a new way.

      The lego-blocks approach is the heart and soul of the unix philosophy - and it's a philosophy worth preserving because that philosophy is literally the ONLY thing that has caused Unix to be the single longest-living architecture in computer history. It's an architecture that's so easy to evolve that no revolution was out of it's reach. From mainframes to PC's to phones - it went where the hardware went and was consistently the most reliable and cheapest and fit-for-purpose answer because it was designed to be easy to rebuild by simply taking the blocks and hooking them up in a new way that Kernighan and Ritchie never imagined.

      In other words - everything SystemD is not.

      We love doing things in new ways, we love change - but we're GOOD at spotting the difference between progress and regression - and systemd is NOT progress, systemD is doing on Linux the exact same mistakes that every operating system besides unix in history has made. If it remains dominant too long - the outcome will be that Linux goes the way of Multics or VMS because, like those, it will not be able to survive the next revolution.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  6. Re:Linux is far worse than Microsoft by Noryungi · · Score: 4, Informative

    yadda yadda yadda.

    Linux does not "force" you into anything: systemd is still optional and many linux distros run perfectly well without systemd (including my old friend Slackware).

    And if you really don't like Linux, there is always the BSD. Nope, no systemd there, no sirree.

    So anyway... yeah, you have no idea what you are talking about.

    --
    The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
  7. Devuan is a Debian distrro not shipping system d by chris2net23 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Devuan is a Debian distrro not shipping system d. I only know about it because it's supported by the EOMA68 project which aims to manufacture computers based around a modular computing standard that is free software friendly. Unlike Intel/AMD: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...

  8. When the only tool you have is a hammer... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lennart argued it will greatly improve the handling of removable media like USB sticks.

    ... everything starts looking like a nail.

  9. When everything you do by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 4, Insightful

    invited complaints, counter-arguments, and forks to get away from your shit, maybe you should take that as a hint to just stop. Chances are that you are, in fact, not the only sane man left.

    1. Re:When everything you do by johannesg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So why are so many distros using it? Maybe you should just take that as a hint to take it more seriously?

      What is the actual problem of using systemd as a mount tool? I've read the entire thread and not seen a single complaint other than the fact that it is "systemd by leonart poetering", which to me seems like an extremely childish case of shooting the messenger.

  10. Godwinned in just 17 minutes. by mark-t · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not a record... but still pretty impressive.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  11. Re:Linux is far worse than Microsoft by Etcetera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are systemd-free distros of Linux, you know. I can pretty confidently state that it will remain that way unless systemd should start to integrate itself into the kernel.

    Well, yes... Most importantly RHEL6 / CentOS6. Those of us using Linux in business/enterprise settings are mostly running that, and that's mostly what we care about. The time limit on that is what we're sweating.

    RedHat (Inc.) seems to be undervaluing its Good Will in terms of building an enterprise platform that goes well beyond RHEL subscriptions. EL users don't care about most of the systemd "feature" set (with the possible exception of easy(-ier) cgroup management), since most of the rest either doesn't apply or attempts to re-solve and already mostly-solved problem (eg, service monitoring and restart scripts). The cost is using less mature, less modular, less tested code with more common failure points, which might cover 80% of your needs but makes the other 20% of system customization really, really difficult, because apparently shell scripting is a Sin now.

    Oh, and most of your config management that worked pretty similarly between EL5 and EL6 has a *lot* more of a delta to work with EL7.

    "Forking Fedora" doesn't seem like it will happen, even though there are fewer and fewer non Kool-Aid drinkers there who think keeping your options open is a good thing.

    Do you know what I'd like for EL8? Fork EL6, update all the non-daemon RPM versions to their current Fedora level, and run systemd as Just Another Daemon, akin to xinetd, supervise, or your cluster management software.

    We get more reliable and more deterministic startup and shutdown process using the previous initscripts toolset and regular /sbin/init, and those who want the management capabilities of systemd for services can still use it, albeit with it not functioning as PID 1. I'd pay for that.

    --
    Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
  12. Re:Linux is far worse than Microsoft by Dagger2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Realistically, the Linux ecosystem forces you to pick between running a minor distro that you don't want to use, running a major distro with systemd removed (with broken functionality) or giving up and using systemd.

    I suppose you could technically call that "not forcing" on the basis that you made the choice to use Linux in the first place, but... nope. Still being forced.

  13. does not replace mount by JonathanP.Bennett · · Score: 4, Informative

    When I first read this on Phoronix, it appeared that systemd was replacing the mount command. This is not the case. It is wrapping the mount command. That seems to be an important distinction. Replacing mount would be crazy and pointless. Handling mounts more intelligently during startup would be welcome. So far, this seems to be the latter instead of the former.

  14. Slack Off by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use Slackware, so I don't need to know what it is all about. Thanks Pat!

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  15. Re:Since '85?! by bferrell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No actually old farts are being hired in droves. We're not "snowflakes" in need of constant coddling and stroking. We understand we work to pay our bills and be of service to our employers... Not fulfill our dream selves. Great if our job can be fulfilling, but not really necessary.

  16. Re:Linux is far worse than Microsoft by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    a major distro with systemd removed (with broken functionality)

    While this is mostly true for those hosting their own systems, one of the larger pieces of the Linux `ecosystem' today is AWS. The heavily used Amazon Linux AMI has the traditional SysV init and Amazon has not indicated that they intend to move to systemd. This at least ensures that it will not be possible to entirely neglect SysV init methods; if it doesn't run on EC2 it's broken for many people, and indeed there are cases of commercial software vendors discovering that their paying customers need SysV init compatibility for this reason.

    I personally haven't had problem with systemd anywhere I've had to deal with it, and I've become comfortable working with it. The doomsayers predicted all manner of problems with systemd. They were wrong as far as I know. A minor bug here and there, quickly fixed. Journalctl is very handy; a lot nicer than chasing creatively named log files hither and thither. On the other hand, when I deal with EC2 instances and SysV init I'm fine with that as well. I understand both the rational for systemd and the reasons behind Amazon staying with SysV init; I'm happy to live with both.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  17. Re:Linux is far worse than Microsoft by lucm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some of us actually know how to do more than yum -y install. You know -- that old fashioned "compile from source"? Or even find an rpm.

    The point is not "duh give me teh rpms", the point is why the fuck would you pay $2,000 per cpu per year to get a polite "piss off" from Red Hat whenever support is needed because you installed (from source or other) a version or software that is not in their repo. That's like renting a car that has no radio and bragging that you can go to Best Buy to get a car radio installed in it.

    If you want the general Red Har ecosystem but you rely on non-supported software, use CentOS for free and be done with it.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  18. Re:Linux is far worse than Microsoft by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Better for distro maintainers != better for users or better for Linux.

    Better is an ENTIRELY subjective thing. Better at what ? Better *how* ?

    Whether something is demonstrably better depends on what your chosen measurements are. That's like saying a Boeing 747 is demonstrably better a motorcycle.
    Whether or not the statement is true depends entirely on the job description. If the job description is 'ferrying lots of people from coast to coast" then it's true, if the job description is "getting to the other side of town with minimal traffic problems" then it's utterly false.

    No systemd is NOT better than anything by many, many measures. The only thing it is consistently better at is making distro maintainers' jobs easier. That's not a bad thing, but it's the wrong metric. Here in my country we have a similar issue in the medical insurance field. The largest local insurer by a long shot is also demonstrably the worst insurer you can have. They frequently refuse to pay claims they are liable for (relying on the imbalance of power their wealth gives them should a client choose to sue). Their customer service is absolutely atrocious.

    So how the hell did they get to be the biggest insurer ? Because the deals they offer employers is demonstrably the best in the market. They save employers lots of money, so employers make them the default insurance offered - and employees are stuck with the worst insurance imaginable.

    That's pretty much the relationship with systemd and distro-maintainers versus users.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  19. Re:Hmmm how bad could it be? by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

    Systemd-logind must be restarted every ~1000 SSH logins to prevent a ~25s delay

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

    Except... it wasn't a systemd bug at all. Per comment #16:

    Ok, with everyone confirming that the systemd patch is not required, I am closing the systemd part of the bug as 'Invalid' - let's only concentrate on the dbus part here. That being said, I would not like to release a new patch for dbus downstream if the patch hasn't been fully reviewed and approved upstream. In this case I would propose to wait a bit and see if a finalized patch will be available.

    Not that the presence of one bug in systemd would indicate that the whole approach is a bad idea... but it's rather funny that the one example you pick turns out not to be a systemd bug at all.

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  20. Systemd the distro by lucm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Great! What can we do to speed up this process a bit, its about time that linux started to replace some of its aging, creaking old architecture with new tools liberated of old, out of date practices and effectively made a system which took care of the things I really dont give a shit about.

    My computer is not my work, I use it to do my work, I do not want to spend time configuring it, I want to spend time doing my work and enjoying myself, I really couldnt give a fuck how to configure it 90% of the time.

    I think you summarize the problem pretty well. Systemd is a desktop solution for people who essentially want a Macbook.

    What would be great? Having systemd only in specialized desktop distributions. Not on servers and not on desktop for power users. Even better: systemd should be a distribution itself, not be a part of other distributions. And it would also have the exclusivity of pulseaudio.

    --
    lucm, indeed.