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Does Systemd Make Linux Complex, Error-Prone, and Unstable? (ungleich.ch)
"Systemd developers split the community over a tiny detail that decreases stability significantly and increases complexity for not much real value." So argues Nico Schottelius, talking about his experiences as the CEO of a Swiss company providing VM hosting, datacenters, and high-speed fiber internet. Long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd quotes Nico's essay:
While I am writing here in flowery words, the reason to use Devuan is hard calculated costs. We are a small team at ungleich and we simply don't have the time to fix problems caused by systemd on a daily basis. This is even without calculating the security risks that come with systemd. Our objective is to create a great, easy-to-use platform for VM hosting, not to walk a tightrope...
[W]hat the Devuan developers are doing is creating stability. Think about it not in a few repeating systemd bugs or about the insecurity caused by a huge, monolithic piece of software running with root privileges. Why do people favor Linux on servers over Windows? It is very easy: people don't use Windows, because it is too complex, too error prone and not suitable as a stable basis. Read it again. This is exactly what systemd introduces into Linux: error prone complexity and instability. With systemd the main advantage to using Linux is obsolete.
The essay argues that while Devuan foisted another choice into the community, "it is not their fault. Creating Devuan is simply a counteraction to ensure Linux stays stable. which is of high importance for a lot of people."
[W]hat the Devuan developers are doing is creating stability. Think about it not in a few repeating systemd bugs or about the insecurity caused by a huge, monolithic piece of software running with root privileges. Why do people favor Linux on servers over Windows? It is very easy: people don't use Windows, because it is too complex, too error prone and not suitable as a stable basis. Read it again. This is exactly what systemd introduces into Linux: error prone complexity and instability. With systemd the main advantage to using Linux is obsolete.
The essay argues that while Devuan foisted another choice into the community, "it is not their fault. Creating Devuan is simply a counteraction to ensure Linux stays stable. which is of high importance for a lot of people."
1. You've moved having a basic understanding of the boot process, and the ability to fix things, from having a decent knowledge of bash to being a C wizard.
2. You've broken decades of understanding the boot process.
3. It breaks KISS, as it doesn't simply do startup. Hell, it does ntpd.
It breaks a lot of the *concept* of unix. Maybe to something preferred by a lot of people - but it also turns it into an alien mess to a lot of other people.
So the short answer is: Yes, systemd makes things unnecessarily complex with little benefit.
That matches my experience - losing a lot of time trying to figure out why things don't work. The improved boot time is lost several times over.
I completely agree. Troubleshooting is really a bitch with systemd, much more time-consuming. For instance, often systemctl reports a daemon as failed while it's not, or suddenly decides that it didn't start because of some mysterious arbitrary timeout while the daemon just needs some time to run a maintenance tasks at startup time. And getting anything of value out of the log is a pain in the ass.
Quite often I end up writing control shell scripts specifically to be called by systemd, because this junkware is too fragile and capricious to work with actual daemons. That says a lot about the overal usefulness of systemd.
Nothing has been gained with systemd, at least not on servers.
lucm, indeed.
Troubleshooting is really a bitch with systemd, much more time-consuming. For instance, often systemctl reports a daemon as failed while it's not, or suddenly decides that it didn't start because of some mysterious arbitrary timeout while the daemon just needs some time to run a maintenance tasks at startup time.
Not to mention that the damn logs are not plain text, which in itself complicates things before you even have the chance to start troubleshooting.
#DeleteChrome
People who complain about systemd the most seem to have been using Linux for a very long time and just "don't want to change".
no, that's not it. people who have been using linux for a long time usually *know the corner-cases better*. in other words, they know *exactly* why it doesn't work and won't work, they know *exactly* the hell that it can and will create, under what circumstances, and they know *precisely* how they've been betrayed by the rail-roaded decisions made by distros without consulting them as to the complexities of the scenario to which they have been (successfully up until that point) deploying a GNU/Linux system.
also they've done the research - looked up systemd vs other init systems on the CVE mitre databases and gone "holy fuck".
also they've seen - perhaps even reported bugs themselves over the years - how well bugs are handled, and how reasonable and welcoming (or in some sad cases not, but generally it's ok) the developers are... then they've looked up the systemd bug database and how pottering abruptly CLOSES LEGITIMATE BUGREPORTS and they've gone "WHAT the fuck??"
also, they've been through the hell that was the "proprietary world", if they're REALLY old they've witnessed first-hand the "Unix Wars" and if they're not that old they experienced the domination of Windows through the 1990s. they know what a monoculture looks like and how dangerous that is for a computing eco-system.
in short, i have to apologise for pointing this out: they can read the danger signs far better than you can. sorry! :)
Can I ask, why don't you and other admins/devs like you start to contribute to systemd?
Lennart Poettering has specifically said that he will not accept many important kinds of patches, for example he refuses to merge any patch that improves cross-platform compatibility.
And what's the reason, because people on forums are complaining? Because binary log files break the UNIX philosophy?
Here is my analysis of systemd, spread across multiple posts (links towards the bottom). It's poorly written software (the interfaces are bad, you can read through my links for more explanation), and that will only get worse over time if an effort isn't made to isolate it over time. This is basic system architecture.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I really struggle to reconcile the Slashdot view that systemd is total crap and the fact that every major Linux distro has switched to it.
The Linux ecosystem is not sane. Redhat wanted more control of Linux so they pushed systemd. GNOME developers are easily distracted by shiny things (as proof I submit GNOME 3) so they went ahead and made GNOME dependent on it. And then Debian (which most Linux distributions are based upon) adopted systemd because GNOME depended on it. There were some other excuses, but that's the biggest reason. You can blame Redhat and Debian for this clusterfuck, and really, only a small handful of people in the Debian community are actually responsible for Debian's involvement. Debian's leaders were split almost down the middle on whether they should go to systemd. This is why major changes should require a 2/3 vote (or more!)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"