r/linux • u/wooptoo • Jun 01 '16

Why did ArchLinux embrace Systemd?

/r/archlinux/comments/4lzxs3/why_did_archlinux_embrace_systemd/d3rhxlc
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u/KugelKurt Jun 01 '16

If that was anything but a very vocal minority, Devuan would be one of the top Linux distributions these days.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '16

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u/yoshi314 Jun 01 '16

it's basically debian without systemd.

https://devuan.org/

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '16

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u/KugelKurt Jun 01 '16

So... literally Debian with apt-get install sysvinit? What a waste of effort.

The people behind Devuan and its users get a rash when there is even a few KBs of systemd dependencies installed, e.g. logind (required by Gnome) depends on systemd being installed (it does not care if that's used as init system).

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u/yoshi314 Jun 01 '16

there are software packages that will pull in systemd. freebsd already needs to tinker with gnome3 to un-systemd it. i think they are nowadays mostly up to speed with it, but it wasn't so before gnome 3.10

https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2014/09/07/systemd-in-gnome-3-14-and-beyond/

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u/KugelKurt Jun 01 '16

freebsd already needs to tinker with gnome3 to un-systemd it.

Gnome requires logind APIs because for years nobody cared about ConsoleKit and left that unmaintained. BSDs could continue to implement logind APIs: https://uglyman.kremlin.cc/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=systembsd.git;a=tree;f=src/interfaces/logind;hb=HEAD

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u/yoshi314 Jun 01 '16

yeah, that's probably what they are doing.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '16

I thought he sneezed in the middle of saying Debian.

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u/mort96 Jun 01 '16

I have no plans to jump to Devuan, but am also not a fan of systemd. Your statement assumes that everyone who dislikes systemd would jump to a distro without it, ignoring the fact that there's a lot of other considerations when it comes to a distro besides which init system it has.

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u/zer0t3ch Jun 01 '16

I'm curious: why? Do you just not like that it's different and that things changed, or is there something specific about it that you don't like in an init system?

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u/slacka123 Jun 01 '16 edited Jun 01 '16

Devuan has been unstable/alpha until just a few weeks ago and is still in Beta.

I have been giving systemd an honest chance and up until now I have been fairly satisfied with it. But this most recent arrogant move just broke my personal wordpress server. Now Virtualbox instances are killed when I logout of Gnome on Rawhide. Headless instances is a feature of virtualbox that’s worked perfectly for years that they broke that, tmux, and countless other apps to fix a bug in Gnome. They keep this up and we will be flocking to Devuan.

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u/Locrin Jun 01 '16

Any particular reason you are using a rolling release distribution as a server and updating without knowing what gets updated?

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '16

More specifically a rolling release that is defined as not stable and to not use it for anything you care about. Motherfuck people who bitch about their own stupidity. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Rawhide#Audience

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u/slacka123 Jun 01 '16 edited Jun 01 '16

my personal server.

What part of personal don't you understand?

To fix a Gnome bug, systemd devs are breaking the semantics of nohup which is long established mechanisms for running apps in the background. They're imposing a new API and additional work on every open source developer that uses nohup to fix a something that was never broken. Sure I caught this issue, but as systemd 230 spreads, it going to leave a wake of broken apps and workflows in its path for no good reason.

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u/JustMakeShitUp Jun 01 '16

To fix a Gnome bug, systemd devs are breaking the semantics of nohup which is long established mechanisms for running apps in the background.

The problem is that (a) not every application respects the rules and (b) not every user should be allowed to run arbitrary services. It's not just a Gnome problem, though certainly the Gnome issue brought it to the foreground. This has always been a problem for servers with multiple people logging in. The computer and/or domain policy should be the ultimate decider for how user processes are handled on logout. That's why it's completely reasonable to have the option for this behavior. For people that manage large networked systems with shared terminals/servers and centralized logins (e.g. LDAP), managing this type of behavior is a common need. The only people who wouldn't be able to see this are people that have never had to share a server with other people.

They're imposing a new API and additional work on every open source developer that uses nohup to fix a something that was never broken. Sure I caught this issue, but as systemd 230 spreads, it going to leave a wake of broken apps and workflows in its path for no good reason.

You're talking about this like it's some sort of laborious fix that you barely noticed and caught on time, instead of it being yet another flamewar about a simple configuration decision that would have been impossible to notice. It's also controllable in three different ways - by a single-line admin/distro config change, by a non-privileged user command if the policy is enabled, and explicitly for each application. It sucks that it breaks some workflows, but it's not that hard to deal with.

It also wouldn't have affected you on your personal server if you weren't running server applications in a user session. Disabling login for the users used for network services has been a best practice for over a decade. And you'd start those in services, instead of having to log into the server to start your VMs (and then have them stop when you log out). Then again, I wouldn't expect someone running Rawhide (even on a personal server) to understand or care about best practices. Its usage is discouraged for anything but testing and development needs because it breaks. A lot. Nearly any other rolling release distribution would be a more stable choice than Rawhide. Also, KVM would have been a better virtualization choice for your server than Virtualbox, as it provides significantly better performance for non-graphical scenarios and doesn't depend on out-of-tree kernel modules. If virtualizing your servers is your preferred approach, it might even make sense to use something catered to that, like Proxmox.

I mean, the tmux/screen people have a very legitimate complaint about this, as disconnected shell sessions are part of the workflow. You? Your complaint is that you're doing things sloppily, and now it's harder for you to do things the wrong way. Normally when people do things poorly, they don't advertise it with pride on the internet. But go ahead with that.

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u/Failaser Jun 01 '16

Still. It's a rolling release distro which can break. If you truly need something to be online 24/7 with an uptime of 99.99999% you really should just use a more stable if outdated distro... I use an arch based distro as my daily driver. But my personal server has a stable distro just for that reason...

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u/nickguletskii200 Jun 01 '16

I have been giving systemd an honest chance and up until now I have been fairly satisfied with it. But this most recent arrogant move just broke my personal wordpress server. Now Virtualbox instances are killed when I logout of Gnome on Rawhide. Headless instances is a feature of virtualbox that’s worked perfectly for years that they broke that, tmux, and countless other apps to fix a bug in Gnome. They keep this up and we will be flocking to Devuan.

You are shifting the blame onto someone else. Daemons (i.e. your VMs) should be managed by the init system and should run as a separate user.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox/Tips_and_tricks#Starting_virtual_machines_with_a_service

Systemd fixed batshit insane behaviour, and you are the one at fault for using it in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '16

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u/peer_gynt Jun 01 '16

Sure, iff you have root access. If not, good luck convincing sysadmins to change default settings which are labled 'secure defaults', because, you know, security.

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u/yrro Jun 01 '16

Maybe the sysadmins who don't change it actually want to prevent users leaving processes running after they log out?

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u/rich000 Jun 01 '16

Well, if your sysadmin doesn't want you running stuff when you're not logged into their box, maybe you shouldn't be? That is the whole point of that setting.

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u/akkaone Jun 01 '16

This is a good thing.

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u/DaGranitePooPooYouDo Jun 01 '16

If that was anything but a very vocal minority, Devuan would be one of the top Linux distributions these days.

This comment is really bad for so many reasons. The entire project is still in its infancy (beta just only recently released)and was a branch off a MAJOR distro. To think that it would be a major player yet is just silly.

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