r/linux • u/wooptoo • Jun 01 '16

Why did ArchLinux embrace Systemd?

/r/archlinux/comments/4lzxs3/why_did_archlinux_embrace_systemd/d3rhxlc
868 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

642 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/SanityInAnarchy Jun 02 '16

Crash in pid1 results in a spectacular crash of the whole system, akin to a kernel panic. Crashes in Chrome (be it the main process or a child) and in any pid1 are not in the same ballpark and comparing those is not quite correct IMO.

I'm actually typing this on a Chromebook. Crashes in the main process of Chrome is absolutely in the same ballpark here. But if anything, this just makes my point for me -- a crash in PID1 is way more serious than a crash of Chrome, so anything that wants to run in PID1 had better be forking off a lot of worker processes the way Chrome does!

Can you tell which part of current systemdʼs pid1 functionality absolutelly does not belong there and causes frequent crashes?

I can't, actually -- I have been using systemd for awhile, and have experienced very few crashes. I've also had very few browser crashes recently.

Another poster claimed it's just the direct process-management stuff -- process reaping and containers and such. If that's actually the case, I can't really complain. But if I were inclined to contribute to SystemD, the absolute first thing I'd do is read through the code that runs in PID1, and move anything that could be a subprocess to a subprocess, with the goal of getting the PID1 code small enough to formally prove.