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Re: Why I dislike systemd

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RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>:

> ... and that's the real issue, isn't it, that a huge proportion of the
> complaining turns out to be uneducated or misinformed.

Much of the complaining seems to come from the system administrators'
corner. Veteran UNIX system administrators have wanted to feel they have
the ultimate power over their systems. They don't really acknowledge the
existence of black boxes. The system components are just that:
components, and the system administrator is the divine being that moulds
the system into his own image.

Now, systemd is part of a grand scheme to tie the hands of the system
administrators. Instead of Super-Users, they are demoted into lowly
operators, who are given very limited degrees of freedom. They hate
that.

> I'm not convinced I like systemd, but I'm not convinced I dislike it,
> either. I do agree init could use an update.

As a developer, I'm big on black boxes. Crystal-clear inputs, outputs,
policies and protocols make it possible to build and maintain complex
systems. Improvising leads to nightmarish situations. In one company, we
seriously considered encrypting the configuration files because our
customers and sales engineers took too many liberties with them.

Unfortunately, systemd does not replace the improvised mess that is
init.d with a rigorous methodology. For example, who is supposed to
write the systemd configuration file for the "postfix" MTA?

 (a) the system administrator

 (b) the distro maker

 (c) the "postfix" developers

As it stands, the distro makers took on that responsibility for
political reasons. However, the distro maker is not going to include the
systemd configuration for my new service. So am I, the developer,
supposed to write the systemd configuration files or is that a job for
my customer, the system administrator?

I suppose that's a job for me, the developer. However, I run into many
small issues:

 * How do I quote an arbitrary command into an ExecStart entry?

 * Where do I place my .service file?

 * What are the correct systemd targets to depend on?

Distro documentation caters to the system administrator. What I need is
developer guides for the different distros.

[Analogous problems plague also SELinux. Systemd is a piece of cake
compared to SELinux.]

> In fact, I googled it and came up with this page:
> http://alternativeto.net/software/systemd/ and was surprised by how
> many alternatives there are. Let the best technical solution prevail!

Technical superiority is a moot point. If you develop for RedHat or
Debian, you integrate with systemd, period. You don't go against systemd
any more than you would choose a BSD system call on Linux because you
think it's technically superior.


Marko

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Thread

Why I dislike systemd Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-06-15 10:04 +0000
  Re: Why I dislike systemd Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2015-06-15 11:17 +0000
  Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-15 09:46 -0400
    Re: Why I dislike systemd RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-06-15 17:24 +0300
      Re: Why I dislike systemd Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-15 18:45 +0300
        Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-15 12:33 -0400
          Re: Why I dislike systemd Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-15 21:16 +0300
            Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-15 15:19 -0400
              Re: Why I dislike systemd Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-15 23:11 +0300
                Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-15 16:53 -0400
                Re: Why I dislike systemd Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-16 00:14 +0300
                Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-15 21:02 -0400
                Re: Why I dislike systemd Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-06-16 07:48 +0300
                Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-16 11:08 -0400
        Re: Why I dislike systemd Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2015-06-15 19:20 +0100
        Re: Why I dislike systemd Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2015-06-15 16:19 -0300
      Re: Why I dislike systemd Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2015-06-15 20:13 +0100
    Re: Why I dislike systemd Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-06-15 15:50 +0000
      Re: Why I dislike systemd Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-06-15 12:14 -0400
      Re: Why I dislike systemd Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2015-06-15 17:18 +0100

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