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from the all-your-computer-are-belong-to-us dept.
At the All Systems Go conference in Berlin 20-22 September, Lennart Poettering proposed a new extension to systemd, systemd-homed.service. A video of his session can be downloaded from media.ccc.de with accompanying slides [PDF].
In his presentation, Poettering outlines a number of problems he sees with the current system, like /etc needs to be writeable, UIDs need to be consistent across systems, and lack of encryption and resource management.
His goals with the proposed solution are migrateable and self-contained, UID-independent home directories with extensible user records that unify the user's password and encryption key; LUKS locking on system suspend; and Yubikey support.
He identifies a number of problems this new idea could cause with SSH logins, disk space assignments, UID assignments, and LUKS locking.
He plans to introduce JSON user records that can be queried via a Varlink interface and to a certain extent are convertible to and from existing formats. The home directories will be stored as LUKS-encrypted files that will be managed by the proposed new service, systemd-homed.service. The system integration will be supported by pam_systemd and systemd-logind.service.
It will be interesting to see how the world responds to this new take on systemd's ever-increasing encroachment of Linux.
... and lastly, this story is brought to you from a systemd-free laptop.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by janrinok on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:08PM (10 children)
I just don't get the systemd hate here.
Many of us here use FOSS, a linux distro or perhaps a flavour of BSD. We like the fact that we can modify it however we please. We can recompile it, rewrite it, fix bugs etc. We can make and configure our software to do exactly as we please. But Linux doesn't belong to us, we are only a small proportion of its userbase. And other users have different requirements.
So when RedHat do exactly the same we get howls of derision. Why? RedHat have produced some code that makes linux work better for them - not for you - but for them. Businesses who spin up hundreds or thousands of instances or virtual images in a matter of seconds can now do so in a far more efficient fashion, in a standard way, regardless of which of the main distros they want to use. Not more efficient for you maybe - but for them.
They do not care if you use their software. They are not interested in you. You probably downloaded your software for free, as I did, and RedHat owe us nothing at all. But if you want to use it, then they are happy for you to do so.
There are other distros that do not use systemd. You are free to use one of them. RedHat doesn't mind. Debian won't get upset. Ubuntu doesn't care either. If they did, they would have done what you wanted, rather than what business was asking for. They are in business and whether you use systemd or not doesn't worry them at all.
So why all the hatred of something that you don't have to use and that you are getting for free?. Just pick your chosen distro and get on with enjoying your life. After all, you can make it do whatever you want it to do. FOSS is open to everybody, and not everybody wants to do things the way that you do. So follow your own path. Business will follow theirs too.
Systemd has become the most recent incarnation of the Emacs/Vi, Photoshop/GIMP, Gnome/KDE battles that have been going on for years. None of them were important, none of them should dictate how you run your life and, as long as you don't have to support them, you can ignore systemd completely.
Tomorrow we can argue about people who buy blue cars, or live in near the sea, or don't eat fish. They are not saying that you should do the same, and the arguments will be just as pointless.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:11PM
"So when RedHat do exactly the same we get howls of derision. Why?"
There were already probably twenty or more well known configuration syntax's on Linux to do any number of jobs. Redhat decided that none of them were good enough and so they had to introduce an archaic Windows INI file format. Rolling your own is ignorant. Picking something that is universally regarded as a shitbox when there are twenty well known solutions? Well that is just being an asshole.
And while I get your point about "everybody does it", the init system cannot be easily removed without a certain amount of grief. Your right people have a choice. But when you have an established install base and the upstream system wags, it ends up being an earthquake by the time it gets to the admins. Redhat dropped a bomb on Linux, Debian helped. That is really all there is to it.
boycott systemd. It is a shill.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:26PM (4 children)
Many of us have been around for a long time. We know what the Unix way is, and how it is superior on engineering grounds.
Many of us are dismayed that the decision to adopt SystemD is being pushed via backroom deals.
Many of us are professionals, and we care little about how SystemD speeds up booting.
Many of us are sick of the intrusion of meatspace political attitudes entering Free Software. We have a stake in "our" distros, "our" Linux, and don't care for being told "you're free to use something else (and go fuck off to Russia if you don't like it)."
Many of us have been on the long march in the 1990s from a world of unfree software to a world of Linux and BSD created from our hands. We don't want to have to rebuild from scratch because major parts of GNU/Linux have conspired to lock in to each other.
Many of us remember PulseAudio, Poettering and his ilk's previous fuckup.
Many of us would rather use Devuan, but don't have the freedom to make that decision at work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:44PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday September 23 2019, @07:42AM (1 child)
There are still distros that do not use systemd: Devuan, Alpine Linux, ArtixLinux, Void, Slackware, Funtoo and Gentoo, GUIX, CRUX, PCLinuxOS, Manjaro OpenRC, Adelie Linux, Obarun, KISS Linux, and of course Linux-From-Scratch.
It is also relatively easy to choose another init system for Arch Linux and Debian Linux, plus all of their derivatives.
Paranoia is a terrible problem. SELinux was supported by NSA - so that they could secure their own systems. But we don't hear the same hue and cry about that nowadays, do we? There is no evidence of systemd 'phoning home' that I have seen. How about you?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 23 2019, @07:31PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday September 23 2019, @07:06AM
I'm older than most people here - so I'm not impressed with your "Many of us ..." claim. I started in writing software in 1978 - in Algol. I've written software for mainframes, real-time avionic systems and desktops.
So don't use it then. Vote with your choices. However, it is what business wants and it plays a major part in making cloud computing viable.
Linux is still free, you can install what you wish, for whatever reason or justification that you wish. No one has told you to install KDE, or LibreOffice, or anything else for that matter. Don't install a distro which uses systemd if you don't want to use it.
I've loaded Mandrake from a pile of floppy disks, I've used Corel Linux, Puppy Linux, and Yggdrasil Linux, and tried many others besides. I switched to Ubuntu around version 4 or 5 but didn't settle into it until 6.04. I have a stake in my distros too, but so do RedHat, Ubuntu, Debian, and so on, and they are paying big bucks to keep the software doing what they want. But your choices don't overrule theirs. By the way, I'm British you idiot - I've not suggested that anyone should 'fuck of to Russia'.
Got the tee-shirt and the mug. So you don't want to rebuild? Then don't. Many of those earlier distros still work you know. Ah, but the software is different nowadays. So is the software in 'phones, in washing machines, in GPS systems. The world moves on. But there are still distros that do not use systemd: Devuan, Alpine Linux, ArtixLinux, Void, Slackware, Funtoo and Gentoo, GUIX, CRUX, PCLinuxOS, Adelie Linux, Obarun, KISS Linux, and of course Linux-From-Scratch.
The man is an idiot. I agree. But I don't let personalities cloud my judgement - neither does business.
Why has your employer elected to use a distro that needs systemd? Whatever, nobody said that life is easy. If systemd is being forced upon you then the choice is learn to use systemd effectively, or complain about your lot. But only one of those choices will move you forward.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:46PM
The whole extensive effort at lockin, err, "integration" of every unrelated essential thing to systemd is openly demonstrating that.
Were it not for that, any one of us could not care less about what flavor of interchangeable init system a specific distro is running. But alas, the world of rainbows, unicorns, and freedom of choice is not this besystemded one.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:42PM
I do hate systemd … and rightfully so because I am caught by it. I am administering a number of systems that has not been able to be converted to any of the non-systemd distros without dependency problems that would require too much effort to solve.
Apart from that, most non-systemd distros are very small compared to RedHat, Debian and Ubuntu, which means less resources for package updates and for debugging as well as a higher risk that the project may go under due to one or two vital people leaving it. So yes there are alternatives but not always good and safe (from a long-term viability point of view) ones.
I can understand that a company like RedHat, which is business/enterprise focussed, changes to systemd (apart from the fact it its own baby, of course), but Debian and Ubuntu that are as much desktop distros as for the server room, why? (OK, there are probably quite a few more server installations of Debian than desktops, but still …) Changing to a different distro is much like moving house, maybe not the worst experience of your life but still full of irritating challenges that need to be solved. (A survey found that moving house is actually more stressful than a death in the family.)
What I feel is that systemd takes an approach that could be compared to a car company suddenly deciding to move the accelerator to the center, the brake to the left and the clutch to the right. (And the clutch, for those driving an automatic is used when changing gears while driving a stick-shift ;-)
Also, systemd is ill thought out and the technical implementation far from the best with "features" that everyone bar Lennart Poettering considers bugs.
All of this and more makes it much too easy to hate systemd — still, my reason is mostly that it is in reality forced upon me as I cannot find a viable alternative that works with all of my systems.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Trilkhai on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:18PM
On my part, it's because the situation as a user is using a distro that either relies on systemd *or* has a large reasonably-current repo, in part because far too many programs rely on a library that's somehow tied to systemd and are therefore a huge PITA (or impossible) for distro devs to package and/or for users on non-systemd distros to compile.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday September 23 2019, @06:22AM
How can this be flamebait?
Disagree all you wish, but this is most certainly not flamebait.