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The Linux Homefront Project reports on Lennart Poettering looking to do away with the good old "su" command. From the article, "With this pull request systemd now support a su command functional and can create privileged sessions, that are fully isolated from the original session. Su is a classic UNIX command and used more than 30 years. Why su is bad? Lennart Poettering says:"
Well, there have been long discussions about this, but the problem is that what su is supposed to do is very unclear. On one hand it’s supposed to open a new session and change a number of execution context parameters (uid, gid, env, …), and on the other it’s supposed to inherit a lot concepts from the originating session (tty, cgroup, audit, …). Since this is so weakly defined it’s a really weird mix&match of old and new paramters. To keep this somewhat managable we decided to only switch the absolute minimum over, and that excludes XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, specifically because XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is actually bound to the session/audit runtime and those we do not transition. Instead we simply unset it.
Long story short: su is really a broken concept. It will given you kind of a shell, and it’s fine to use it for that, but it’s not a full login, and shouldn’t be mistaken for one.
I'm guessing that Devuan won't be getting rid of "su."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @05:11PM
Poettering is being his usual disingenuous self...
The basic issue is that su does its job just fine. But that job conflict with some infosec voodoo that systemd is trying to do with various pam modules and cgroups in an effort to track "sessions".
In this effort they decided to zero out a certain xdg variable that tells compliant programs where they are expected to write their files. End result was that if someone su-ed into a different account, the compliant programs would stomp all over settings files etc.
Here is the thing, without the involvement of systemd things would have worked just fine (and has done so for some time). But still Poettering has the gall to declare su the broken party in all this when confronted with the issue. Never mind ignoring vital differences between su and su -l throughout.
In essence Poettering is constantly demonstrating a profound lack of understanding of unix internals, and is papering over it with arrogance. And if he actually gets called on it he will slink away and let someone else take the brunt of the fallout.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 31 2015, @05:37PM
in an effort to track "sessions".
AC has it... its really weird how far systemd is moving away from unix.
This is why there is pushback, because the existing userbase is being told to F off and go away, our gnome mobile phone OS is no longer for you. And my webserver or database server should care about your little tablet OS GUI weirdness exactly why? Lots of extremely baroque solutions to problems that don't exist and mostly get in the way of "real work".
Recall the quote "GNU is not unix" now consider "systemd is not unix". And that's OK, people should go away and develop other OS and play with new ideas. After all, most OS devs are doomed to eventually reinvent unix, poorly, so it part of their learning curve. Unfortunately they're screwing up everyone else's work with their learning experiment.
My freebsd boxes (which used to be Debian boxes) don't really care. Those weird solutions to problems that don't exist are unnecessary. Oh you're going to try to force it in to linux by product tying with gnome/kde, for the distros that still care about those legacy GUIs? Go ahead, my xmonad and awesome workstations don't care. Oh now you're going to sneak in using su instead of product tying bloated desktop environments.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 31 2015, @06:03PM
TFS, TFA, GP and you are finally causing me to come around to the anti-systemd point of view. Mostly, I'm still watching, and listening, but the fact is SU isn't broken. If systemd breaks SU, then it's a systemd problem, and it can't be blamed on SU. So, yeah, someone is full of fecal material.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Nerdfest on Monday August 31 2015, @06:44PM
Unfortunately, if you're a Linux user you're too late for the most part. A huge chunk of the distros now use systemd. I'm just hoping we get a little use of the bootless updates in the 4.x kernel before systemd fucks everything up and required reboots for patches. It's still beyond me how we got into this mess. This can't be incompetence, it *has* to be malice.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Monday August 31 2015, @08:03PM
I too lean towards the idea of malice, but I think that leaning is more a result of paranoia brought on by the secrets that have come to light over the last few decades. Now that we know how far some have gone to undermine our security and privacy with proprietary systems, it almost seems like a given that there would be a push to get compromised software into all linux boxes.
However, barring proof we can't make absolute statements. The big hurdle I run into when discussing this issue is that systemd is open source. It basically boils down to: "I trust the experts, and its open source so go find the bad code if you're so sure systemd is bad." Which ignores the multiple VALID issues with systemd architecture.
Even if there is no inherent flaw with systemd, it is entirely possible that another piece of software could have bugs that propagate through the new system that has its fingers in everything.
Back to my original point: it is not necessarily bad intentions at work, it could easily be the cultural arrogance and cliquishness that is permeating the West Coast tech scene. Once the possibility to fork is taken from the community, freedom is gone.
After a quick search on types of authoritarianism to see which type this falls under, I felt this one resonated pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism [wikipedia.org]
You either drink the kool-aid or you're, in the modern parlance, a troll because the debate has been "settled". The comparison amuses me since right wing authoritarianism is typically the opposite of what you'd expect from this crowd, and the last thing the various committees (that have pushed this stuff through) would think of themselves. Trust the experts, trust the open source...
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @08:06PM
Lennart and most of the other systemd developers are actually from Germany. I guess the west coast texh scene reaches further than I thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:19AM
Hush, you. He's built up a nice little consistent hero fantasy story in his head. Let's not go messing it up with things like facts.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:25AM
A good point! I am definitely not experienced with developers across the globe, maybe its a generational tech trend and not geographic at all. Perhaps it is a natural progression as programming languages evolved. Abstract the lower levels and the next group of devs have a different outlook on architecture. Or it is as simple as the architectural choice of Windows vs. Linux, and nowadays developers prefer the streamlined windows method vs. the configurable linux method.
Opinionated Prose: One tool to link them all, and in the system's darkness bind them!
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:40AM
I think you are onto something there. Although I would probably replace "Windows" with "IOS".
Not that the difference is that big anymore. Since Windows 8, Microsoft has also been chasing the "you'll do what we say, and you will like it" point of view.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @08:36PM
I do believe Germany also has a coastline. Although its coast is in the North of the country, there will certainly be a western part of that coastline. I don't know if there is a tech scene there though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:33PM
Code is logic, and logic is a road, not a destination. If you start from A but think you start from B, you are unlikely to reach C continuing forward.
(Score: 1) by utoddl on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:26PM
The other alternative is that you're wrong.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday August 31 2015, @06:08PM
There shouldn't be pushback, there should be a fork. Period. Let him do what he wants in his own little world. But all people do is bitch about it, no one is writing code. Reap the rewards of your apathy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @06:30PM
It's not just Larry Potter.
It's his boss: RedHat.
RedHat is behind this. Save your scorn for those tossers! (Well, and a little extra for Larry Potter too).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @06:41PM
There you have, this code is all you need.
% apt-get install sysvinit-core sysvinit sysvinit-utils
% apt-get remove --purge --auto-remove systemd
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @06:57PM
# wget ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.2/FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso [freebsd.org]
# dd if=./FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso of=/dev/cdrom bs=4096
# reboot
(Score: 3, Interesting) by present_arms on Monday August 31 2015, @09:57PM
wget http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/isos/trinity64-big-daddy-august-2015.iso [mypclinuxos.com]
No systemd there either and never will be :P
Then again neither has slackware, duvuan, pclinuxos proper...
systemd, ya having a laugh, nothing is broken in su...
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 5, Informative) by hendrikboom on Monday August 31 2015, @07:18PM
There is a debian fork: devuan.
It hasn't yet removed all traces of systemd from debian, it's moving ahead. It takes a lot to make a major change in something as big as debian. systemd is definitely no longer the init system.
Devuan's second alpha release is running just fine on my laptop.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @08:34PM
Why won't devuan revive or package the bastille linux hardening script.
It always worked, even in early Wheezy. Now it doesn't work anymore: the script never is able to apply or write it's changes, some TCL error.
Please could you please add bastille. No, it is not easy to do all the things it does.
Please. Don't dismiss such security hardeners.
No idea why TCL became "incompatible" with this script mid stable debian wheezy.
Tried to track it down.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday August 31 2015, @09:56PM
My favourite DE is KDE ... isn't it tied to systemd as well?
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Monday August 31 2015, @10:00PM
kde isn't no, only Gnome 3 at the moment
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday August 31 2015, @11:45PM
Thanks ... I think I heard it's in the plans though. What a mess we're in. All operating sysems seem to want to settle to a common level of mediocrity. What ever happened to learning from the mistakes of others?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:48AM
>What ever happened to learning from the mistakes of others?
Payments to some, threats to others (to not give them payments), mostly payments.
"We will make your life awsome, just ditch this computer bullshit"
If they let men marry young girls and own english country houses without property taxes on the first 20 acres it might even have been worth it.
(Score: 1) by rtfazeberdee on Thursday September 03 2015, @03:00PM
LP actually wrote a library for Gnome to use to avoid using logind but Gnome decided to ignore it. Probably a sensible choice in the long run as ConsoleKit is no longer maintained.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:53AM
You might find this interesting: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/02/20/101235 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fnj on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:16PM
For those turned off by posts containing nothing but a bare link, with no hint whatsoever what it is about ...
The linked page says that KDE, as of February 2015, intended to drop "legacy" support for any other init system than systemd, by August 2015. It would be interesting to know if this has in fact come to pass. One would guess "no, it has not", because AFAIK KDE is still running on non-systemd distros.
The whole question of why a goddam DE should give a flying fuck what init system is running; just what feature(s) of systemd it considers so important that it can't even do its goddam job of presenting a DE without them; is an interesting one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @01:30PM
Plus bodhi and antix are deb based and without systemd. Void linux and alpine linux are independent distros again with no systemd
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:36PM
The people doing the fork should be Poettering and crew. Let them spin up their own distro and invite people to contribute.
Instead they have co-opted and absorbed projects that worked fine already, making them ever more difficult to use in existing distros without re-basing to systemd.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @05:57PM
Nice rant, almost the same one verbatim I've seen copy-pasted from god-knows-where (usually Reddit in these cases?). Really well sourced (yeah...). Insightful. Informative.
HAH.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Non Sequor on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:13AM
Interestingly here's a spec for the XDG stuff with Pottering's name on it:
http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html [freedesktop.org]
That spec seems to be a fancy way of telling programs to ignore HOME and put stuff some place else. I guess what's happening here is that now Poettering is having to reinvent an axle to connect two wheels he's reinvented.
I'm slightly bemused by this and all I'll say is that on OS X (and to a lesser extent, Cygwin) the traditional Unix bits seem to continue to conform to my expectations and the whizbang stuff stays on its side of the chalk line and does it's own thing although there are still some interfaces to the Unix side. I don't see why that approach shouldn't be considered good enough in general. It's easier to interface new stuff to Unix than to redesign Unix to build in the new interfaces you think you need.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:16AM
> Poettering is being his usual disingenuous self...
> The basic issue is that su does its job just fine. But that job conflict with some infosec voodoo that systemd is trying to do with various pam modules and cgroups in an effort to track "sessions".
This is the problem, IMHO.
I don't expect systemd not to rewrite the kitchen sink because hey they said it from the beginning "POSIX SUX and SYSTEMD IS ALWAYS EVOLVING NEVER FINISHED".
Now, whether people installing systemd are aware that they are essentially getting into the usual "upgrade for no reason whatsoever" cycle that win, osx and android users enjoy it's another matter.
So, su fell down, another domino piece. Expected.
The piece of news is that Poettering doesn't even bother to write down the real reason, which you managed to express in 2 clear lines of text.
The reason he comes up with is that su is "unclear", "really broken".
You get it? the author of the original pulseaudio says su is "really broken".
I repeat: the man behind fucking first versions of pulseaudio says su is "really broken".
Poettering: the next Elop, but funnier.
Account abandoned.