Michael Biebl, long-time maintainer of systemd for Debian (2010 or earlier, based on changelog.Debian.gz), is taking undetermined holidays from packaging it. The e-mail was short:
Will stop maintaining systemd in debian for a while.
What's going on is just too stupid/crazy.
This takes place after he discussed a bug in which he expected systemd to respect local settings, and not rename network devices:
@yuwata a default policy like /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link should never trump explicit user configuration.
Later he seems surprised about how things roll there:
I'm amazed that I have to point this out....
The issue is locked currently, and also archived just in case, so everyone can read the initial report and the replies he got.
Opinion: It seems distribution developers are starting to get the stick too, not just users with their "errors" (taken from a reply). Will distributions finally wake up or is that they don't still grok the attitude of projects like this? [Or is it something else? --Ed.]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:41AM (26 children)
But too bad so much damage has already been done.
Their easiest route would probably be to create an emergency point release for Debian and "merge" Devuan code back into Debian.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @08:01AM (25 children)
Why would merging be necessary? It may not even be desirable. All of the alternatives still exist, within Debian. All that need be done, is to package Debian to use an alternative init. Devuan is a done deal, they've split. It may not be possible for some of those people who left to come back into the fold.
No, I don't have the inside sccop on relations between all those people, but there were probably harsh words exchanged when they went their separate ways. Don't expect a big family reunion now.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Monday January 21 2019, @08:08AM (5 children)
You are assuming that systemd is just another init system. There are entire sites devoted to the idea that it is a RH world domination scheme, instead.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:25AM (2 children)
IBM may have other plans
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @11:02AM (1 child)
IBM's bread and butter has been in selling expensive consultancy for their own, frequently overcomplicated and fragile, solutions. The invention of systemd is probably what gave them a hard-on for RH in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:05PM
Yes, IBM's bread and butter, since the early 60s, has been: "we make it so complicated, you need us to help you manage it for yourself.
Systemd fits right into that mold.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 21 2019, @02:41PM (1 child)
I thought systemd was a Microsoft world domination
schemeplan 9.To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday January 21 2019, @09:37PM
That's was a popular conspiracy theory until IBM bought Redhat
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:54AM
There is unlikely to be a merging of the two communities and that shouldn't happen. Devuan does more than just remove systemd by the way, as it tries to adhere more strictly to "Unix philosophy" and treats users needs as a high priority. More than that, there are attempts to improve upon processes because of starting small again. So I doubt any Devuan devs could be convinced to go back to Debian even if they switch back to sysvinit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rleigh on Monday January 21 2019, @11:11AM (10 children)
Devuan is still based upon Debian. There's absolutely nothing preventing the modified subset of packages being folded back in. And, with the creation of the debian-init-diversity list, there are people from several distributions collaborating on this, and some of the Devuan developers are pushing some changes back into Debian.
Whenever you have a fork, it does make sense to fold as much back as possible, because every bit of divergence has an additional maintenance cost. Keeping it minimal means you can focus your efforts on the really important unique bits which are the reason for the fork existing. This isn't unique to Devuan, it's a consideration any derivative of any software project must take. If you don't, you can get swamped with busy work with little value for the return it gives you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday January 21 2019, @02:46PM (9 children)
Does anyone see a problem with this?
Debian puts the poison in, and then Devuan takes it back out. If there wasn't any poison there to begin with, why add it in the first place only to have to remove it again? Imagine this process applied to municipal water projects.
Debugging is the process of removing bugs from software. Programming is the process of adding bugs to software. Don't do any programming and the debugging would be unnecessary.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:07PM (1 child)
Just like Ubuntu add featureware onto Debian and Mint in turn repair the damage from both upstreams. Hey, what would we call a Mint derived from Devuan instead of Debian? Muant?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 21 2019, @08:07PM
That would be a good thing for Mint to take notice of.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Troll) by requerdanos on Monday January 21 2019, @07:15PM (6 children)
Works both ways: Debian takes the poison out (no non-free packages), Devuan puts it back in (non-free packages on all official install media).
Thinking that Devuan is "Debian without Systemd" ignores that it's actually "Debian without Systemd and without Debian's social contract and commitment to 100% free packages."
The issue that Systemd is in many ways a sprawling mess, however helpful its desirable features may be, argues that it should at least be optional.
It's pretty handy to have if you accept its worldview and outlook, but it has its tendrils into many areas you might not even suspect until you are one of the ones who starts debugging and wishing for its removal (and perhaps its demise in creative ways involving fire or ionizing radiation).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:57PM (5 children)
Debian distributes non-free, just makes it clear and opt-in. With modern computers, it's more probable that you need the non-free installer than the fully free. Even if you do the extra hops (extract disk and install by debootstrap, eg), you will have to install non-free to get things working (or buy usb dongles because the laptop has etherne or wifi chips that don't work with only free, or run with VESA video). Too many firmwares.
(Score: 0, Troll) by requerdanos on Monday January 21 2019, @08:18PM (4 children)
Perhaps you misunderstand.
Debian is committed to no non-free packages. In order to add something non-free to debian, the user must specifically seek out and add it manually.
This is in stark contract to Devuan, who couldn't care less, and who install non-free packages automatically and silently, providing them whether needed or not.
Thus, if a person who was interested in using all free software heard the nonsense about "Devuan is just like debian but with no systemd", they would be seriously misled.
This makes it important to point out that "Devuan is not just Debian without Systemd. They also add non-free packages to all install media."
Perhaps you personally don't care (in which case, why weigh in?), but Debian and DFSG have been going a long time, and there are people who care about them.
Here are some things that have nothing to do with the above:
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday January 21 2019, @09:04PM (1 child)
When I did a clean install of Devuan ASCII a few weeks ago I had to add "non-free contrib" to sources.list after the installer finished. So, at least as far as the net-installer.iso version I downloaded and used is concerned, Devuan did not include the non-free repositories by default.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:38PM
No, Devuan includes non-free firmware packages on all official media; it doesn't also add the "contrib non-free" to sources.list.
Per https://files.devuan.org/devuan_ascii/Release_notes.txt [devuan.org] :
So, in Debian, there's no non-free packages and you have to work if you want them. In Devuan, there's always non-free packages, and you have to work if you want to get rid of them.
Both sane choices, differing only in what's important to you, freedom-purity or non-free-world hardware working out of the box. And both important to know in advance, for just those reasons.
IMO, always, always having non-free packages but still making the user add "contrib non-free" as if they weren't there, is misleading; you yourself seem to have been thusly misled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:11PM (1 child)
Yes, Debian cares... latelly without long term vision:
If their first interest still is the free software community, they would not have made systemd the default and allow packages to hard depend on it, and are default in some cases (GNOME3 is default for desktop task, IIRC). Include it but don't wear it as cement shoes (kfreebsd & hurd anyone?). As in other posts, it means extra work, but also it means the more it is tolerated, the harder it would be to break the cement later and remain independent.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:39PM
There are reasons to eschew systemd (books could be written on the subject), but "free software" isn't one of them, because systemd is free software.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:31PM (6 children)
Dunno how your family works but mine can exchange harsh words at Thanksgiving and be throwing back nog together at Christmas. We always eventually remember that standing by family is far more important than any disagreements we might have.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @12:54PM (1 child)
as long as you agree that I make a better potato salad, it's all good.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @02:34PM
Than me? Almost certainly. I've never made any so as long as yours is better than an absence of potato salad, it's better than mine.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 21 2019, @03:11PM (3 children)
Mmmmmmm . . .
Us Poles have a couple of reputations. The first is for being stupid, and that is mostly unjustified. We have our share of stupids, but not excessive. The second is for being stubborn, which is entirely justified.
My great aunts Helen (she with the flaming red hair and temper) and Mary (she with the coal black hair and heart to match) lived only blocks apart in Youngstown. The two hadn't spoken to each other for twenty years or more. I have no idea what the disagreement started over, but each wanted to kill the other. Personally, I liked each of them (they always had cookies and milk or soda for an always hungry nephew) but neither of them would hear a single word about the other.
While that isn't exactly common among Poles, it's not terribly uncommon either.
I'm not the only Polack from my home town who left his father's house, never to return. Ever. We're an evil bunch, I guess.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @03:28PM
That particular bit of culture is likely a significant contributor to other demographics kicking your asses financially. Tight families are one of the strongest methods ever developed for wealth conservation and fiscal progression.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:33PM (1 child)
I like how Buzzard brought up family, is at +3; you responded and are at 0 Offtopic.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:43PM
There's just no accounting for mods. Would you believe some people actually mod me down?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Monday January 21 2019, @07:43AM (3 children)
I wish him a happy holiday. I'll be working hard!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @04:43PM (2 children)
http://www.humorpower.com/art-rulethree.html [humorpower.com]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Monday January 21 2019, @05:02PM (1 child)
My 3 rules are Buy American. And Hire American!!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:09PM
Oops, your iPhone was made in China by not one American worker. Buy/Hire American indeed...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Monday January 21 2019, @07:58AM (14 children)
I really hope Debian maintainers come to their senses on systemd. SysVinit was/is far from perfect but at least it's a robust init system that does exactly that... init. I don't even know what systemd is anymore, but it feels like some ameaboid that took user 0 perms and then started vomiting code over whatever core process it could. If it had stuck to init and was stable, relatively bug free and failed gracefully, then OK. But currently it's just a mess. Long live Devuan.
It's not too late, most Debian packages still work fine with other init systems and devs still seem happy to include sysVinit files most of the.time, so it's definitely possible to save Debian from systemd.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Bot on Monday January 21 2019, @08:09AM (1 child)
[laughs in AntiX]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @08:16AM
AntiX is very good.
Almost chose it for my primary desktop. In the end Ubuntu looked better - community support etc.
It's nearly time to upgrade. I'll be checking antiX out.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday January 21 2019, @08:55AM (3 children)
Debian is important because other distributions base themselves upon it, so decisions made by the Debian maintainers affect other distributions. While some people would prefer it if Debian mandated that packages were init-agnostic, the Debian maintainers have not done so*, and followed their own procedures** in doing so. So there is no rule that packages must support use any, a blessèd group of some, or all init systems. You can see why maintainers do this - it is the least effort approach. It takes a lot of effort to ensure your package works in the environments created by the different inits - if no-one is paying for it, it makes sense to choose just one - the most used (I carefully did not say the most popular).
Other distributions show it is still possible, just, to operate a linux-kernel based system without using systemd, but I would not be surprised to see linux become gnu/systemd/linux for notebook and desktop computers. IoT devices will still be capable of being operated without systemd as there are strong incentives to do so: small system resource constraints lead to stripped down kernels with minimal inits and busybox shells. With no desktop environment, whether the desktop environment is dependent upon systemd is irrelevant.
*While Debian does not mandate that systemd is used, some package maintainers only bother to accommodate systemd requirements, and others make their packages reliant upon systemd-only facilities.
**There is some argument over this. It is water under the bridge now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday January 21 2019, @07:21PM (2 children)
While admittedly the only such small devices I own are the NanoPC T3 and the Olinuxino Lime 2, I must say that manufacturer's Debian images for both include systemd, and it works frankly perfectly on those underpowered-arm devices.
The "resources are valuable" argument, in my opinion, should apply pretty much everywhere, not just where it's critical. If I can run something that leaves my resources alone (SysV? OpenRC?) with no downside, why wouldn't I?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:30PM (1 child)
Olimex tries to use whatever is avaliable, so if Debian has systemd, that's what they use, no optimizations. Now Olimex is even trying more generic images, one that supports multiple versions instead of a single board, to reduce work. They picked Ubuntu Bionic Desktop and Debian Stretch Server as base. https://olimex.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/new-univeral-a20-image-released-which-works-with-all-our-a20-boards-and-auto-detect-and-configure-on-boot/ [wordpress.com]
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:48PM
That sounds very sane to me, to be honest.
I bought three of the Olimex boards because Debian's website advised me that they could be booted and used productively without using any non-free firmware. The only problem area is the still-incomplete free support for the MALI GPU and, running them headless, I haven't had much problem in that area.
Specifically, systemd has given me no problems. it doesn't take a lot of memory, doesn't slow things down much*, and gives features in return for what it takes away.
-----
* A great experiment to test faster/slower wrt systemd is to install Bochs and get it working (alchemy required), then boot, say, Debian wheezy (no systemd), then boot Debian jessie (with systemd). The inherent dirt dog sluggish slowness of the emulation amplifies the effect of anything that takes a longer or shorter time and gives you a better overall picture.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Monday January 21 2019, @01:36PM (1 child)
I must admit I was slightly surprised at Michael Biebl being surprised. I mean this is systemd we're talking about here, not something sane. It's like being a courtier to Charles the Mad (an actual King of France who among other things thought he was made of glass and could break if touched) and thinking it was just a meaningless nickname from childhood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @01:56PM
Charles the Mad was made of glass though...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday January 21 2019, @05:11PM (5 children)
From what I can gather: Lennart has a vision of how the entirety of Linux userspace ought to look. However, he also seems either unwilling or unable to articulate what that idea actually is in any form other than code, so instead of writing out some sort of design document he instead writes oodles of code. Unfortunately, Lennart isn't that great of a coder, so his stuff is extremely bug-riddled and other people have to come along and fix afterwords.
The side effects of this include:
- Lennart and his buddies anger people in a lot of other projects by breaking their stuff and refusing to fix it. That's been a consistent problem.
- Nobody really knows what systemd is supposed to be, because it's never had its design stated clearly enough to be able to say "This is when we'll know systemd is feature-complete". That prevents anyone from either designing their own packages to be immune from Lennart coming in and changing it, and also renders the vision somewhat immune from criticism because nobody knows what that vision is.
- Lennart cannot be replaced on systemd because the vision of systemd ultimately is "Linux userspace the way Lennart wants it".
The charitable interpretation is that Lennart had a good idea but got in way over his head implementing that idea and doesn't have the people skills to recruit and manage developers who are better than himself. The less charitable interpretation is that Lennart is going through Linux userspace with a wrecking ball for his own job security and possibly to demand pay raises from Red Hat.
What definitely appears true is that the votes to put systemd into Debian in the first place were questionable at best.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Monday January 21 2019, @05:47PM (3 children)
Lennart Poettering was also behind PulseAudio [wikipedia.org], which generates heated opinions as well. It is not welcomed with unalloyed enthusiasm, and certainly, my experiences of its use on Ubuntu-based distributions (which Poettering says have not integrated Pulseaudio properly) is poor - pavucontrol crashes, and audio streams die and disappear, never to come back until applications are restarted. I am unable to set sensible default volume levels that are preserved between application invocations - so I wear headphones around my neck (not over my ears) because Firefox ends up starting with VOLUME AT 100% AND PAVUCONTROL CRASHES WHEN I TRY TO ADJUST IT.
I don't know if the problem is with Firefox, Ubuntu, or PulseAudio, but whatever the problem is, it means that sound just doesn't work properly, which is 'less than optimal'.
No doubt other people have good experiences with PulseAudio. I just wish I was one of them.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:12PM
The problem is with PulseAudio
Poettering has decided that, obviously, you want your headphone volume at 100%. Otherwise you might miss out on the quiet sounds.
How to tell if a problem you are having is with code that Poettering wrote:
1) Determine you are having a problem.
2) Determine if the problem path includes any code written by Poettering
3) if the answer to #2 is yes, then the problem you are having is always with the code that Poettering wrote.
(Score: 4, Informative) by chromas on Monday January 21 2019, @07:49PM (1 child)
Your volume problem is what systemd calls "Flat volumes [freedesktop.org]" (/etc/pulse/daemon.conf: "flat-volumes = yes"), where the application volume is relative to the hardware's maximum volume and scales the master bus to the loudest application. It's a copycat of Windows' mixer since Vista or so. Some distros like arch (btw I use arch) disable it by default.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:47PM
That's fucking retarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:44PM
So lennart follows the same design philosophy as the linux kernel?
That does suck actually...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Monday January 21 2019, @08:19AM
since he is the maintainer of systemd, he gets a medal for the inhuman effort and a lifetime supply of Valium.
YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO LAUGH THIS IS A TRUE STORY
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Apparition on Monday January 21 2019, @08:47AM (15 children)
Most of the non-systemd Linux distributions are only maintained by one or two core developers each and are therefore vulnerable to the bus factor [wikipedia.org]. A major Linux distribution backing away from systemd would be a welcome development.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday January 21 2019, @09:04AM (7 children)
A major Linux distribution backing away from systemd would be a welcome development./
A major Linux distribution mandating packages support a choice of inits would be welcome. There is more to systemd than just the init. That said, I find it odd (read crazy) that choosing a particular Desktop Environment which itself is dependent upon things that systemd does forces the use of systemd (or shims that emulate systemd behaviour). It goes against the modular philosophy of Unix-like systems. Diversity is strength.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MadTinfoilHatter on Monday January 21 2019, @09:37AM (5 children)
Easier said than done. Making a Linux distro that allows you to choose between different kinds of normal init systems, e.g. sysv, runit, epoch, et.c. isn't that hard, because those init systems are just init systems. Systemd, on the other hand extends it's slimy tentacles to who-knows-where, which means that the only kind of distro that can offer this kind of choice is something like Gentoo, where the users himself builds all the binaries. Gentoo in fact does just this - you can choose systemd if you want to, even though it's not the default. (Funtoo could do the same, but their stance is that systemd is a turd that they're not going to waste any time supporting.)
Because of all the systemd bindings to packages that have nothing to do with init (which BTW is the single biggest architectural flaw of systemd), regular binary package distros pretty much have to make a choice, whether to support systemd while making everybody else 2nd class citizens where things may or may not work, or whether to support normal UNIXy init systems, and give systemd the middle finger. In my opinion more distros need to do the latter, and evict the cuckoo from the nest before it destroys everything else in it.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @01:28PM (2 children)
systemD totally needs a bit-torrent subsystem : ]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:30AM (1 child)
Just run KodiD, fully loadeD, on your RaspDberryDPiD. Use a HDMID 2.2D cable to connect it to your SmartD TVD and you're good to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:51PM
Hate smart tvs.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Monday January 21 2019, @02:22PM (1 child)
Absolutely. What's more they need to do the same for any software projects that decide to require systemd. The fact that the open source community didn't dump Gnome on the trash heap of software history when they did so has always astonished me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:04PM
Some of us did. You'll never get 100% - the maintainers at least are unlikely to dump their own stuff - and it sounds like I'm not alone, but I don't know where the general consensus on gnome ended up.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:44AM
I have to agree with that diversity is a strength of GNU+Linux distros. Being able to choose a distro to fit any given need has always been a big bonus, but it's less and less if everyone does everything same as systemd attempts to do. It would be difficult for every distro to mandate init agnosticism however, but I think having a good crack at supporting more than one and not forcing any packages relating to other inits is worth doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:06AM (1 child)
It would indeed! But all the big distros seem to be in lock-step - and nobody dares be the first to make the right and sensible move. It makes one think of the hypothetical monkey experiment: http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place [answers.com]
PS - first 'monkey' to break ranks will get much banana. Me give money to distro that brave. Go ahead and test my generosity...
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday January 21 2019, @02:53PM
First, it is amusing that you would use the monkey-banana-water-spary experiment even after Ballmer is no longer part of Microsoft.
Second, nobody wants to be the first to break ranks and say The Microsoft Has No Clothes!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:34PM (4 children)
Gentoo is a major distribution, it's just not the major distribution for people who don't want to fundamentally understand their system.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:02PM (3 children)
:) The thing is that in 2019 we don't want a distro that requires a double PhD in CS. We need something to put on a disc/usb and hand it to Joe Public, Auntie May, install for family, friends - and not open up a can of whoopass that immunises them from ever trying Linux again. So we need a mainstream major distro, like Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, or Arch to make the move. Gentoo and Slackware are too hands-on terminal-heavy for the average user. I run Mint as I can get work done and not play sysadmin all day long.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @07:24PM (2 children)
So, like I said then. Also, just a side note, if you're a competent sysadmin, you don't play it all day long. You hardly ever have to play it at all because you've automated away everything that doesn't require your constant attention.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:17PM (1 child)
But then what do you do all day long?
A sysadmin's home system should *always* be on the brink. Because they should be so busy experimenting with it that they never get anything fully stable :)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:41PM
Try to look busy without actually doing anything.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by shrewdsheep on Monday January 21 2019, @10:02AM (12 children)
While there are some valid concerns about systemd, soylentnews usually falls into an inebriation-driven strawman-hitting group-think delirium, missing those valid concerns entirely. If you read the thread, there seems to be indeed one inept developer. However, within a single day he gets overruled by his compatriots and the requested behavior is restored. If you have ever participated in a larger projects an outcome like this is about the smoothest you can expect. The blame is on the Debian guy this time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @10:21AM (10 children)
In fact, it was Mr 'WONTFIX' Poettering who was the voice of reason. I thought, all-in-all this was a perfectly reasonable outcome, and it's a shame the Debian guy left half way through.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PocketSizeSUn on Monday January 21 2019, @11:10AM (9 children)
Really?
To me it appears that Mr Biebl's notice on the mailing list is what prompted escalation of the issue and Pottering to consider that *maybe* breaking existing rules wasn't very nice .. but he really didn't seem all that concerned about it ... because the rule 'wasn't well written'.
The fact remains that the rule in question follows the pattern of the rule in every example of 'how to rename Ethernet device names using udev' ... so breaking that is going to break a metric ton of machines.
Full disclosure, I am not a fan Pottering or systemd.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @03:32PM (8 children)
"break a metric ton of machines"
Redhat already did that once before, or does nobody remember that interface names made sense before redhat fucked them up? Systemd is a trojan horse. It always was.
I get that it is important to know bus location of a card. But what makes more sense, serializing the devices and symlinking the card/port names to them, or renaming every port on the box because "fuck you, we wrote it so you must comply with our custom"? The only devices that care about the slot are switches, routers and firewalls. Almost every other host just wants eth0 and eth1.
Of course they knew that. The fact that they ignored it, is what tells you that they're malicious. Because it is harder to do it wrong, than it is to do it right. The way they did it made configuring interface scripts rediculous, and undoubtedly has resulted in fewer people actually making the effort to develop portable security policies. We aren't just talking about one line of bash here. We are talking about every network script on every box having to do interface discovery in order to be portable. That is quite literally thousands of lines of code that other people have to write because RH are dicks.
It is the same shit that MS does, Debian developers should have known that the minute they saw the ini files.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jdccdevel on Monday January 21 2019, @06:59PM (7 children)
I have some serious problems with systemd. The Logging facilities are atrocious, and the software is poorly documented, unintuitive, and non-deterministic in some instances. Mostly though, I dislike it because the lead developer is so arrogant he has no problems dumping decades of status quo built from hard-earned experience because he can't bother to take the time to understand why things were done that way.
That said, changing the network device names from eth0, eth1, etc to something based on the hardware itself is a definite improvement, and I'll tell you why.
The problem with the way cards were named before is that it isn't consistent. It would depend on what order your network drivers were loaded by the kernel, or at the whim of the driver developer. I've had network device names change with a kernel updates and OS updates before. I even had one situation where the device names on a 2-port card were seemingly randomly assigned at boot.
I regularly work with machines that have 4 or more network interfaces, and having them re-shuffle for any reason is completely unacceptable, and has happened to me on more than one occasion.
Now, most Distros use a dynamically written config file (part of UDev) that associates network device names (eth0, etc) with a particular device using MAC addresses. That works fine for most workstations, but what if a card dies in a server? The hardware MAC addresses are going to change when that card is replaced, and the old device won't exist any more.
That will completely mess up the configuration on boot, since the new card will be assigned a new device number (ethY) and the old device (ethX) won't exist any more. Anything associated with ethX won't work anymore.
Granted, that's a distro issue, and the developers could have fixed it using bus slot locations instead of MAC addresses, but what about other kinds of devices where their bus locations can be expected to change? (USB adapters, for example).
In many respects, it's a trade off between easier for beginners to understand (eth0, etc), and easier to work with.
However, for pretty much anything with two or more network interfaces, the new naming scheme is better. It's more predictable and consistent, which makes it easier to use. It has logical rules, so it doesn't need a "device name configuration file" written at boot. It's driver and kernel version agnostic too, which means I can swap network cards, and even change brands, and I don't have to change my configuration at all.
About the only thing that the old convention is better at is copy/paste from the Internet, which is something I would never recommend without understanding what they do anyway.
The new naming convention was created first, [wikipedia.org] for Very good reasons [freedesktop.org] prior to being implemented by systemd.
TLDR: Of all of the changes made by systemd, predictable network names is, IMHO, the MOST justified. Probably because it wasn't Pottering's idea in the first place.
PS: If you're writing network security scripts, or "Portable Security Policies" and can't be bothered to figure out how to make it device name agnostic, WTF are you doing writing "security scripts" in the first place? Seriously? Shell variables, Environment variables, SED, M4, Even Perl will fix that for you. If it takes more than 5 minutes to fix your script so it doesn't matter what the network names are, you're doing it wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
Can you elaborate on how to make network scripts device name agnostic? Please and thank you...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jdccdevel on Monday January 21 2019, @11:46PM
The question real is, What is the purpose of the script?
I assume you're talking about the simple example, where there's only one interface connected?
All you need to do is find out which link is connected, put that name in a shell variable, and replace "eth0" with the variable holding the device name ("${edev}" for example...)
Something like this bash script should work fine, even if you have multiple connected interfaces. (Off the top of my head so please forgive any bugs. This assumes you have iproute2 installed like most modern distros. you can do something similar with ifconfig easily enough.)
#!/bin/bash
ETHDEV=$(ip link show | grep LOWER_UP | cut -d: -f2 | grep -v lo);
echo "Your connected interface names are:"
echo "${ETHDEV}"
echo "${ETHDEV}" | while read edev; do
echo "Network statistics for device: ${edev}"
ip -s link show dev ${edev};
done
Of course, if you're talking a firewall script, or something similar, you need to identify which interface you want the script to use for what purpose anyway, so that should be less of an issue.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:53PM (2 children)
It's not just "beginners." When you have a server with multiple interfaces and need the names to never change, you can be expected to be someone who knows what they are doing and can enable this feature. On the other hand, most desktops, laptops, and many servers have only one interface, or maybe one ethernet and one wifi, which have different names anyway. "Predictable" network names means that you have no idea what the names are going to be, but traditional names are always eth0/wlan0 regardless of your hardware, as long as you fall into this common case. Predictable depends on your situation and your perspective, not just your experience level.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdccdevel on Tuesday January 22 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
For situations with only one network device I see this as a non-issue. The VAST majority of these users have no idea that their network device is called "eth0" or anything else. They will never even see it, nor will they need to care, the distro install tools and the GUI will hide those details from them.
For the relative few entering commands in a terminal, or following a script of some sort... Those sorts of users are perfectly capable of running a couple of commands to find out what their network device's name is, and substituting that in the commands themselves as required.
Seriously, it's not hard to do. It can almost be automated. Give them instructions to enter "ip link show" or "ifconfig -a", or give them a little script to find out what their network device is called.
Yes, not having the name always be eth0 stops some people from copy/pasting from the Internet. IMHO that's not a bad thing, it encourages a better understanding of what the commands they're running are actually doing if they have to edit them to replace a device name.
Alternatively, If you already have a good understanding of what's going on, adding "ip link show" to the set of commands you're familiar with is probably a good thing.
TLDR: Real novices will never see the device name anyway (It'll hidden behind a gui), and power users can easily adjust.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:03AM
Thank YOU
This is what keeps me employed and will continue to do so for some time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @02:50AM (1 child)
I'll except everything you said... until it gets to the point that you rob users of control. As per the defect report, if a user explicitly sets system settings a specific way, the system should respect that.
My computer should belong to me. Not to Pottering, not to Gates, not to Jobs. It should belong to ME.
Setting sane defaults is great. Ignoring the user's will is reprehensible and unacceptable.
The moment Pottering (or one of his developers) comes along and says "don't worry your pretty little head over this, it's too complicated for somebody as precious as you to be trusted with" is the moment I leave them for something else. (This includes using older and unsupported operating systems... i.e. Windows 7 next year even after it leaves support.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:57PM
> "don't worry your pretty little head over this, it's too complicated for somebody as precious as you to be trusted with"
Like talking to a child bride
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:22PM
You don't see what the problem is when that "one guy" is the one in charge of the entire project?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @01:51PM (2 children)
The author of the GPL licensed text-mode casino game "GPC-Slots 2" has rescinded the license from the "Geek feminist" collective.
( https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/1/17/52 [lkml.org] )
( https://slashdot.org/submission/9087542/author-recinds-gpl [slashdot.org] )
[Notice: the revocation of the "Geek Feminists"'s license /just/ occurred. 2019. January.]
The original author, after years of silence, notes that the "Geek Feminist" changed[1] a bunch of if-then statements which were preceded by a loop waiting for string input to a switch statement. The author reportedly noted that to use a switch statement in such an instance is no more preformant than the if-thens. Switch statements should be used where the input to the switch statement is numerical, and of a successive nature, for most efficient use of the jump table that is generated from said code.
The author reportedly was offended, after quiet observation of the group, that the "Geek Feminists" mocked his code, mocked his existence as a male, and never did any work on the code afterwards and never updated to include new slot machines added to the original code by author subsequently.
The author notes that he neither sought nor received any compensation for the granted license, that is was a gratuitous license, and that there never was any refutation of his default right to rescind given. (A right founded in the property law of licenses.)
The copyright owner has reportedly watched quietly as each year the "Geek Feminists" published a recount of their heroic efforts regarding his code.[2][3] Presumably he has now had enough of it all...
The author notes that the SF Conservancy attempts to construe a particular clause in the GPL version 2 license text as a "no revocation by grantor clause", however that clause states that if a licensee suffers and automatic-revocation by operation of the license, that licensees down stream from him do not suffer the same fate. The author of "GPC-Slots 2" reportedly notes that said clause does only what it claims to do: clarifies that a downstream licensee, through no fault of his own, is not penalized by the automatic revocation suffered by a licensee he gained a "sub-license" from (for lack of a better term.)
The author reportedly notes that version 3 of the GPL did not exist when he published the code, additionally the author notes that even if there was a clause not to revoke, he was paid no consideration for such a forbearance of a legal right of his and thus said clause is not operative against him, the grantor, should it exist at all.
(Editor's note: GPL version 3 contains an explicit "no-revocation-by-grantor" clause, in addition to a term-of-years that the license is granted for. Both absent in version 2 of the GPL)
The author reportedly has mulled an option to register his copyright and then to seek damages from the "Geek Feminists" if they choose to violate his copyright post-hence.
(Editors note: Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement can amount to $150,000 plus attorney's fees for post registration violations of a differing nature to pre-registration violations.)
[1]https://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/19/
[2]https://geekfeminism.org
[3]http://geekfeminism.wikia.com
GPC-Slots 2 is a text console mode casino game available for linux with various slot machines, table games, and stock market tokens for the player to test his luck. For the unlucky there is a Russian Roulette function.
[Notice: the revocation of the "Geek Feminists"'s license /just/ occurred. 2019. January.]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @03:45PM (1 child)
I modded you Funny. because the first 10 spamposts from you was a bit annoying, but now you've become sort of a meme to me apparently. I chuckled when I got to the end of the discussion and found your autistic OCD non-sense there. Can't promise I'll vote you funny next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @04:11PM
Good. I was able to mod him (MikeeUSA [wikia.com]) spam because you modded him up.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @03:38PM
Just a side note for the poster (and any other person really) that archive.is is in the process of being taken over, and archive.fo should be used.
source:
https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1081276424781287427 [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1081282909783449607 [twitter.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:03PM
This is wonderful news. End users are mostly helpless. Their complaints fell on deaf ears when the elite few who create the distributions decided: systemd is the way... And besides changing distros, those same end users had little power to make any change.
But, if those elite few start receiving enough shocks from the stick they will gradually begin to rethink their belief that "systemd is the way". And as they are few it does not take too many getting fed up with the beatings before they realize what a total set of egomaniacs the systemd crowd really is and decide to remove systemd from their distros.
Looking forward to the day when the beatings have finally pushed them over the edge, and they drop systemd because of the attitude of this group of screwups.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilsa on Monday January 21 2019, @08:49PM (6 children)
While I personally haven't run into any of the systemd issues that other people have reported, I can respect the current outcry of systemd being a sprawling mess that sticks its fingers in things it has no business too.
The thing is, the old init system is crap. Large swaths of quasi-system level annotated bash scripts is not rigorous, ugly and is a hassle to deal with. Especially when everyone has a different idea of how to manage their apps processes.
So what are the alternatives to systemd and why aren't they getting more attention? What happened to upstart, for example? Surely there are projects out there that do what systemd _should_ be doing without all the overreach?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:39PM
Upstart lost most of its momentum when Ubuntu switched to systemd, but it still exists. Gentoo has OpenRC, which is like sysVinit but with much less cruft. There are only so many choices in the init system department. I think there are one or two other systems that are not widely used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:43PM (1 child)
Scripts can be improved:
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: lvm2-lvmpolld
# Required-Start: $local_fs
# Required-Stop: $local_fs
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: LVM2 poll daemon
### END INIT INFO
DESC="LVM2 poll daemon"
DAEMON=/sbin/lvmpolld
DAEMON_ARGS="-t 60"
PIDFILE=/run/lvmpolld.pid
do_start_prepare() {
mkdir -m 0700 -p /run/lvm
}
This is mostly declarative. Only cmd is for special thing, that would need to be handled by separate scripts or forcing the daemon to do what init system wants, instead of the other way arround. It also boots in parallel, and the order is known ahead of time.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday January 23 2019, @08:35PM
You've completely missed my point. IMO we shouldn't be using scripts at all to manage all the init stuff. Using scripts is sloppy, cumbersome and error prone.
The way systemd handles services/daemons in a declarative way is a far superior way to handle it because you don't have to rely on the script writer to do the correct thing, not run their process as root, etc.
Systemd would have been perfect if they had only quit while they were ahead and not turned it into the giant tentacled mess that it has become.
(Score: 2) by wirelessduck on Monday January 21 2019, @11:56PM
http://smarden.org/runit/ [smarden.org]
https://skarnet.org/software/s6/ [skarnet.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:10AM (1 child)
I've run into a couple. It's pissed me off enough that I am ready to switch away from Ubuntu.
Maybe devuan is worth a try
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:58PM
it is