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Security researcher and MateSSL founder, Andrew Ayer has uncovered a bug which will either crash or make systemd unstable (depending on who you talk to) on pretty much every linux distro. David Strauss posted a highly critical response to Ayer. In true pedantic nerd-fight fashion there is a bit of back and forth between them over the "true" severity of the issue and what not.
Nerd fights aside, how you feel about this bug, will probably largely depend on how you feel about systemd in general.
The following command, when run as any user, will crash systemd:
NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/systemd/notify systemd-notify ""
After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the
pausesystem call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system). All of this can be caused by a command that's short enough to fit in a Tweet.Edit (2016-09-28 21:34): Some people can only reproduce if they wrap the command in a
while trueloop. Yay non-determinism!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:38AM
history will likely show that the intro of systemd was the downfall of linux.
I hope we recover and undo systemd at some future date. why it was pushed out to SO many distros (redhat, yes, I understand; debian based ones, though, I have no idea why that ended up being voted in) - its just a damned shame that its not limited to ONE 'test' distro. let the testers have their fun, but on PRODUCTION, wow, just wow.
it really does show that the 'kids are in control' and they seem to have such attitudes that they KNOW better than us greyhairs. sigh....
well, there is the BSD distros. I guess we can think about switching over. I was once a big freebsd guy, myself, back when linux was still going stable/unstable back and forth. then, a few years ago, it got stable enough that I dumped all my bsd systems. at this point, I may have to think about going back; but linux has taken over the embedded world and no one (that I know of) runs bsd on their embedded hardware anymore. all the jobs I've seen and have interviewed for have been linux.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:48AM
history will likely show that the intro of systemd was the downfall of linux
And you Linux scum will deserve it, because asshole Linux followers were the downfall of GNU. It is fitting that systemd will be the downfall of you. Bye bye fuckers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:01PM
The standard linux is still free of it. http://slackware.com/ [slackware.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @01:27PM
For now.
One may wonder if they will adopt systemd or drop every big DE from their repository when time comes...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:52PM
linux has taken over the embedded world
How long will that last in a world of Gnome boot-loading windows architecture?
Look smaller. I have an olimex dev board on my desk at home to play with, its just an overgrown pic32, and in my infinite spare time I'm going to retro-BSD it. The point being that embedded as in "I velcro'd mah tablet onto mah refrigerator" is going all linux-y but coming up from the bottom the low performance PIC in your next toaster might very well be running *BSD.
I mean if you want a unix like internet grade OS, thats not linux anymore, but the good news is even lower end microcontrollers are getting powerful enough to run real unix, and a real unix is probably a good OS for "internet of crappy things" and all those buzzwords. You want something that works in a toaster, not something that finally solves automounting floppy disks on gnome desktop (in 2016) at enormous reliability and security cost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @02:04PM
Try antiX Linux? Proudly (almost!! damn thing is like aids to flush out) systemd free!
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday October 05 2016, @02:31PM
Well there is always Slackware. if they go to systemd you know it will be here for the long haul.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @03:17PM
iOS is based on FreeBSD like MacOS is, so at least one embedded device running *BSD
(Score: 2) by hopp on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:06PM
It was the inclusion of systemd which made me take another look at FreeBSD for our systems. We left FreeBSD when the whole 4-5 upgrade debacle happened and happily returned to FreeBSD when systemd became the standard. bhyve is actually a pretty nice way to layer vm over the zfs and upgrades and auditing are a breeze.
We're a tiny shop so we matter to no one and we may go back to linux some day but for now BSD is our best option.