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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 21 2014, @04:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the show-stopper-or-rare-event? dept.

Noted Linux expert Chris Siebenmann has described two catastrophic failures involving systemd.

One of the problems he encountered with systemd became apparent during a disastrous upgrade of a system from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21. It involved PID 1 segfaulting during the upgrade process. He isn't the only victim to suffer from this type of bad experience, either. The bug report for this problem is still showing a status of NEW, nearly a month after it was opened.

The second problem with systemd that he describes involves the journalctl utility. It displays log messages with long lines in a way that requires sideways scrolling, as well as displaying all messages since the beginning of time, in forward chronological order. Both of these behaviors contribute to making the tool much less usable, especially in critical situations where time and efficiency are of the essence.

Problems like these raise some serious questions about systemd, and its suitability for use by major Linux distros like Fedora and Debian. How can systemd be used if it can segfault in such a way, or if the tools that are provided to assist with the recovery exhibit such counter-intuitive, if not outright useless, behavior?

Editor's Comment: I am not a supporter of systemd, but if there are only 2 such reported occurrences of this fault, as noted in one of the links, then perhaps it is not a widespread fault but actually a very rare one. This would certainly explain - although not justify - why there has been so little apparent interest being shown by the maintainers. Nevertheless, the fault should still be fixed.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @05:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @05:10PM (#128048)

    I'm grateful that SN keeps posting these systemd stories. They've helped me avoid a lot of problems so far. I was going to upgrade my Fedora 20 system later today oddly enough, but I won't risk it now that I know about this problem. I don't read about these systemd problems at other news sites, so I'm relying on SN to keep me informed. Please keep putting these stories on the front page! They keep saving my ass!

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 21 2014, @06:08PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday December 21 2014, @06:08PM (#128063) Homepage

    From the summary:

    " The second problem with systemd that he describes involves the journalctl utility. It displays log messages with long lines in a way that requires sideways scrolling, as well as displaying all messages since the beginning of time, in forward chronological order. Both of these behaviors contribute to making the tool much less usable, especially in critical situations where time and efficiency are of the essence.

    Well boo-hoo-goddamn-fucking-doo! Is that really a SERIOUS PROBLEM?!

    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday December 21 2014, @06:12PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 21 2014, @06:12PM (#128064)
      Yes for reasons contained within your quote.
      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @06:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @06:20PM (#128067)

      Are you saying that log files are for faggots?

      A big, manly system administrator like yourself just feels the problem deep in his scrotum, right?

      Your fat, throbbing ballsack just knows what the problem is, huh?

      What is this, penile intuition or something?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday December 21 2014, @07:35PM

      by digitalaudiorock (688) on Sunday December 21 2014, @07:35PM (#128092) Journal

      Well boo-hoo-goddamn-fucking-doo! Is that really a SERIOUS PROBLEM?!

      I'd say it certainly is when you're the one trying to diagnose the problem and aren't able to in the manner you've been able to for decades.

      More importantly, the whole issue is in the name of this insane binary log design that's never been more than a cure for which there is no known disease. Every time I bring this up of course, someone chimes in with arguments to the contrary, and they always amount to just more and more and more of these imaginary shortcomings of text logs. Pure fucking insanity...all of it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @01:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @01:41PM (#128311)

    It is depressing me. I will have to make a choice soon. Debian or FreeBSD. This is my pc. I really prefer Debian on my desktop. Perhaps it is time to see how far FB had come since 4.5