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As long time SoylentNews community member Marand observed during some recent discussion of severe systemd boot problems, it turns out that systemd disables the magic SysRq key.
The magic SysReq key is described at Wikipedia as:
[...] a key combination understood by the Linux kernel, which allows the user to perform various low-level commands regardless of the system's state. It is often used to recover from freezes, or to reboot a computer without corrupting the filesystem.
A Fedora user who logged a bug report for this issue back in 2013 described the problem with systemd's unexpected and harmful default setting:
As systemd depends on many files on a rootfs, in case of any problems with rootfs, it is not able to do its basic function - control processes and (cleanly) shutdown/reboot when crtl-alt-del is pressed on local keyboard. As this is a feature, I'd like to ask to enable the sysrq by default on Fedora, otherwise it is not possible to reboot system even locally in case of emergency situation.
While that Fedora bug report is set to CLOSED NOTABUG, other Linux distros, like Mageia and Debian GNU/Linux, have restored the proper behavior.
Now that this problem has come to light, all Fedora users should evaluate whether or not they need to fix their systems to work around systemd's incorrect default setting. Users of other Linux distributions using systemd should also evaluate their systems, too, in case their distro has not yet fixed this unexpected bug.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @05:11AM
He hasn't taken a strong stance against it. I think this is perhaps the biggest mistake he has ever made.
It became clear some time ago that systemd just isn't a viable option. Its implementation is broken, as the various bugs we've learned of recently show. But more importantly, the philosophy and architecture behind it are broken. These are things that can't be easily fixed. They define what systemd is.
Linus should have taken a very strong and very public stance against systemd. He should have shown true leadership skills and put an end to this systemd nonsense. He should have done this before Debian, the most important Linux distro and the most important Linux community, was damaged beyond repair thanks to systemd. And, no, light anger directed toward Kay is not sufficient.
By not speaking out against systemd, Linus has enabled systemd to irreparably harm the entire Linux community. As one of the major leaders of the Linux community, if not the entire open source community, it was his duty to stop this before it blew up. But he didn't. He let it happen, even when it was more than obvious that systemd is just not acceptable.
I hold Linus responsible for this systemd disaster nearly as much as I hold Lennart and Kay responsible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @07:14AM
Sadly he see himself as "just" the kernel guy.
Also, his distro of choice is Fedora. The very Fedora where Systemd has slowly been bloating itself.
And the last time he voiced an opinion about Fedora user space, polkit requiring root password to change a wifi setting, it got fixed asap.
All in all, i don't think it has bitten him personally yet...
(Score: 0) by SDRefugee on Monday December 22 2014, @04:03PM
I'm betting the abortion that is systemd just hasn't gotten around to biting him in the ass yet... If he uses Fedora, he's already deep into it.. Once he gets screwed by it, you can BET we'll hear about it.. And I DARE any of the systemd fanbois to accuse Linus of any of their favorite excuses.... I look forward to hearing Linus blasting the abortion that IS systemd... I have NO doubt it WILL happen... I've used Linux since 1995, started with Slackware, and frankly, I'm looking into going BACK to it, due to all of my favorite distros (Debian/CentOS) shoving this abortion down their users throats.. I strongly suspect Pat V. isn't gonna go down THAT road....
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @12:23PM
While I understand this point of view - I've said similar things in the past - I think it is important to not over-inflate Mr Torvalds' responsibilities (and our expectations of those responsibilities) simply because we (random community members) wish he had taken a larger role. From another perspective, it is absolutely amazing that Mr. Torvalds had been able to hold the line against stupidity being put into the kernel. We may wish that he had also fought in other battles like the current systemd problem, but any expectation that Mr. Torvalds should have done some additional for us - for free, on top of the important services he has already freely given. - is something that we are imposing on him.
I highly recommend watching this video [youtube.com], which is a very good explanation of this phenomena.
that said....
It certainly would be nice if Mr. Torvalds decided to speak out about the systemd problem.. He may want to stick to the kernel, but systemd is so intimately tied to the kernel avoiding it may not be possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @07:46PM
>any expectation that Mr. Torvalds should have done some additional for us - for free, on top of the important services he has already freely given. - is something that we are imposing on him.
Linus doesn't do what he does for free. He's paid--quite handsomely.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday December 22 2014, @01:06PM
It seems like there are a few genuine advantages to systemd, so perhaps the way to get rid of it is to invent something with those advantages but none of the things people hate about systemd. You could even fork systemd itself. It seems like there are good reasons why Linux could do with a better boot system, and systemd is taking advantage of that because there is nothing else.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22 2014, @09:48PM
Sysv-init already supports anything that isn't totally broken with systemd. Why do we need yet another init system, when the one we've been using for years works fine?