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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: 4, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 31 2015, @06:41PM
More importantly, I wonder how all the distros that have caved to this bullshit are starting to feel.
The really big issue I see coming down the road is the kdbus fiasco. If I understand correctly, kdbus in the kernel will become a requirement in spite of the fact that the kernel devs will have no part of it. They've repeatedly told the freedesktop folks that it's mis-designed bloated userland code that has no place in the kernel, and they just keep sticking their fingers in their ears.
Seems to me this will eventually mean all the distros that have given into this will be stuck with unofficial kernel patches...good fucking luck with that.
(Score: 2) by novak on Monday August 31 2015, @07:52PM
I'm concerned about this too. Linux 4.2 just came out and has no KDBUS. From what I hear, it's expected to merge in 4.3- though I hope it'll be longer than that. The big deal about kdbus is that udev (part of systemd for no reason at all) will become dependent on KDBUS and it will use the sdbus API which is also part of systemd. This could result in major issues for eudev developers.
Thus far I've mainly stuck with linux- linux runs a crapload of tools, and I like to use some of the more obscure ones. My distros of choice are minimal and haven't caved to systemd (though I did use debian a bit), but if the choices are "use systemd," or "write your own systemd and use that," I'll probably stop upgrading linux and move away from it except for legacy versions for embedded development. I've always been impressed with openBSD, so that's probably what I'll have to go unless resistance to systemd stays strong. If at least some distros keep trying to make linux work without systemd or systemd-alikes, I'll probably keep hacking on it for a few more years at least.
novak
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 31 2015, @08:40PM
Is there any indication of that from anyone other than the freedesktop.org folks? There's a thread in the Gentoo forums following the kernel mailing list around that topic, and it doesn't sound like any of the kernel developer's concerns and criticisms have even been acknowledged, let alone addressed. Even Linus has totally called out their claims of how they need that in the kernel for performance reasons as total BS. It's actually a bit bizarre. It seems as though they have no plans of changing any of it, and are just hoping that the kernel devs give into pressure from RH and the like.
(Score: 2) by novak on Monday August 31 2015, @08:52PM
I saw a comment somewhere indicating that Greg was planning to fix it prior to resubmitting it for merging, with a lot of pompous feel-goody words in there about making sure everyone was happy with it but I haven't kept too close an eye on it myself. Now you've got my interest though, got a link to that forum thread?
novak
(Score: 3, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 31 2015, @09:01PM
Here it is:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1004624.html [gentoo.org]
Seems to me that Greg has been spewing non-answers through the entire discussion. I would take anything from him with about 1000 tons of salt.
(Score: 2) by novak on Monday August 31 2015, @09:53PM
Thanks, that's some good reading. Looks like there is some hope that the whole kdbus design and implementation is so bad that Linus will block it, at least for quite a while until they actually solve some of the technical issues (which are apparently even more than I realized- it's a security nightmare). On the other hand, it's fairly clear that the systemd/kdbus supporters' play is to try to ignore the issues and have redhat/greg/poettering/crew try to strongarm the whole thing through as "good enough we'll polish it later." Let's hope that Linus is his usual rude self in the face of such obviously bullshit tactics.
novak
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:40AM
ignore the issues and have redhat/greg/poettering/crew try to strongarm the whole thing through as "good enough we'll polish it later."
So, basically business as usual for Poettering and company. That's the same argument that led to Pulseaudio's premature adoption to (supposedly) solve problems like software audio mixing, and other features that were already solved in other projects before pulse got released. Release crap, make it a dependency of some other stuff, and then let everyone else deal with making it usable.
The good news is that, ten or so years later, pulseaudio is mostly* usable out of the box, so there's some slim hope for systemd, once Sievers and Poettering get bored and move on.
* Only mostly, I still find that the best "fix" for audio problems in Linux is usually to uninstall pulseaudio and let programs work with ALSA directly.
(Score: 2) by novak on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:54AM
Yep, I've had problems in userland with audio on linux exactly once since I started using it. A couple years back, I put debian on a machine for my wife. It was fine, but then a month or two later randomly she was having trouble with sound. I assumed that she did something stupid, not being a linux person, but no, it was really broken and apparently in some persistent setting that lasted through a reboot. That was when I realized that I had accidentally installed pulse (the default, I guess) so I nuked it and have had no problems since. Pulse isn't _that_ buggy (anymore), but it's pretty pointless because it runs on top of ALSA and it's buggier than ALSA. I've never used it intentionally because there has never been a point in time where pulse offered me any feature I cared about- just another layer of bloat.
I have less hope for systemd, though, because by design systemd has to keep expanding. First it has to eat linux userland, then it's going to have to add "features." So if the init system part of it is rock solid in a few years- hell, even the webserver might be pretty well debugged by then- then openofficed or emacsd or waylandd or some shit (which urgently has to be written because what it replaces was really broken the whole time, we'll learn) is going to add bugs right back in.
However, while Linus doesn't appear to really care about the changes systemd is making, he is one of the people least likely to tolerate poor code and worse excuses from these guys in the linux kernel. This could be something of a holdup to systemd's proposed takeover- though as I understand it more of a delay than a real show-stopper because systemd can still run over regular dbus- there won't be any unsupported kernel patches over this anytime soon.
novak
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @02:59PM
The only thing pulse seems to offer that alsa can't do on its own, is dynamic device switching.
This however is only really relevant for the new breed of USB "headphones", where they have a small sound card in the USB end, and some headphones hardwired to that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @08:50PM
It is also relevant for bluetooth headphones. I do love the freedom of using bluetooth headphones, not being tethered to the device the sound is coming from. Now if only bluetooth audio was actually usable on Linux, I've just tried it with the built-in bluetooth on my new laptop and it still suffers from terrible lag and dropouts, like it did the last time I tried it several years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @03:52PM
Bluetooth is sadly highly dependent on the devices being properly charged.
Be it audio or HID, the device will start to show lag and such long before the "low battery" light turns on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05 2015, @01:40PM
That hasn't been my experience, how well charged my headphones are hasn't been an issue, they have worked well up until they run out of battery. However there is an inherent lag with the A2DP protocol that is used due to encoding for high quality audio, but that lag itself isn't an issue it is consistent and easily compensated for when watching video, that wasn't what I was complaining about.
From my point of view Bluetooth audio works just fine with Android (it also mostly worked on my Nokia N900 which ran Linux, though that had an issue with interference from its WiFi radio), the lag I experience with Bluetooth audio on Linux is rather excessive, but it is the dropouts when I'm right next to the computer that make it unusable for me. The only "solution" I have so far is to use an external Bluetooth transmitter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:24AM
I have yet to see Red Hat (Poettering's employer) walk back any of this ridiculousness. Of course, Red Hat already has plenty of fingers in plenty of pies, in terms of Linux subsystems.
If it does come to the point of unofficial kernel patches, I hope Linus Torvalds decides to have some fun on the first merge request where he can stomp on this sideshow. Frankly, it's way past time he did that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:26PM
Linus said systemd is fine. Where does linus get his money from. A consortium. Where does that money come from. Guess.
I don't like it.
Maybe Linux needs to be forked by Brad Spengler of Grsec?
(Score: 2) by fnj on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:38PM
Linux doesn't need to be forked; not by anyone. There are already superb alternate POSIX OSs; the BSDs. FreeBSD and its dependent offshoot PC-BSD come the closest to rivaling the capabilities of linux. NextBSD is just beginning development, and might become another contender. None of these are infected by systemd or ever will/can be. All that is needed is for DE and app developers to stay away from building in any gratuitous dependencies on linux in their code, so they can be readily ported to the BSDs. Mostly, this is only a problem with DEs.
Since the various DEs[*] are being obtuse and obstinate, a fresh DE called Lumina is being developed expressly for PC-BSD. It is lightweight and very promising; already well along in development.
[*] GNOME has gone in whole hog with systemd dependency, and the developers are on the record for only caring about Linux. KDE is catching the disease. Even XFree86 is showing definite signs of infection.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hash14 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:01AM
I'm not quite as optimistic. Greg KH is a pretty big fan of systemd and kdbus:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/4/13/645 [lkml.org] (long discussion, but it shows that GKH is a big proponent of pulling in kdbus, and _against_ the technical advice of many others on LKML)
http://kroah.com/log/blog/2014/01/15/kdbus-details/ [kroah.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/13g3ys/greg_kh_mocks_udev_fork_developers/ [reddit.com]
https://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/771055-fun-photo-greg-kroah-hartman-crowned-at-the-systemd-hack-fest [linux.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:43PM
And Torvalds is overly trusting of GregKH.
Torvalds also seems to think that even with the flaws, kdbus can be pushed into its own little corner of the kernel and forgotten about.
More likely that once the base is accepted, GregKH and others will be pushing to patch it so that various other sub-systems move to talk to userland via kdbus exclusively.
Question is if this will get some "we don't break userspace" rantings from Torvalds, whereupon the recently introduced social contract gets thrown in his face...
(Score: 1) by rtfazeberdee on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:14PM
"More importantly, I wonder how all the distros that have caved to this bullshit are starting to feel." - they know a lot more than you do hence they took this road.
"If I understand correctly, kdbus in the kernel will become a requirement in spite of the fact that the kernel devs will have no part of it. " you don't understand correctly which is indicative of your whole post.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:30PM
Wow...really specific. Seems most people here disagree with you. I guess they don't know anything either right?
I've been coding in unix since the 80s. How the fuck do you know what I know?
(Score: 0) by rtfazeberdee on Friday September 04 2015, @03:28PM
so what if most posters disagree, most are ACs who could be just be a few misinformed people. As most of them didn't understand the article and hence all the crap responses to it, i don't count them as knowledgeable on this particular subject. I don't care if you've be coding since Babbage's time, things move on and sometimes the longer you've been doing the same thing the harder it is to deal with new things. Out of interest, are you still using Linux 0.99 and Motif or CDE (or just cli)?
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:39PM
FFS...I just realized that you just joined here to post this shit. Typical. Get a life and go fuck yourself.