No systemd discussion?

[Peter]

Lennart Sorensen <lsorense at ...> writes:
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 06:36:36PM +0000, Peter wrote:
> > So systemd is causing a lot of grief and panic among seasoned users of
> While I prefer the idea of keeping things simple, I will also agree that
> the scripts are not working fine.

Let's be honest (warning: I am into VERY small systems which probably have
no room for systemd - but see below):

The scripts are not the problem. The problem is the daemons and other things
they start/stop, which can be programmed in ways which make them
nonresponsive for a variety of reasons. init(1) has a sane way to cope with
runaway processes, by making them sleep for a bit if they go insane. Zombies
should be dealt with by process group mechanisms which exist, but are not
used by anyone. It is really easy to write a bit of code which registers
"children to be killed in case of process group leader demise" perhaps
directly into /var/run/thedaemon.pid files, to be used by a slightly modded
init(1) when a process dies or runs away.

Adding systemd is not going to change that. A daemon that dies repeatedly
very quickly will have to be "quarantined" for a while. systemd will not fix
the underlying problem, which is certain daemons are not high quality and
robust. Using systemd to "fix" them is, imho, barking up the wrong tree.

What systemd *could* have done, is to replace the need for sh(1) and init(1)
in small systems assuming it would have some sort of shell or smnp interface
for control from a shell-less terminal, serial line, or network connection.
It would also have to be rather good at doing system things to replace sh
and init in size, so sh(1) would not be needed at all, as those 2 together
are fairly small (assuming ash or another startup sh compatible shell is
used), and do a LOT of things besides running sysv init scripts.

The way it is now, I see systemd as an unneeded complication which will
break many many things before starting to work "right" for most people. And
by most people I explicitly exclude "ready made" distribution users a la
ubuntu etc., who are end users, and, who, by their own (!) definition,
should do nothing more than push buttons and be rewarded with actions,
reagrdless how those actions are achieved.

Let's say I will be interested in systemd on small systems *after* openwrt
and other embedded distributions adopt it *and* the inevitable anguished
help cries on relevant forums die down a bit. That could take a year or two
after they start using it, judging by how things went in the past. I so wish
I am wrong about the time-frame.

Until then, I see systemd based kernels as a fork... harsh, but a serious
problem for people who need to tinker under the hood frequently, as I have to.

-- Peter (the late bird who hates being eaten)


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