1 |
On 19/08/2013 14:13, pk wrote: |
2 |
>> sysvinit, like X11, needs a massive overhaul and a sprint clean. |
3 |
> Yes, an overhaul is always welcome. But most people criticising these |
4 |
> systems (and other systems) just say that they are bad without pointing |
5 |
> out what is bad. How can you fix something without knowing what's bad? |
6 |
> To me the problem with sysvinit (and X11) seems mostly to be a |
7 |
> philosophical one. Some people say: "this doesn't work the way I want it |
8 |
> to - therefore it's crap!". While others (like me) say: "I have no |
9 |
> problem with this - it works fine!". |
10 |
|
11 |
|
12 |
I find sysvinit to be unwieldy and clunky. Perhaps not so much the code |
13 |
itself, but surely the interface it presents to me the sysadmin. All |
14 |
that rc.[0-6] nonsense - what's that all about? In all my days I have |
15 |
never seen a computer running *nix that wasn't fully satisfied with two |
16 |
exclusive running states: |
17 |
|
18 |
- normal operation (whether console, headless, X) |
19 |
- maintenance mode (busybox on console). |
20 |
|
21 |
So why do I have 6 of them? The runlevels themselves are fixed and |
22 |
rigid. I want them somewhat more flexible, I actually don't want a |
23 |
bluetooth daemon *running*all*the*time* - really, it should only start |
24 |
when I enable bluetooth. This may not be the best analogy but you get |
25 |
the point, the OS needs to react to changes in the environment and |
26 |
sometimes those reactions are best dealt with by the service manager. |
27 |
|
28 |
OpenRC to my mind made huge strides in dragging this into modern times |
29 |
by making runlevels declarative. It all make so much sense in Gentoo. As |
30 |
for the bulk of the code, I don't have issue with that. PID=1 does what |
31 |
it needs to do. |
32 |
|
33 |
I suppose I can sum up the changed environment in one word: hotplug |
34 |
|
35 |
X11, well that's another story and probably way off topic. It was |
36 |
designed for hardware and architectures that haven't existed for 20+ |
37 |
years. Almost all factors that made X11 awesome in the 80s and 90s |
38 |
simply are not there anymore. |
39 |
|
40 |
|
41 |
-- |
42 |
Alan McKinnon |
43 |
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |