Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet? -> what was wron with SysVInit?

[pk]

On 2012-12-27 02:14, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:

> I really think that's the crux of the matter Pandou: udev/systemd
> serves to the wants of the many. The eudev fork serves to the wants of

systemd+udev serves the "large mass" (users of mainly Fedora and other
distros using systemd) that doesn't care/know computers.

> a very few which really don't want an initramfs, when it has a lot of
> technical advantages. It has some problems, of course, but we can
> solve those, and solve the problem *in the general case*. Which is the
> one that it's important ant interesting.

It's unimportant and uninteresting on the terms that
Poettering/Sievers/Greg KH put forward, for us that wants control and
does not want an all singing and dancing system (incl. "kitchen sink").
In my opinion the init system should be completely independent of the
kernel with a well defined, generic, interface so that the user can
choose and pick whatever pieces he/she wishes to run his system. Think
"Lego" (as in small, well defined pieces that fit together in any way
the user sees fit)...

> my wishing luck to the eudev fork (which, BTW, Greg also did). The few

The way I read Greg's "good luck" was that it had quite a bit of a
sarcastic tone... Was there really any need for him to say anything at
all? I've previously had a lot of respect for Greg but this made me
think quite a lot less of him...

> of us who *dare* to praise udev/systemd get an incredible amount of
> crap for it. We are nothing but fanbois or, in your words, "udev has
> become like the cosmos: everything there is, and ever shall be."
> Really? I didn't knew that.

You really sound like a fanboy... And I don't mean that in a derogatory
way; it's just how I see your writing...

> Maybe we are doing it wrong. But as far as i can see, we are only
> expressing our opinion on technical grounds. We are not calling names

Your opinions (technical or not) doesn't matter to me since (it seems)
you have a very different goal than me with your system. I want you to
enjoy whatever system you use but you shouldn't try to force that same
system on to me. In that regard I see the eudev fork as a saviour.

These are the technical grounds that I've seen you state:

* fast boot time
Irrelevant, BIOS/UEFI/card firmware takes longer time than booting to
XDM for me. The few seconds that it takes to boot from grub to login is
of no matter (to me).

* parallel service startup
Nice to have but still irrelevant, see above. Sequential is also
preferred from a trouble shooting perspective. Furthermore I like having
the ability to stop a particular daemon if there something that needs
fixing (pushing "I" when booting).

* "simple service unit files"
Simplicity is fine but to accomplish the same in your simple "service"
file as in the example you brought forward (sshd) you need to hide a lot
of stuff elsewhere. Not for me thanks, I'm a control freak.

* good documentation
I haven't read it so I won't touch this. Not a technical point though,
more of an opinion. Although I agree that good documentation is very
nice to have.

* "Really good in-site customization"
If I choose to upgrade a daemon, I should be interested in what changes,
if any, that brings in configuration in order to not have any surprises
later. If you think that's a good thing, that really sounds like you
would be doing the OpenRC equivalent of:
'etc-update --automode -5'

* control groups
As I understand it, this depends on someone writing config files for the
individual daemons. Noone is stopping Gentoo devs or anyone else from
writing such. And I would, again, prefer to go through a good manual or
a "howto" and do it myself so that I can understand the consequences, if
I would want it.

* unification
I've tried quite a few distros over the years (starting with Redhat in
the late 90'ies) and Gentoos OpenRC is by far the most sane system I've
come across. Never going back to Redhat hell thank you! Standardizing
the interfaces is fine but it's not ok to force a whole "kitchen and
sink" solution in order to "satisfy" as many as possible. This is not
the Gentoo way, as I understand it. Gentoo is all about choice.

* "you tell the daemon *what* to do, not *how* to do it"
It's good if you don't want to learn about what things you install and
understand what the consequences are of different choices, in the config
files. I run very few daemons on my desktop machine so it's not so time
consuming to read up on/fix things etc. If I ever were to run a full
blown server (esp. connected to the "net") with lots of daemons I would
be very hesitant to use any pre-configurations, seems suicidal to me.
The only usage I see here of "declarative" scripts are when you don't
care about what the machine is doing.

Best regards

Peter K