Re: [gentoo-user] Debian just voted in systemd for default init system in jessie

[Andrew Savchenko]

On Wed, 19 Feb 2014 10:19:43 +0000 thegeezer wrote:
[...]
> >> For all this talk about technical details,
> >> nobody seems to notice the marketing
> > A few people including myself have noted it earlier.
> >
> >> that's going on and frankly it disgusts me.
> >  And me too.
> >
> >
> I have to confess that it does feel very evangelistic the approach from
> folks pushing systemd.  perhaps it is just because for some it has been
> four years of looking at new ways of doing things, whilst others are
> just realising now how different it is.
> I saw an interesting blog post [1] that basically tried to convince
> directly gentoo devs.
> it was interesting because of this comment:
>
> <snip>
> "
> *Simon*
> September 26, 2013 at 2:58 am
> <https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logindsystemd-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-756>
>
>
> Yes, I think you’re dead on, there. It’s not that Gnome depends on
> systemd – but it’s increasingly dependent on features that are only
> provided by systemd. The example of OpenRC not behaving according to
> GDM’s assumptions is a perfect illustration of that. It’s dependent not
> on systemd, but on something that for practical purposes is
> indistinguishable from systemd
> "
> </snip>

It looks like systemd PR agents put it quite simple: my way or the
highway. And it looks like Gentoo is the last major shelter for
freedom we have.
 
> the difficulty is that without knowing what features are required but
> assumed to be there it becomes very difficult to build something the has
> the API that logind or others might be requiring.    an update of gnome
> might require a new feature that is hot off the presses, and until it
> breaks an openrc-logind system no one is aware of that requirement.  the
> API does seem to be online [2], albeit updated 30days ago; i can't
> comment if this is up to date enough or not.
>
> I think the argument on the blog page is a bit disingenuous too -
> essentially implying that if you want gnome then you must have logind,
> and if you want logind you must supply the features supplied by systemd:
> but to get a list of the features required is _your_ problem: go through
> the gnome source code to find out.
> these kinds of things are what folks are taking umbrage against.
>
> I'm also a little confused over the socket matrix feature.  I think it's
> very clever to be negotiating and buffering socket and mounts to
> services that need them, but I haven't seen a good technical argument as
> to why this is required.  From my perspective i see it as xinet.d for
> unix sockets and well, is anyone using xinet.d on a production server?
> Hopefuly someone can enlighten me?  also what happens if the socket
> arbitrator dies ?

1. We never use xinetd on either production systems or
desktops/laptops. The only legitimate setup with xinetd I can recall
is CVS server. Though the very CVS technology is obsolete this days
(yes, I know portage tree is still using it and I'm looking forward
for git migration).

Socket activation feature is dubious at least. It looks like nobody
from its developers cared to assume that services may start not as
fast as they expect (e.g. network issues with cisco switches being
too slow to answer dhcp which may take up to several minutes). That's
why socket activation is extremely dangerous: it may cause services
to fail _on_ start. Some may just crash and will be restarted (though
not all services may be restarted after crash without manual
interaction, e.g. some DB setups may fail badly), while other may
loose some functionality and continue to work.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko