boycott systemd

[James C]

Linux Expert Describes Two Serious systemd Flaws He Has Encountered

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/12/21/1343258

Noted Linux expert Chris Siebenmann has described two catastrophic failures involving systemd.

One of the problems he encountered with systemd became apparent during a disastrous upgrade of a system from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21. It involved PID 1 segfaulting during the upgrade process. He isn't the only victim to suffer from this type of bad experience, either. The bug report for this problem is still showing a status of NEW, nearly a month after it was opened.

The second problem with systemd that he describes involves the journalctl utility. It displays log messages with long lines in a way that requires sideways scrolling, as well as displaying all messages since the beginning of time, in forward chronological order. Both of these behaviors contribute to making the tool much less usable, especially in critical situations where time and efficiency are of the essence.

Problems like these raise some serious questions about systemd, and its suitability for use by major Linux distros like Fedora and Debian. How can systemd be used if it can segfault in such a way, or if the tools that are provided to assist with the recovery exhibit such counter-intuitive, if not outright useless, behavior?

Additional link...

http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog ... ashAndMore

[James C]

systemd Disables the Linux Magic SysRq Key

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/12/21/1554227

As long time SoylentNews community member Marand observed during some recent discussion of severe systemd boot problems, it turns out that systemd disables the magic SysRq key.

The magic SysReq key is described at Wikipedia as:

[...] a key combination understood by the Linux kernel, which allows the user to perform various low-level commands regardless of the system's state. It is often used to recover from freezes, or to reboot a computer without corrupting the filesystem.
A Fedora user who logged a bug report for this issue back in 2013 described the problem with systemd's unexpected and harmful default setting:

As systemd depends on many files on a rootfs, in case of any problems with rootfs, it is not able to do its basic function - control processes and (cleanly) shutdown/reboot when crtl-alt-del is pressed on local keyboard. As this is a feature, I'd like to ask to enable the sysrq by default on Fedora, otherwise it is not possible to reboot system even locally in case of emergency situation.
While that Fedora bug report is set to CLOSED NOTABUG, other Linux distros, like Mageia and Debian GNU/Linux, have restored the proper behavior.

Now that this problem has come to light, all Fedora users should evaluate whether or not they need to fix their systems to work around systemd's incorrect default setting. Users of other Linux distributions using systemd should also evaluate their systems, too, in case their distro has not yet fixed this unexpected bug.

[James C]

Systemd Prevents the Skipping of fsck while Booting

http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=5378&tid=11

A Debian user has recently discovered that systemd prevents the skipping of fsck while booting:

With init, skipping a scheduled fsck during boot was easy, you just pressed Ctrl+c, it was obvious! Today I was late for an online conference. I got home, turned on my computer, and systemd decided it was time to run fsck on my 1TB hard drive. Ok, I just skip it, right? Well, Ctrl+c does not work, ESC does not work, nothing seems to work. I Googled for an answer on my phone but nothing. So, is there a mysterious set of commands they came up with to skip an fsck or is it yet another flaw?
One user chimed in with a hack to work around the flaw, but it involved specifying an argument on the kernel command line. Another user described this so-called "fix" as being "Pretty damn inconvenient and un-discoverable", while yet another pointed out that the "fix" merely prevents "systemd from running fsck in the first place", and it "does not let you cancel a systemd-initiated boot-time fsck which is already in progress."

Further investigation showed that this is a known bug with systemd that was first reported in mid-2011, and remains unfixed as of late December 2014. At least one other user has also fallen victim to this bug.

How could a severe bug of this nature even happen in the first place? How can it remain unfixed over three years after it was first reported?

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 ... 00184.html

With init, skipping a scheduled fsck during boot was easy, you just pressed
Ctrl+c, it was obvious! Today I was late for an online conference. I got
home, turned on my computer, and systemd decided it was time to run fsck on my
1TB hard drive. Ok, I just skip it, right? Well, Ctrl+c does not work, ESC
does not work, nothing seems to work. I Googled for an answer on my phone but
nothing. So, is there a mysterious set of commands they came up with to skip an
fsck or is it yet another flaw?

[starhawk]

My opinion of systemd --

[anikin]

XLennart: A Game For Systemd Haters With Nothing Better To Do

It seems that a good number of Linux users who despise systemd as an init manager have a lot of time on their hands... From making websites bashing systemd, forking distributions over their position of using systemd, personal attacks against systemd developers, to writing page after page of forum comments about negative points of systemd. There's now even an anti-systemd game.

XLennart is the anti-systemd game that's a modification of the XBill game.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTg2Mjk

[NeroVance]

XLennart: A Game For Systemd Haters With Nothing Better To Do

It seems that a good number of Linux users who despise systemd as an init manager have a lot of time on their hands... From making websites bashing systemd, forking distributions over their position of using systemd, personal attacks against systemd developers, to writing page after page of forum comments about negative points of systemd. There's now even an anti-systemd game.

XLennart is the anti-systemd game that's a modification of the XBill game.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTg2Mjk

I'd love a game like that, but then again he does look like the kind of hipster yuppie that I would... Well, I don't think that would be a good idea to talk about

[James C]

Devuan release roadmap

https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/2 ... 77.en.html

Anyway, i want to let you know the roadmap i have for the release of
what i consider the "alpha" version of devuan jessie. ......... snip

.....We will probably have the repository populated with all needed packages
for friday 23 january, and the first iso installer is scheduled for
saturday 31 january.

[8Geee]

My opinion of systemd --

I was thinking more of a steaming dung-heap in August, but a turd in a punch-bowl on the boil is OK by me.

[starhawk]

It's a Crock Pot. Geddit? Crock of...

...yeah, exactly...

Fits perfectly, IMO.

[8Geee]

that a metal crock-pot... I'm used to the ceramic ones. But yah... I got the picture.

@anikin

I was hoping for the "Whack-a-Mole" version

[scsijon]

A faq on systemd is in the December issue of Linux Voice and was written by Graham Morrison so it's not a 'roughie'.

A good basic explanation of it I believe.

[James C]

INTERVIEW: LENNART POETTERING

http://www.linuxvoice.com/interview-lennart-poettering/

LV: Why do you think some distributions managed to adopt Systemd without any major fights, and then others like Debian had very intense debates and resignations? Is it just because it’s a distro with more political processes?

LP: Arch Linux probably did it the quickest way. You know, distributions attract different kinds of people, of course. If you looked at Arch Linux, it attracted very progressive kinds of people – like power users. They’re progressive and want to make the best out of their computers. So it was easy for them to adopt.

Then if you look at Gentoo, for example, they still haven’t done Systemd as default. They used to be like Arch Linux is now – they used to be the young people who adopted things quickly. But the Gentoo people aged, and they became more conservative.

And Debian is probably an even more conservative bunch. Debian is a really old project, and many people from back in the old days are still active on it. So they have longer release cycles. And Fedora always defined itself as being on the bleeding edge, of course, so it was easier. Well, not that easy – some people don’t realise that inside of Fedora and inside of Red Hat, there were lots of fights. So it’s to do with the culture around the various distributions. And Slackware are the ultra conservatives!

[darkcity]

he makes it sound as though its just about people not wanting change.

he no mention puppy too!

[James C]

LMDE 2 "Betsy" will be using the traditional sysvinit

Linux Mint's Debian-based release will differ from vanilla Debian by not featuring systemd as the default init software.
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2764

"Similar to Linux Mint 17.x, LMDE 2 "Betsy" will be using the traditional sysvinit. The move to systemd could happen with Linux Mint 18 and LMDE 3, giving this new technology and the Linux ecosystem 2 years (or more) to mature and to iron out integration and compatibility issues. Cinnamon in particular is built without systemd support by default and the development team is planning to change this in version 2.6 to give the DE the ability to switch at runtime between systemd and consolekit/upower without the need to recompile anything.

[starhawk]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88570

[anikin]

Torvalds says he has no strong opinions on systemd

Linux creator Linus Torvalds is well-known for his strong opinions on many technical things. But when it comes to systemd, the init system that has caused a fair degree of angst in the Linux world, Torvalds is neutral.
"When it comes to systemd, you may expect me to have lots of colourful opinions, and I just don't," Torvalds told iTWire in an interview. "I don't personally mind systemd, and in fact my main desktop and laptop both run it.

http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/ ... on-systemd

[stemsee]

Torvalds holds this opinion because of his knowledge of linux coding, I hold the same opinion because of my lack of knowledge of linux coding. Which demonstrates that genius is not dependent upon knowledge, but the other way around! Knowledge depends on geniuses to reveal it.

[anikin]

Tsss ... we are not supposed to speak positively about systemd here in this thread.

[James C]

http://fossforce.com/2015/01/top-ten-th ... t-systemd/

Top Ten Things Linux Users Say About systemd
FOSS Force

Back about four or five years ago, when FOSS Force was just a young whippersnapper yelling to be heard, we found people first noticing us when we dreamed up a unique weekly feature we cleverly called the Top Ten List. It was an immediate success. Unfortunately, we can’t claim credit for originating the concept, as Michael J. Fox saw one of our lists on his DeLorean’s dashboard computer while on a foray into the twenty-first century, and told someone at NBC when back home in the eighties, who told David Letterman. We lost out when Letterman used it on his show and took credit for it — even though it was our idea years later in the first place. Thanks, David.

Until now, we thought the days of the Top Ten on FOSS Force were long gone. However, the systemd brouhaha has awakened the inner Top Ten List that has been sleeping within us for all these years. Today, for one day only, the Top Ten List returns for one last encore — or the last one until the next time something tickles us funny.

Ladies and gentlemen, from the home office in Omaha, Nebraska, here is this week’s Top Ten List — the top ten things Linux users say about systemd.

10. Shouldn’t that be capitalized?

9. It can’t be very good if all it got was a D.

8. I think that’s some kind of thing that Microsoft hangs on their servers.

7. We developers know what’s best.

6. systemd? Where’s my gun?

5. Will I still be able to watch Netflix?

4. Not nearly educated enough on the issue to make an informed assessment currently.

3. I don’t know nothing but I know what’s best and systemd ain’t it.

2. systemd? systemd? We don’t need no stinking systemd.

1. Things were going kinda good around here until you brought that systemd to the party.

[stemsee]

Debian team has split over systemd.

Debian forked to Devuan, no systemd, only traditional init. So let's build a Devuan puppy!