Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 15:01 UTC (Wed) by handock (guest, #73633)
Parent article: Introducing /run

It makes me sad that this troll is taken serious.

He just transformed easy hackable start-up shell scripts
into buggy and unmaintainable C code. (systemd)

But that was only his first step. He's now obviously aiming
to infect the remaining sane rests of the Linux-world with his
idiotic ideas and world-view.

And the developers applaud and follow him like mindless sheep.

to post comments

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 15:04 UTC (Wed) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link] (24 responses)

Endlich sagt's mal einer!

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 15:07 UTC (Wed) by handock (guest, #73633) [Link]

Jau, musste mal sein.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 15:11 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

;) Tolles trollen, net?

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 16:43 UTC (Wed) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] (1 responses)

English please

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:12 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

mezcalero:
> Finally, someone says it!

handock:
> Yes, it had to be.

Trelane:
> ;) Great trolling, no?

petegn:
> Deutsch, bitte

[toggle and recurse]

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:16 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (19 responses)

I've reconsidered. I would have to say that as a Lennart Pöttering-related trolls go, it loses substantial points for not referencing The Audio Project. ;)

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:19 UTC (Wed) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link] (18 responses)

My name is "Poettering", with "oe", as in "Goethe". Not "Pöttering".

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:20 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

Poettering, tut mir Leid.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:30 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link] (5 responses)

Well at least they did not try to use or ø in there.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:53 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (4 responses)

How about ó or ò or õ or ô or ỏ or ō?

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:13 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link] (3 responses)

>How about ó or ò or õ or ô or ỏ or ō?

Not a front-rounded vowel AFAICT.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:42 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (2 responses)

o-doubleacute is definitely a front mid rounded vowel. Specifically, a long front mid rounded vowel, as Hungarian has fully phonemic vowel length.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:57 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link] (1 responses)

There was no o-double-acute in that list. That is an o-with-tilde, though it looks damn similar to o-double-acute at the websqueezed fonts of 12pt and below.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 19:11 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

it was just a list of letters I could easily access using the Compose key. :)

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:07 UTC (Wed) by Slumberthud (subscriber, #45657) [Link] (10 responses)

Pronunciation, please.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:21 UTC (Wed) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link] (9 responses)

Like Goethe, just without the "G" and the "the". And with a "P" and a "ttering" instead.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:30 UTC (Wed) by dark (guest, #8483) [Link] (4 responses)

oePttering? Now I'm confused :(

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 23:32 UTC (Wed) by baldridgeec (guest, #55283) [Link] (3 responses)

The way I've always heard "Goethe" pronounced (which may be 100% wrong - neither I nor any of my friends speak Enlightenment-era Germanic) it would end up sort of like:
"Puh(r)-turing" -- with the "(r)" being a soft slur into the next syllable.

Leonard, is that about right? Or do I need to try to start bringing Goethe into conversation more often so I can correct peoples' pronunciation? :)

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 2:15 UTC (Thu) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103) [Link] (2 responses)

Not right, no. The "oe" sounds like "ö", which sounds like a mixture between "o!" and "e!"

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 2:21 UTC (Thu) by baldridgeec (guest, #55283) [Link]

Oh wow, that's way off...

Do the exclamation points as pronunciation guides mean the same thing they do in Ndebele?

(sorry, couldn't resist -- but seriously... I now have no idea how to pronounce Goethe. To Wikipedia!)

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Posted Oct 20, 2017 9:42 UTC (Fri) by poruid (subscriber, #15924) [Link]

In Dutch "oe" is pronounced as the German "U" and really, it sounds a lot better than the English "u".

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 20:54 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

This is why we should support Unicode: so that a nice clear notation like the International Phonetic Alphabet could be used for this.

That way, Lennart could describe the pronunciation of his name using freaky-looking symbols that nobody knows how to pronounce, increasing global confusion still further. Surely a worthy goal.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 0:29 UTC (Thu) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (2 responses)

Clearly the correct solution is a sound sample saying "Hi, I'm Lennart Poettering, and I pronounce Poettering 'Poettering'" bundled in with the systemd source.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 0:58 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Or it could be a libcanberra sample application.

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Posted Oct 20, 2017 15:56 UTC (Fri) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

Linus did it the right way by giving an interview about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 15:50 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (9 responses)

Could you please troll somewhere else? Thanks.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:21 UTC (Wed) by rwmj (guest, #5474) [Link] (8 responses)

The original post isn't a troll.

It's true that systemd replaces shell init scripts with C, and it's at least arguable that the C code will be more buggy than the shell scripts.

The question though is whether it matters that the shell scripts are replaced with C.

After all, you weren't really supposed to edit those init scripts, and they were written in a highly formulaic variety of shell with lots of canned functions. It was very easy to make mistakes in those shell scripts, and keeping them all up to date with the latest LSB/init standards was a constant battle.

Instead of editing those shell scripts, you should use /etc/sysconfig to make changes to how daemons start up.

Furthermore, systemd AIUI can use init scripts if you want to.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:26 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"The original post isn't a troll."

Certainly silly to get all railed up and call Lennart a troll for being a messenger in a widely agreed upon and sensible change. The other criticism happens to be invalid as well as you have pointed out.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:53 UTC (Wed) by dcg (subscriber, #9198) [Link] (3 responses)

IMO it's not correct to say that the shell scripts have been replaced with C. The logic of the init system has certainly been rewritten in C. Some daemons have been modified to be able to be run without needing to do any shell parsing (and I don't understand why it would be a bad thing). But what dictates the behaviour of the init process is not C code, but configuration files. So, most of the real meat of the init system has not been rewritten in C code, but "systemd configuration code". Which are easily hackable...

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 2:12 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (2 responses)

The problems are:

- it is not a widely agreed upon change
- it makes the system markedly worse according to the inspectability axis

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 16:54 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

Please...

Major distributions have adopted/are considering it (Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE at least)
"Inspectable" for whom? The maze of shell scripts legated by sysvinit isn't exactly transparent... Sure, systemd does get some using to, but from my (rabid Fedora fan, rawhide follower; and thus user for some time now) perspective it's much better than what came before; plus is promises to really handle dependencies, not just "(try to) start this after that one on boot, and hope for the best" ordering.

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Posted Apr 1, 2011 3:57 UTC (Fri) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]

O_o ~= my face when tangled knots of SYSV shell are described as 'inspectable', ignoring the rampant emergent complexity and entropy therein.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:47 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (guest, #30636) [Link] (1 responses)

It's true that systemd replaces shell init scripts with C, and it's at least arguable that the C code will be more buggy than the shell scripts.

I think that's a simplification of what systemd does and puts too much importance on language which I think is really just an implementation detail here. My understanding of systemd is that it eliminates the explicit dependency expressed in most init systems with an implicit one largely by using file descriptor inheritance.

Since most tools really don't depend on an application to be running, but just depend on being able to open a socket, you can tremendously simplify the problem by making all of the sockets available at once and starting pretty much everything in parallel.

Since startup dependencies are now simplified so greatly, the per task startup is simplified so much that for the most part, it's trivial to do it all with just plain C.

So a better way to think of it is that systemd doesn't replace init scripts with C, it fundamentally eliminates the need to have init scripts by tremendously simplifying the problem of starting up tasks with complex dependency hierarchies.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 20:31 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

I think that's a simplification of what systemd does and puts too much importance on language which I think is really just an implementation detail here. My understanding of systemd is that it eliminates the explicit dependency expressed in most init systems with an implicit one largely by using file descriptor inheritance.

Make that no dependencies and we'll agree (The standard init stuff just says in which order stuff should (!) be (tried to) run when the system starts in a given runlevel, nothing more. Fragile as hell, but even so vastly better than what came before...).

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 23:42 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

I'm not sure that's a fair description of what systemd does. The biggest thing it does is to refactor the init system. It takes the boilerplate part of all the init scripts and combines it into a single implementation in C, and turns the small variable part into config files. Eliminating the copy and paste proliferation of independent init files should tend to reduce bugs, not increase them.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 16:55 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (5 responses)

> And the developers applaud and follow him like mindless sheep.

I hope so. Linux is better because of it.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 2:06 UTC (Thu) by JEDIDIAH (guest, #14504) [Link] (4 responses)

>> And the developers applaud and follow him like mindless sheep.
>
> I hope so. Linux is better because of it.

No. This is just change for it's own sake like a lot of the stuff that's been going on lately (Wayland, Unity). This seems to be about people's aesthetic preferences and really has little functional value.

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Posted Mar 31, 2011 2:18 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

Disagree completely. It's demonstrably false that it's just "change for it's own sake"; read the comments in this read regarding read-only /.

I'd love to be able to run with / being on read-only media in some scenarios. (I'm a paranoid guy. :)

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 4:44 UTC (Thu) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

yeah there is no practicle reason for wanting to reduce the size of tmpfs and to stop random non-device crap being written in /dev.

Why don't you start jumping up and down about all the stuff that broke the unix best practices that necessitated /run ?

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 31, 2011 5:06 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> No. This is just change for it's own sake like a lot of the stuff that's been going on lately (Wayland, Unity). This seems to be about people's aesthetic preferences and really has little functional value.

Well change is good. It is just people doing their best to make something they like better.

And aesthetics do matter. Isn't that part of the hacker ethos? There is certain aesthetic quality to the design of Unix, right?

The world moves on, things change, people adapt.

Like this /run thing...

Were not people flipping apeshit just a while ago about how SystemD flashed a warning that having a separate /usr is a unsupported configuration?

And how, in reality, that was not a supported configuration for years and years. It can work, but it's not guaranteed to work. You can make it work even if it didn't... but it would require inelegant solutions.

But now when the same guy says that we should have a /run directory so that programs always have a place to store their runtime temporary files... so people can have /var mounted on a different partition without a bunch of ugly hacks going on in /dev/.??* files... now all of a sudden that is a horrible suggestion.

What is the alternative? Just keep shoving more and more information into /dev/.??* because that is the only file system that developers know will be there at immediate boot-up?

Maybe if we modify things a bit and try to improve the system then we can finally have a system that really does support things like read-only root and remote-mount /usr/* directories.

Oh. And Unity is not-so-hot. Ubuntu is pushing too hard on it and it needs to wait till next release. I tried using it for a few weeks, but it's just not a very pleasant experience.

So I ditched Ubuntu and went with Fedora 15 Alpha. I tried to go back to Debian first, but I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted. Gnome 3 is just not well enough put together for Debian yet.

Fedora is FANTASTIC. Gnome 3 has been stable for me. Open source Gallium Radeon drivers are fast and can actually play most games now. The bug track stuff that Fedora has built in to help file bug reports on application crashes is super-duper cool. Hopefully it won't take much longer to get codec acceleration (maybe 8-10 months if things go well) and then I would be very happy.

I wouldn't be so negative about change if I was you. It has it's ups and downs. Ideally it will have more ups.

Introducing /run

Posted Apr 1, 2011 3:59 UTC (Fri) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link]

There's always slackware if you want to live in 1999 Linuxland. Or NetBSD, perhaps.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:13 UTC (Wed) by vrfy (guest, #13362) [Link]

> And the developers applaud and follow him like mindless sheep

It's actually a whole group a sheep that just constantly moves on. It's the group who does the work, and who needs solutions to make the real things happen.

The mindless complainers on the other hand, their impact is close to zero in the end.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:34 UTC (Wed) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link]

Most init.d scripts were buggy as hell. When I write my daemon code I always include command line arguments to specify PID, config, chroot, and log paths and all the other options that cannot be done easily or safely outside of the actual daemon itself. Inevitably someone would come along and rewrite my very simple init.d script (which simply forwarded options to the actual daemon to be done *properly*) to use the inherently broken init.d shell function libraries of various distributions.

I'm not the biggest fan of systemd because it's yet another incompatible daemon manager (compare OS X launchd, Solaris SMF, daemontools... and OpenBSD is just *now* moving to rc.d scripts for ports!) But in most ways it's an improvement over the _existing_ init.d systems. init.d itself isn't broken, IMO, but Redhat especially--other distros, too--made it broken by trying to use it to paper over all the deficiencies in other people's broken code, rather than *fixing* the broken code.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 17:36 UTC (Wed) by dcg (subscriber, #9198) [Link]

1) A lot of code in the init scripts is not "easily hackable", it's a mess. Shell script usually gets very ugly when you use it to program things that don't involve combining unix commands.
2) You can use shell scripts with systemd. It's even more configurable than the old init scripts.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 18:03 UTC (Wed) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (3 responses)

I know I'm feeding a troll by replying here.... but as someone who as himself flamed Lennart Poettering over PulseAudio, systemd and his general hostility to the 'UNIX Way' I want to be sure to stand up and applaud when he is right. And /run is right.

/run leads to a simpler and more understandable system and that is the UNIX Way.

Introducing /run

Posted Mar 30, 2011 20:07 UTC (Wed) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]

Same here.
Sounds like a good and clean thing.

Alex

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 20:56 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

As another perennial Lennart critic who oscillates between thinking his code is really neat and thinking his code is in somewhat bad taste, strongly seconded. This was not stupid. ;}

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Posted Jun 19, 2011 22:46 UTC (Sun) by Yaro (guest, #75783) [Link]

Yeah, I don't like Lennart, either. systemd can't properly init its way out of a paper bag (At least the "ancient" SysVInit can reliably make sure your partitions are mounted properly from the fstab. systemd couldn't even do that for me.) and PA breaks sound just about everywhere it's used.

Ever notice how, whenever someone calls for him to fix PA's problems, he blames it on either ALSA, drivers, or distributions? It's that sort of passing the blame on problems with their software that makes the maintainer of glibc so unpopular.

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 20:22 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (1 responses)

You should be happy this is Poettering and not de Icaza. Imagine what fun systemd would be to implement in C#/Mono. If it's good enough for the note taking app, it's good enough for init! That would be a better troll by an order of magnitude!

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 23:51 UTC (Wed) by baldridgeec (guest, #55283) [Link]

I like most of Leonard Poettering's work. I still haven't made up my mind about systemd, but I love Pulseaudio! (at least when it works properly... which happens so much more often these days than it used to!)

I never had a broken sound card that wouldn't multiplex with ALSA, but I do believe it happened, and then I saw EarCandy - that was really the "critical app" that demonstrated the usefulness of Pulse to me. And the recent versions get out of the way of jackd automatically... good stuff.

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Posted Mar 31, 2011 4:40 UTC (Thu) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

I agree. I prefer buggy and unmaintainable shell code