The case for the /usr merge [LWN.net]

The case for the /usr merge

Posted Jan 30, 2012 0:11 UTC (Mon) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103)
In reply to: The case for the /usr merge by paulj
Parent article: The case for the /usr merge

This is simply not true. systemd speaks the D-Bus protocol without relying on the D-Bus daemon. One of the nice things about systemd is that is is fully introspectable even if the only processes running are systemd itself and a bash. For example, boot into emergency mode by passing "emergency" on the kernel cmdline, and you'll see that "systemctl" works just fine even though no processes between PID 1 and bash are around.

Don't spread obvious falsehoods, please!

The case for the /usr merge

Posted Jan 30, 2012 12:20 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Systemctl gives DBus connection errors in certain situations. And, other than to those quite familiar with systemd, it's NOT an obvious falsehood. I know you get a lot of uncalled-for personal crap from snipers, but does it help for you to respond to other people in a bordering-on-insulting fashion?

Here's what I was going by:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114169232705420738100/System...

I'm not sure, but there's probably some combination of a couple of silly little bugs here:

a) If emergency mode had root mounted RO (I'm not sure if that happened at shutdown or at beginning of emergency mode): Going to emergency mode with root RO when some ancillary fs has failed to mount (I don't remember what old initscripts did, but I think they first mounted / RW before mounting rest?)

b) Shutdown having become fragile in the face of a RO /. I've had old init + initscripts in a similar situation, & services would fail to stop, but init would eventually reboot anyway. A fragile reboot can be a huge problem if you're remote and have no physical access to the power/reset buttons.

c) A slightly misleading or confusing error message from systemctl.

d) Unrelated to my original post, but also evident in those photos: Parallel jobs stomp over the tty with output. Particularly confusing if you've missed the fact you're supposed to type in a passphrase. (This possibly isn't a little bug, in terms of fixing it).

Bugs, which will be fixed no doubt, I'm sure. Also, just because a messenger doesn't have a perfectly set-out message, doesn't mean the messenger should then be shot.

The case for the /usr merge

Posted Jan 30, 2012 16:55 UTC (Mon) by michich (guest, #17902) [Link]

If you can find a sequence of steps to reproduce the problem reliably, please file a bug in Bugzilla.

But... the second screenshot shows 2.6.34.7-66.fc13. Are you really running Fedora 16 on a kernel from Fedora 13?