The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 22, 2014 20:10 UTC (Sat) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate by thedevil
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

> I am not a totally passive recipient, I am an occassional Debian contributor. And, apparently roughly 30% of DDs agree with me. Are they also "taking advantage of others' work"?

Yes. As they take advantage of your work. That wasn't meant to be pejorative; we all gain an advantage from the work of others. But it does imply letting others make some of the choices.

> The crux of my position is: if one option is bad enough, it is not free choice. You could say that users of proprietary software are also "free" to just stop using it, yet that is not usually how we apply the term.

I'm not saying that anyone has to stop using Debian. Unlike proprietary software, the pre-systemd versions will remain available for them to use or improve on as they see fit. _Upgrading_ to a hypothetical new version of Debian with a hard systemd dependency would be a free choice.

> systemd is no detail. Adoption of systemd in its full scope would make a completely different OS...

Perhaps it would, but then you have two options: the software as it exists right now, pre-systemd, or the improved version with systemd. That's one of the nice things about free software, the older versions remain available for use and further development if anyone should happen to disagree with the direction taken by the project's current developers. (Just look at what happened with Gnome 3 and MATE, for example.)

There are any number of Debian derivatives available. If 30% of Debian contributors really want a Debian-style OS without systemd—or even just the 24% who listed Option 1 as their first choice—they would clearly have the resources necessary to create such a derivative without impeding the 70+% who want to use systemd. Or they could just submit patches to ensure that the packages they're interested in continue to work with other init systems in Debian proper, without imposing such support as a requirement on other maintainers.

Personally, I don't see why anyone would bother. Systemd seems strictly superior to the existing sysvinit as well as the other proposals. I'm already using it on my Debian systems and am glad for the change.

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The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 22, 2014 20:39 UTC (Sat) by thedevil (guest, #32913) [Link] (23 responses)

"I'm not saying that anyone has to stop using Debian. Unlike proprietary
software, the pre-systemd versions will remain available for them to use
or improve on as they see fit. _Upgrading_ to a hypothetical new version
of Debian with a hard systemd dependency would be a free choice."

Sorry, no. Running today's software, bit by bit, in 2 years (even
assuming my hardware lasts that long) would be a worse option than not
using computing at all. And you know that.

"they could just submit patches to ensure that the packages they're
interested in continue to work with other init systems in Debian proper"

This is what I pin my hopes on, but the tone adopted by many DDs in the
last few years when presented with patches and bugreports detracts from
those hopes. If I was conspiracy theory minded (I am not) I would describe
the tone as remarkably similar to that of systemd maintainer ;-)

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 22, 2014 21:02 UTC (Sat) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (22 responses)

Please try on said DD's shoes for size. Firstly, their principal responsibility is to say "no" to ill-conceived patches, and even just to patches that don't fit into the programming standards of the package(s). They have to triage bug reports into "requires immediate attention", "can wait" and "just not worth it". Remember they have limited resources (probably best described as "resource starved"). That means they can't responsibly take on continuing maintenance of all crazy ideas proposed. Much less when upstream won't take them over, leaving them in the bind of caring for changes forever.

Pretty much the same way the systemd developers state their position; They want to build the very best possible process managing infrastructure for Linux. Diverting resources to cater for other kernels (or even not-so-new Linux versions), or compromising the use of Linux-only features for the sake of portability, just isn't in their books.

Your might not like either position, but you should at least try to understand where they come from. Both Debian and systemd owe their success to following through with their visions.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 23, 2014 1:42 UTC (Sun) by thedevil (guest, #32913) [Link] (21 responses)

My point (a minor and apropos one, anyway) was that this is a new
phenomenon to me. I have been using, and trying to improve, Debian for
a long time as I wrote in my other posts here. Refusals used to be
gracious and understanding, now they're often silent or even snide.

I actually agree with you about the vision, but the problem for me is
that in the Debian case the vision seems to have changed. Very slightly
but perceptibly if you look close. Nothing I can do about that as an
individual (and not because of my lacking technical merit), and that's
really the most frustrating thing about the situation.

Bowing out of this debate for good; since the effort to switch to
systemd with all its family is comparable to switching to a new distro,
I may as well start exploring the latter :-(

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 23, 2014 1:53 UTC (Sun) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (19 responses)

Please consider GNU/kFreeBSD in your list of alternatives to explore. It has 90% of the archive build, so you likely won't miss out on any apt goodness, it works like GNU (because it is GNU), and is endorsed by systemd's lead developer as positively remaining systemd free.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 24, 2014 12:27 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (18 responses)

[…] and is endorsed by systemd's lead developer as positively remaining systemd free.

People who hope that FreeBSD will let them stay in the 1990s forever should be really scared of this.

(Of course, once FreeBSD has systemd there will be little point in Debian/kFreeBSD staying with sysvinit.)

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 24, 2014 14:14 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (17 responses)

Dam you spoiled the surprise for the anti-systemd crowd that would go running over to FreeBSD in the masses due to systemd being installed on their favourite linux distro only to find a launchd alternative, bsd kernel spesific and on feature par with systemd in the future ;)

Now let's see if that crowd will complain as much to the BSD crowd, demanding of them to make it available and work on linux too...

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 29, 2014 9:01 UTC (Sat) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (16 responses)

What a petty comment. You sound as if you want systemd dissenters to be miserable, as if they did something to harm you and you want to see them suffer in return. This kind of sore-winner attitude is part of the problem the dissenters have with the systemd movement. It's the opposite of the attitudes of cooperation and congenial coexistence that have made Debian and the rest of the FOSS movement possible.

On top of that, you misrepresent the portability argument: no one is demanding that Poettering, et al make systemd work on BSDs. The problem is that he explicitly refuses to even accept patches from others to that end.

Then there's the double-speak and the "wakeup call" to Gentoo, which gives the lie to the "no one is forcing anyone" line.

And that's the biggest problem with systemd. And when people focus exclusively on the technical issues, they miss the bigger issues, the people problems. And those are harder to fix and far more damaging, because there's no "community reset --hard" command.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 30, 2014 15:23 UTC (Sun) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] (15 responses)

> The problem is that he explicitly refuses to even accept patches from others to that end.

No. That would only be a problem if:
a) Such patches to make systemd work on other OSes actually existed.
b) It turned out, from actual experience, that maintaining them in a separate "portable" git tree had frequent problematic merge conflicts or something like that, that made it very desirable for the tree be merged back with the Linux-only tree for developer sanity.

Please note the OpenSSH/Portable OpenSSH split seems to work out just fine.

Anyone in the world can get together and work on a branch to make the bits and pieces they'd like to use portable.

Whether or not systemd upstream git tree supports other OSes is almost completely irrelevant -- unless you're asking the systemd upstream to do the portability work.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 30, 2014 20:34 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (14 responses)

why would someone waste time creating such patches when the project has already stated that they won't accept them?"

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 30, 2014 20:45 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (3 responses)

Remember the days when much stuff for Linux was developed in/through non-vanilla kernel trees, and Alan Cox' tree was the one most bleeding edge hackers followed? Could set up a git tree and merge said patches in there, that is just a few keystrokes away. Merging in upstream changes is ridiculously easy with git, no need to handle random text patches flying by on mailing lists. Not doing so is a dead giveaway to me that they aren't serious.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 30, 2014 21:02 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

I remember those days, but you only go to that sort of effort if you _really_ want the functionality provided and it's worth maintaining a fork.

For many people, systemd just isn't that compelling.

It's like the attention paid to fast boot times and suspend/resume, if you are dealing with systemd that stay up and running for months at a time, shaving a few seconds off of the boot time doesn't matter. If you are putting all your attention to servers providing 24/7 service, suspend/resume doesn't matter.

That's not to say that those features aren't interesting to other people, but the people who are interested in them (and correspondingly the people who are interested in features that systemd provides) need to accept the fact that it's not interesting to everyone.

And when there is a regression or performance hit to something that you are interested in because of some feature that you aren't interested in, that's annoying and people crowing about the feature you don't care about don't solve your problem.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 30, 2014 23:21 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

I for one have never claimed systemd's advantage being fast boot, it is that it gives sane process management. That is even much more relevant on servers that should run continuously for months, having to reboot because some idiotic script got irretrievably wedged (yes, has happened to me) isn't acceptable.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 1, 2014 0:46 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Many people don't seem to find systemd compelling but they're still outraged that portability isn't an important goal of the project so it won't run everywhere right off the bat. This is a bit incongruous to say the least.

From what we hear, systemd does have lots of features that are interesting to many people – from embedded-system developers to server admins. Fast boot times are nice to have and systemd seems to work well in that area, but systemd is not just about fast boot times; they are a fringe benefit of the approach systemd takes for service activation. (Incidentally, even on servers, people who deal with on-demand virtual machines seem to appreciate a faster boot process, so it is incorrect to claim that boot times are irrelevant to servers.)

Of course anybody may feel free not to be interested in systemd's features, which is why systemd is not mandatory to run Linux, and is unlikely to ever be that way as long as those not interested in systemd are willing to put in the work to maintain a systemd-free Linux distribution (if nobody else does). Whether other people – such as upstream developers who would like to avail themselves of systemd's features – will bend over backwards to make it easy for them is of course up to those people. Then you get people like the Debian developers, who on the whole seem to be happy with the concept of supporting several init systems (in particular, sysvinit and systemd) at the same time as long as this is dealt with in the usual way (i.e., by means of wishlist bugs, preferably with patches attached) rather than mandated by GR. This means that if you do notice a regression or performance hit to something you are interested in, the first step towards getting that fixed is to submit a bug report. Crowing about it on an unrelated web site doesn't solve your problem, either.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 30, 2014 22:33 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (9 responses)

The BSD OpenSSH people don't accept portability patches, either – the portable version is maintained by a different team in a separate repository. Nobody seems to mind much. There is no particular reason why a similar approach wouldn't work with systemd if somebody actually came up with patches for a portable version.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 2, 2014 2:58 UTC (Tue) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (8 responses)

There certainly is such a reason: the ways in which systemd and OpenSSH are developed are a world apart. OpenSSH changes slowly, valuing stability and predictability and correctness, actively expecting people to maintain its portability patches, knowing that a wide variety of platforms and projects depend on it around the world. Systemd changes rapidly and incompatibly, explicitly disregarding backwards compatibility and the needs of other projects. The effort required to maintain portability patches for each is incomparable.

And you know this. "If you actually made the patches, it would be fine." This is equivalent to, "Do as I say, not as I do." "Portability patches will not be accepted....Why aren't you porting it?" You say one thing, but expect others to do the opposite, and then criticize them when they take you at your word. It's as if you expect people to think you're lying--in which case, why would they trust you?

You make no sense, but I think you know that. The question is then, why?

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 2, 2014 5:04 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

> There certainly is such a reason: the ways in which systemd and OpenSSH are developed are a world apart.

Yeah, because one is a network-facing daemon that must conform to well-established protocol specifications in order to be of any use, and the other is operating system plumbing that tries to take advantage of the features of its targeted kernel (modern Linux). They have quite different scopes, so it's no wonder they're developed differently.

But since you brought it up, let's actually talk about some of the ways systemd and OpenSSH/OpenBSD are similarly developed:

* Principal developers have a strong vision and often abrasive personality
* All related code is developed in a single repository and built together
* Modular, yet tightly coupled design via well-defined internal interfaces
* Extremely strong emphasis placed on "predictability and correctness" to the point of not compromising either for the sake of expedience (or even portability)
* Expectation for third parties to develop and maintain portability to other systems
* Little regard for backwards compatibilty (although systemd fares *far* better than OpenSSH here; seriously, try to compile a modern OpenSSH release on an old OpenBSD system sometime)

> You make no sense, but I think you know that. The question is then, why?

Your argument is based on factually incorrect premises, false equivalences, and downright faulty logic; this makes no sense, but I think you know that as well. The question is then, why?

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 3, 2014 0:26 UTC (Wed) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (3 responses)

> Yeah, because one is a network-facing daemon that must conform to well-established protocol specifications in order to be of any use, and the other is operating system plumbing that tries to take advantage of the features of its targeted kernel (modern Linux). They have quite different scopes, so it's no wonder they're developed differently.

All of which makes it more ridiculous to expect other people to maintain portability patches against the will of the developers.

> Principal developers have a strong vision and often abrasive personality

But that is supposed to be irrelevant, isn't it? After all, no one accepts that as a valid argument against systemd. And while de Raadt knows OpenSSH is vital to software around the world, Poettering explicitly disregards portability. The difference is night and day.

> All related code is developed in a single repository and built together

This favors in-tree development of portability, not out-of-tree.

> Modular, yet tightly coupled design via well-defined internal interfaces

Just like the kernel, which also maintains its many platforms in-tree.

> Extremely strong emphasis placed on "predictability and correctness"

Predictability? Like Poettering's "wake-up call" to Gentoo?

> to the point of not compromising either for the sake of expedience (or even portability)

Again, this favors in-tree portability, not out-of-tree.

> Expectation for third parties to develop and maintain portability to other systems

False! This is a lie! No one is expected to port systemd to other platforms, because it's not expected at all! You know this! That's the whole point!

> Little regard for backwards compatibilty (although systemd fares *far* better than OpenSSH here; seriously, try to compile a modern OpenSSH release on an old OpenBSD system sometime)

See previous comments about OpenSSH's knowing that their software is vital on platforms around the world. Their method of porting is just that: a method of doing it. Systemd, on the other hand, refuses to even consider it. You know this.

> Your argument is based on factually incorrect premises, false equivalences, and downright faulty logic; this makes no sense, but I think you know that as well. The question is then, why?

Nope, nice try though.

Your argument boils down to, "It's technically possible, so shut up and port it." You conveniently ignore the gross impracticalities, knowing that no such effort would be feasible with the way systemd is developed. We're talking past each other because you're moving the goalposts. And I've yet to see anyone actually respond to Poettering's "wake-up call" to Gentoo--too inconvenient for the narrative, I suppose, so better to ignore it and redirect the argument.

I think there's no point in continuing this discussion with you. Changing the subject, ignoring facts, moving the goalposts, focusing on strawmen...but what of the truth?

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 3, 2014 2:24 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> I think there's no point in continuing this discussion with you. Changing the subject, ignoring facts, moving the goalposts, focusing on strawmen...but what of the truth?

You're one to talk, given that you've done every one of those things in your reply, including taking contradictory positions depending on the particular point you're trying to argue.

What of the truth, indeed.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 3, 2014 6:36 UTC (Wed) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

You did not refute a single point I made. I rest my case. Systemd proponents (at least, some of these vocal ones) say one thing, expect another, and then criticize when people decline to waste their own time playing catch-up to a project expressly disinterested in portability. "We won't accept portability patches.... Why aren't you porting it? This proves that no one cares."

Then, "No one is forcing you to use systemd.... This is your wake-up call, Gentoo! Good luck reimplementing our rapidly changing internal APIs!"

Yeah, I'm the one being self-contradictory...

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 3, 2014 10:13 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

No one is expected to port systemd to other platforms, because it's not expected at all!

It would be more appropriate to say that (a) the systemd developers don't see the point of portability patches to systemd because systemd relies heavily on kernel features that are currently only available on Linux in the first place, and (b) the systemd developers don't want their own code base cluttered up with portability #ifdefs. None of this prevents other people from actually trying to port systemd if they have nothing better to do with their time.

To port systemd to another Unix-like operating system kernel, somebody would have to remove all the Linux-specific bits from systemd and/or enhance the other kernel to provide compatible versions of those Linux-specific bits that one would consider worth supporting (considering that some of systemd's Linux-specific bits are really quite essential for its functionality). This would very likely involve a major effort, and – since most other Unix systems by now have their own take on an improved init – it is unclear whether such an effort would really be worthwhile. Having said that, it is fair to assume that if one is prepared to go to the trouble at all then having to maintain a separate OpenSSH-style “portable systemd” repository is probably the least of one's worries.

In this context it is worth mentioning that leading FreeBSD developers have recently gone on record to say that something like systemd would not be a bad idea at all for FreeBSD as far as they're concerned. Whether this means that FreeBSD will move towards evolving enough Linux compatibility to support a (partial?) systemd port, or whether the FreeBSD people will come up with something similar but unrelated by themselves is as yet unclear – but the fact that there is active interest does validate the principle of systemd's approach to basic plumbing (if not portability).

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 2, 2014 8:34 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

Systemd is changing quickly because it is a new project (compared to OpenSSH, anyway). It will eventually settle down and evolve at a much slower rate, at which point a “portable” version may become more interesting to consider.

It is also worth pointing out that the systemd developers have not said that they will not ever consider any “portability patches” whatsoever, just that the idea doesn't make a lot of sense because systemd relies extensively on Linux-only kernel features and that as long as such patches don't exist the point is moot, anyway. Again, from the systemd developers' POV it makes good technical sense to focus on Linux first, and to deliver a clean and correct code base that runs on Linux. Once systemd does what it is supposed to do on Linux, there may come a time to think about what parts of systemd's functionality can usefully be adapted for other systems, and what extensions to those systems (e.g., additional kernel features or Linux compatibility layers) would be required for systemd support. This might eventually lead to a “portable” systemd maintained in a separate repository à la OpenSSH, and while the systemd developers may not be interested in “portability patches” per se, if there are reasonable “cleanup patches” that facilitate this without unduly complicating systemd's Linux-oriented code base then I think those might well be accepted.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 2, 2014 17:41 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

given that the scope of systemd is not defined, how long for it to settle down? it could be a couple of decades.

Part of what people aren't liking is the dependence on linux-only features without any fallback to operate without them.

If cgroups are required to be in the kernel, but you can operate without using any controllers (as was stated in some thread on lwn in the last few days), then refusing to boot when cgroups aren't in the kernel is the wrong thing to do. That would be one linux-only feature that would change from a hard dependency to a feature to be used when available.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Dec 2, 2014 20:51 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> If cgroups are required to be in the kernel, but you can operate without using any controllers (as was stated in some thread on lwn in the last few days), then refusing to boot when cgroups aren't in the kernel is the wrong thing to do.
Uhm, you still NEED cgroups to use systemd. It can't really work without them.

However, you don't need any cgroups-based resource management to be turned on (or even compiled in). In this case cgroups will be used only for process tracking and nothing else.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 24, 2014 10:31 UTC (Mon) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

> since the effort to switch to systemd with all its family is comparable to switching to a new distro

I don't see how. For me it was just an apt-get away. [Besides, I don't think current packaging of systemd in Debian uses much more than the core init component.]

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 22, 2014 20:41 UTC (Sat) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Please don't. You just come barging in and foul up a perfectly nice flamewar with a reasoned comment taking away their favorite arguments for fanning the flames.

Sheesh...