*** This response is my personal opinion and may not reflect that of my 
employer. ***


>> people are tired of screaming and yelling about systemd, because we've 
>> had years now of the response being "tough, it's the Wave of the 
>> Future"
>
>We covered that back when RHEL 7 was still in beta: the time is far too late 
>to change the init system of RHEL 7.  The fact that you’re tired of being 
>ignored doesn’t enter into it: you could still be yelling about it, and it 
>still wouldn’t change.  Red Has simply isn’t going to >swap out its Enterprise 
>Linux init system within a major release cycle.
>
>I believe it’s certain that RHEL 8 (and thus CentOS 8) will also be 
>systemd-based, since we’d be hearing about the change by now via Fedora if it 
>were otherwise.
>
>Those of you who want a systemd-free CentOS-like OS to be available before 
>CentOS 6 hits EOL are going to have to see to that yourselves.  You cannot 
>expect it to just drop from the sky.
>

After spending the last year and a half preparing a major CentOS 6 based 
appliance for the upgrade to CentOS 7, I can say when I started the project, I 
was very much in the "I hate systemd" boat. It was new, different and a drastic 
change from what I had become accustomed to. I have spent way too many hours 
cursing systemd, converting init scripts, and handling the different way it 
does things (like Java app daemons retuning non-zero exit codes for clean 
shutdowns). Now that I have spent the time getting very intimate with systemd, 
making it do what I need it to, and learning some of the neat tricks it has up 
it's sleeves (like the xxx.mount definition files), I actually have come to 
appreciate it, and the power it contains.

Is the conversion from sysVinit/Upstart services simple and easy? Not in the 
least, particularly if you are used to the simplicity involved with dropping a 
launch script in the /etc/init.d/ folder. Does CentOS 7 make allowances for 
some of this pain? Yes, it still processes the /etc/init.d/ folder in order to 
allow legacy services to launch as pseudo systemd services. Is it a perfect 
workaround? Not at all, otherwise I would have had no reason to convert all our 
services to systemd, and my project would have been done a year ago. Will there 
ever be a way to automate upgrading a CentOS 6 system and services to CentOS 7 
or 8 (like was asked in another thread this week)? It might be do-able for a 
very basic file server, or possibly even a web server, but with the wide 
variety of services run on top of CentOS, there would be no foolproof way of 
automating the process. If someone was to spend the time to create an automated 
tool to convert init scripts to systemd services, I have a feeling their life 
would become an unmitigated hell trying to accommodate all the corner cases out 
there where a simple conversion won't work (and we all know how people love to 
complain that free software doesn't do what they need it to do for corner case 
#65,535, and therefore the developer who spent their own time writing it to 
fill the need their project had, should donate their own time to make it work 
for corner case #65,535).

If CentOS 8 were to switch back from systemd, I think you would be able to see 
the explosions from Alpha Centauri as all the developers out there lost their 
minds after spending all this time converting their apps to work with systemd. 
If you don't like change, you are more than welcome to go back to using Windows 
XP (as too many businesses still do because they don't want to spend the time 
and money updating their LOB software), I'll guarantee you the script kiddies 
and crypto-criminals will love you.

Greg
_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list
CentOS@centos.org
https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Reply via email to