Re: Debian contributor Register of Interests (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[tomas]

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On Tue, May 09, 2017 at 03:56:37PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 10:12:47AM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > if people felt this was a concern, perhaps a process for voluntarily
> > "declaring an interest" could be worked out.
> > 
> > I should stress that I have no concerns about anyone I know, but in the
> > interests of transparency I would support the discussion and development of
> > the above. But that ball should probably start rolling on the debian-project
> > list.
> 
> Just to report I've followed up on this, and created this page
> 
>   https://wiki.debian.org/RegisterOfInterests
> 
> and notified -project.

Just to say that Debian rocks :-)

cheers
- -- tomás
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Debian contributor Register of Interests (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 10:12:47AM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> if people felt this was a concern, perhaps a process for voluntarily
> "declaring an interest" could be worked out.
> 
> I should stress that I have no concerns about anyone I know, but in the
> interests of transparency I would support the discussion and development of
> the above. But that ball should probably start rolling on the debian-project
> list.

Just to report I've followed up on this, and created this page

https://wiki.debian.org/RegisterOfInterests

and notified -project.


-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.

Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Joel Rees  wrote:
 On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 4:13 AM, Nicholas Geovanis
 wrote:
> Like numerous linux users I have sometimes lamented coming to terms with
> systemd. My belief is that it's a well-written collection of software
which
> is somewhat over-engineered. It fills a need, sure, though I've managed to
> live and work without it for a long time (been using linux since 1994).
And
> who am I to question Torvalds and Co. on the subject of its suitability
for
> linux and the data center?

Have Linus and Lennart come to a meeting of minds or something?

Yes, they conspired to invade my personal space with systemd ;-)
But as I wrote, the 8-kilo gorilla named Amazon Web Services may
make that a non-issue for the future. It's looking "cloud"-ier every day.
(12 billion $ in 2016. Dwell on that number for a while.)
And Poettering worked on pulseaudio so maybe someday I can learn to forgive
:-)

Fwd: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Joel Rees]

 On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 4:13 AM, Nicholas Geovanis
 wrote:
> Like numerous linux users I have sometimes lamented coming to terms with
> systemd. My belief is that it's a well-written collection of software which
> is somewhat over-engineered. It fills a need, sure, though I've managed to
> live and work without it for a long time (been using linux since 1994). And
> who am I to question Torvalds and Co. on the subject of its suitability for
> linux and the data center?

Have Linus and Lennart come to a meeting of minds or something?

So I looked up "Torvalds systemd" and found a slashdot Q/A article with
Torvalds in which someone asked him about systemd.

Interesting.

> So the other day I was on a recently-built Amazon AWS EC2 instance, running
> one of the AWS-branded linux AMIs, fixing things in /etc/init.d. Thinking
> about how AWS might rule the world someday, since they already hold about
> 35-40% of the public cloud
> (http://www.geekwire.com/2017/cloud-report-card-amazon-web-services-12b-juggernaut-microsoft-google-gaining/).
> Then I had one of those "Duh!" moments: There must be on-the-order-of a
> million of linux instances on the planet which are _not_ running systemd, as
> AWS's own linux AMIs do not by default.
>
> It seems to me that this data point has been completely ignored in the
> years-long discussions about systemd's merits, flaws and suitability.
>
> On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Jonathan Dowland  wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 03:17:00PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
>> > Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
>> > distribution authors.
>>
>> {systemctl,journalctl,etc.} --user beg to differ.
>>
>>
>> --
>> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
>> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
>> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
>> ⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
>
>



--
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html


-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Nicholas Geovanis]

Like numerous linux users I have sometimes lamented coming to terms with
systemd. My belief is that it's a well-written collection of software which
is somewhat over-engineered. It fills a need, sure, though I've managed to
live and work without it for a long time (been using linux since 1994). And
who am I to question Torvalds and Co. on the subject of its suitability for
linux and the data center?

So the other day I was on a recently-built Amazon AWS EC2 instance, running
one of the AWS-branded linux AMIs, fixing things in /etc/init.d. Thinking
about how AWS might rule the world someday, since they already hold about
35-40% of the public cloud (
http://www.geekwire.com/2017/cloud-report-card-amazon-web-services-12b-juggernaut-microsoft-google-gaining/).
Then I had one of those "Duh!" moments: There must be on-the-order-of a
million of linux instances on the planet which are _not_ running systemd,
as AWS's own linux AMIs do not by default.

It seems to me that this data point has been completely ignored in the
years-long discussions about systemd's merits, flaws and suitability.

On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 03:17:00PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> > Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
> > distribution authors.
>
> {systemctl,journalctl,etc.} --user beg to differ.
>
>
> --
> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
> ⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
>

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Joel Rees:
>
> I wish I didn't have to put my conspiracy theorist hat on here, but I
> suspect that many in HP's management are fearful of upsetting the 800
> pound gorilla/elephant in the room.
>
> Neither Microsoft nor Intel seem to have any desire to understand
> where the technology on which they so blithely ride their fortunes
> came from originally. And they seem quite willing to say one thing and
> do another with one hand and use the other hand to stab anyone handy
> in the back with behind-the-scenes market pressure.
>

All fine and reasonable but nowhere in your fine analysis on things do
you imply there is anything more than financial interests and if all
this exists in a "free" economy where meritocracy of function and value
wins.

Whenever there is economic power found you will find an intersection
with political power.  One can not survive long without the other, in a
global system of inequality.  If we are talking of
monopolies/oligopolies/cartels/trusts there is a need for political
power to keep this scum alive and blood sucking.  So there is exchange
and it is not always in the form of "official lobbying" and bribery.
There is also exchange in "services".

It is the only way a system of inequality in both arenas can survive and
resist change.  I hope I don't have to break it down in pennies (of what
this actually means).  So don't dare tell me that everything that is
incorporated in a chip or a processor is a pure product of financial
interests of its manufacturer, to be the best and still pretty cheap.



-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

"keep rocking in the non-free world" Neilznotyoung

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

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On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 10:12:47AM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 07:40:04PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > I stand corrected. They (HP) hid it pretty well, though.
> > I was under impression that they prefer something more enterprisey
> > there, like SuSE or RHEL.
> > To complete the analogy with Fedora one needs to count all DDs who are on 
> > HPE
> > payroll, I guess.
> 
> I am aware of two ex-HP Debian Developers; Bdale Garbee (who I think is 
> probably
> largely responsible for securing HP's support of Debian) 
> (http://gag.com/bdale/)
> and Keith Packard (https://keithp.com).

And then there's Bruce Perens, who was for about two years on HP payroll (it 
seems
he was too explicit about his dislike for Microsoft to stay there).

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 07:40:04PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> I stand corrected. They (HP) hid it pretty well, though.
> I was under impression that they prefer something more enterprisey
> there, like SuSE or RHEL.
> To complete the analogy with Fedora one needs to count all DDs who are on HPE
> payroll, I guess.

I am aware of two ex-HP Debian Developers; Bdale Garbee (who I think is probably
largely responsible for securing HP's support of Debian) (http://gag.com/bdale/)
and Keith Packard (https://keithp.com).

For clarity's sake I have absolutely no doubts as to their honesty and 
integrity.
They're both exemplary F/OSS folks IMHO (I've met Keith once and Bdale twice, I
think) and of huge value to the project.

> A quick search at [1] did not produce anything useful.

A search on email domain is never going to be particularly accurate. I don't
post from @redhat.com, for example. Instead, if people felt this was a concern,
perhaps a process for voluntarily "declaring an interest" could be worked out.

I should stress that I have no concerns about anyone I know, but in the
interests of transparency I would support the discussion and development of the
above. But that ball should probably start rolling on the debian-project list.


-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:41 AM, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 April 2017 11:00:34 Jonathan Dowland wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> In the past at least, HP hosted and provided servers and bandwidth for
>> critical Debian build infrastructure, and (still) sponsor a group
>> subscription to LWN for Debian developers. So you could answer "HP"
>> here.  One could look at whoever (possibly still including HP, I
>> haven't checked) provide or host Debian's infrastructure today.
>
> If thats still the case Jonathan, and I suspect you may be in a position
> to confirm or deny, if HP is providing such support to debian, then I'd
> submit that it shouldn't be so well hidden.

I wish I didn't have to put my conspiracy theorist hat on here, but I
suspect that many in HP's management are fearful of upsetting the 800
pound gorilla/elephant in the room.

Neither Microsoft nor Intel seem to have any desire to understand
where the technology on which they so blithely ride their fortunes
came from originally. And they seem quite willing to say one thing and
do another with one hand and use the other hand to stab anyone handy
in the back with behind-the-scenes market pressure.

There do seem to be many in top management at most of the major
hardware vendors who feel extremely embarrassed to have any visible
association with Linux (and any other openly community-driven
technology). (Further mumbling about bean counters and expected value
and such elided.)

> Server machines cost money,
> and so does the bandwidth. IMO HP should be thanked for providing that
> service, by our raising HP to a higher position on the potential list of
> products to purchase when we are in need of a printer or home server.
>
> Credit is nicely given at , which I see a
> lengthy list of there.  No doubt the rest of that list also deserves our
> support if they are within the geographical range applicable.
>
> Those of us who care, should visit that link to keep ourselves up to
> date, because those who do support debian, deserve our support.
>
> TANSTAAFL principle at work folks.

Oh, the lunch has always been free, but there sure are a lot of goons
who seem to have nothing better to do than "protect" the free lunch
from the hungry people who need it. Either way, we need to do our part
to support alternatives whose expected value is not among the current
crop of assumed winners being bet on by the big money.

> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>



-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 19/04/17 02:34, Reco wrote:

It's inevitable. Those who are paid for their work tend to align with
employer's view of things. I don't see it as a Universally Bad Thing™,
or The Source Of All Evil™. It's just the way things are.


This alignment is a natural human response and occurs without payment. I 
draw a parallel between paid employment and the Stockholm syndrome :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

See also the use of embedded journalism to subvert objectivity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_journalism

Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Reco]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 04:00:34PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 05:34:56PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > My (tiny) contributions to Debian in the form of
> > bug reports, patches and answering e-mails on this list here and there
> > did not provide me with any income ☺.
> 
> Likewise; but your contributions are non-the-less appreciated. Thanks!
> 
> > I'd like to switch an angle a bit here. Red Hat and community put aside,
> > who else is interested in Fedora?
> > For instance, it's impossible to name a single corporation (SPI does not
> > count) that stands behind a Debian, if there's any.
> > It's possible to do so for, say, OpenSUSE or (pardon) Ubuntu.
> 
> In the past at least, HP hosted and provided servers and bandwidth for 
> critical
> Debian build infrastructure, and (still) sponsor a group subscription to LWN
> for Debian developers. So you could answer "HP" here.  One could look at
> whoever (possibly still including HP, I haven't checked) provide or host
> Debian's infrastructure today.

I stand corrected. They (HP) hid it pretty well, though.
I was under impression that they prefer something more enterprisey
there, like SuSE or RHEL.
To complete the analogy with Fedora one needs to count all DDs who are on HPE
payroll, I guess.

A quick search at [1] did not produce anything useful.

[1] 
https://www.startpage.com/do/search?query=%40hpl.hp.com%20site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Flists.debian.org

Reco

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 18 April 2017 11:00:34 Jonathan Dowland wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 05:34:56PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > My (tiny) contributions to Debian in the form of
> > bug reports, patches and answering e-mails on this list here and
> > there did not provide me with any income ☺.
>
> Likewise; but your contributions are non-the-less appreciated. Thanks!
>
> > I'd like to switch an angle a bit here. Red Hat and community put
> > aside, who else is interested in Fedora?
> > For instance, it's impossible to name a single corporation (SPI does
> > not count) that stands behind a Debian, if there's any.
> > It's possible to do so for, say, OpenSUSE or (pardon) Ubuntu.
>
> In the past at least, HP hosted and provided servers and bandwidth for
> critical Debian build infrastructure, and (still) sponsor a group
> subscription to LWN for Debian developers. So you could answer "HP"
> here.  One could look at whoever (possibly still including HP, I
> haven't checked) provide or host Debian's infrastructure today.

If thats still the case Jonathan, and I suspect you may be in a position 
to confirm or deny, if HP is providing such support to debian, then I'd 
submit that it shouldn't be so well hidden.  Server machines cost money, 
and so does the bandwidth. IMO HP should be thanked for providing that 
service, by our raising HP to a higher position on the potential list of 
products to purchase when we are in need of a printer or home server.

Credit is nicely given at , which I see a 
lengthy list of there.  No doubt the rest of that list also deserves our 
support if they are within the geographical range applicable.

Those of us who care, should visit that link to keep ourselves up to 
date, because those who do support debian, deserve our support.

TANSTAAFL principle at work folks.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Reco:
> So, sooner or later, money come into play (aren't they always do?). The
> important thing here for me is 'who pays', not 'who gets paid'.

I mostly agree with your analysis but here I would add to the "who
pays", "why are they paying" and "what exactly are they paying for" 
In most cases the last is so a (single), or a few corporations, can
control a market, a monopoly or oligopoly is founded, and in some cases
to be allowed to do so they have to serve "other interests" that are not
readily explained with financial interests alone.  The bad sometimes are
in silent synergy with the evil, but they can improve their image by
donating and sponsoring "the good".  Eventually the good end up
depending on this sponsorship for existence.  This is the ultimate
control and blackmail, and that justifies blindly serving the interests
of all evil.

> Reco

Yes, what are we to change things, but at least we should be able to
freely talk about it, in case a way is discovered.


-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

"keep rocking in the non-free world" Neilznotyoung

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 05:34:56PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> My (tiny) contributions to Debian in the form of
> bug reports, patches and answering e-mails on this list here and there
> did not provide me with any income ☺.

Likewise; but your contributions are non-the-less appreciated. Thanks!

> I'd like to switch an angle a bit here. Red Hat and community put aside,
> who else is interested in Fedora?
> For instance, it's impossible to name a single corporation (SPI does not
> count) that stands behind a Debian, if there's any.
> It's possible to do so for, say, OpenSUSE or (pardon) Ubuntu.

In the past at least, HP hosted and provided servers and bandwidth for critical
Debian build infrastructure, and (still) sponsor a group subscription to LWN
for Debian developers. So you could answer "HP" here.  One could look at
whoever (possibly still including HP, I haven't checked) provide or host
Debian's infrastructure today.

-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Reco]

On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 10:38:28PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 02:57:35PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 06:37:03PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > > Red Hat employees do have significant involvement in Fedora. This is true.
> > > May I ask, what model would you prefer?
> > 
> > Both, actually.
> 
> Your answer that follows indicates that you misunderstood my question.

Indeed I had.


> Red Hat do indeed employ people who work on Fedora, much as the do for X,
> GNOME, the kernel, systemd, and a whole raft of other technologies. Your
> suggestion was that this impaired the independence of these projects.

It's inevitable. Those who are paid for their work tend to align with
employer's view of things. I don't see it as a Universally Bad Thing™,
or The Source Of All Evil™. It's just the way things are.


> My question is, what would be your ideal situation? How should people
> who work on these projects get paid for their work?

I honestly do not know. My (tiny) contributions to Debian in the form of
bug reports, patches and answering e-mails on this list here and there
did not provide me with any income ☺.
Never tried developing or maintaining anything. Not my cup of tea.

What I do know - never trust any commercial entity to keep *your* interest
in any priority. Add some non-commercial ones to 'do not trust' list
while we're at it (Mozilla Foundation, Tor Project to name a few).

In the conflict of interest between a single commercial entity and a
community of individuals first one usually wins.
But, in the conflict of interest between *multiple* commercial entities
and a community of individuals second one stands a chance.

I'd like to switch an angle a bit here. Red Hat and community put aside,
who else is interested in Fedora?
For instance, it's impossible to name a single corporation (SPI does not
count) that stands behind a Debian, if there's any.
It's possible to do so for, say, OpenSUSE or (pardon) Ubuntu.


> Or perhaps they shouldn't, and this stuff should be strictly hobby only?

The way I see it - it does not work that way for long.
Sooner or later 'the stuff' transforms to Boring Things™, and any
initial enthusiasm does not keep things running indefinitely. Usually
does not.

So, sooner or later, money come into play (aren't they always do?). The
important thing here for me is 'who pays', not 'who gets paid'.


> Who should Red Hat employ, or to put it another way, what should Red
> Hat employees do if not work in the open?

That's for Red Hat and its employees to decide, not for me.

Reco

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 03:17:00PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
> distribution authors.

{systemctl,journalctl,etc.} --user beg to differ.


-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 02:57:35PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 06:37:03PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > Red Hat employees do have significant involvement in Fedora. This is true.
> > May I ask, what model would you prefer?
> 
> Both, actually.

Your answer that follows indicates that you misunderstood my question.

Red Hat do indeed employ people who work on Fedora, much as the do for X,
GNOME, the kernel, systemd, and a whole raft of other technologies. Your
suggestion was that this impaired the independence of these projects. My
question is, what would be your ideal situation? How should people who work on
these projects get paid for their work? Or perhaps they shouldn't, and this
stuff should be strictly hobby only? Who should Red Hat employ, or to put it
another way, what should Red Hat employees do if not work in the open?

-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Laurent Bigonville]

Greg Wooledge mailto:wooledg%40eeg.ccf.org>> wrote:

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 03:17:00PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Greg Wooledge a écrit :
> > Some day there will be actual end-user-friendly systemd documentation
> > somewhere, consolidating all of these pieces of wisdom together.  I hope.
>
> Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
> distribution authors.

The end users of systemd are Linux system administrators.  You and me.
The people on this mailing list.  That's us, the users.  That's why
it's called "debian-user".

If you'd prefer "Some day there will be a system administrator's guide
for systemd", that's an acceptable wording.

There is already extensive documentation about how to administrate systemd:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#manualsanddocumentationforusersandadministrators

"The systemd for Administrators Blog Series" worth reading.

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Joel Rees]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 9:37 PM, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> [...]
>Don't even get me started on sshd.service vs. ssh.service.  Do you
>have any idea how hard it is to notice that extra/missing "d", and
>figure out why things Simply Do Not Work?

Well, that demonstrates that the concept of tagging a "d" on the end
of a name to indicate the daemon part well predates systemd, and
probably should be reconsidered in a world where short names are no
longer required.

Not sure how that relates to the rest of the issues you are trying to
work through.

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 6:46 PM, Nicolas George  wrote:
> Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Joel Rees a écrit :
>> > Summary: Linux has a new system call to allow process to register as
>> > adopters for orphan processes.
>> Ick. I hope they don't register directly with pid1.
>
> I am sorry, but that does not even make sense.

Well, this is where the conversation does seem to fall apart.

I'm looking at the problem from the point of view of someone who has
seen the ins and outs of an engineering principle called complexity. I
know enough about complexity to understand that you cannot guarantee
response time without properly constraining certain processes -- or,
perhaps I should say, supported recurring paths of execution, because
you might think I mean a specific entity with a process id on a Unix
system, and systemd itself is an example of a unix system process that
has multiple actual supported recurring paths of execution.

>> Or you could have pid1 monitor only the monitoring process, to keep pid1 
>> simple.
>
> Or you could have PID 1 monitor a process that monitors a process that
> monitors a process that monitors a process that monitors the monitoring
> process.

Talk about strawman arguments.

If you care to listen, I am not saying add process redirection to
process redirection ad infinitum. There are, of course, limits to what
one can do that direction, as well, and caution has to be applied in
constructing the redirections.

What I'm suggesting does require changes to the kernel. In particular,
16 bits of process id is not enough.

How we change that requires some thought, but it is not enough.

Systemd already takes a certain approach. Actually, it appears that
they are trying two, maybe three approaches. Ultimately it will have
to end up being able to resolve the identity of a process at a greater
resolution of 1 in 2^16, and distinguish between processes in
different ways than just the arbitrary distinction between threads and
processes, and the arbitrary distinction between system and user.

> Sorry, I do not share your religious imperative of keeping PID 1 simple
> at the cost of making everything else more complex.

It is easy to call things you don't want to think about "religious".
Doing so doesn't solve any problems.

If I had time, maybe I could construct a demonstration of the problem
of complexity that would make the issues clear.

But the demonstrations do exist already.

>> pid1 seems to be doing a lot of other things in systemd. Is it
>> cooperatively multitasking with itself yet? Or have they borrowed
>> threads to define a new kind of process concept, so that pid1 can
>> multitask with itself preemptively?
>>
>> I should go look at the source to see, I suppose
>
> Obviously you find burning straw men more entertaining. Please go ahead,
> I will try not to trouble further.

Working out the set of possible execution paths that a critical
process can take may look like burning straw men to you, or it may
look like wasting time in strawman arguments to you. It appears to
look like a waste of time to many people in management.

I do hope that what you are saying is that you assume that Poettering
and company at least are walking through an informal analysis of the
execution paths in systemd. (Formal analysis would be preferred.)

Otherwise, your reference in other branches of this conversation to
guarantees better than "most of the time" would seem rather, I hate to
use the word, but there it is -- duplicitous.

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Greg Wooledge:
> Don't even get me started on sshd.service vs. ssh.service.  Do
> you have any idea how hard it is to notice that extra/missing “d”, 
> and figure out why things Simply Do Not Work?

* http://www.mail-archive.com/supervision@list.skarnet.org/msg01486.html

* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/303302/5132

Yes.

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Martin Read]

On 14/04/17 14:17, Nicolas George wrote:

Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Greg Wooledge a écrit :

Some day there will be actual end-user-friendly systemd documentation
somewhere, consolidating all of these pieces of wisdom together.  I hope.


Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
distribution authors.


systemd is absolutely for end-users, because:

* Some systemd-running systems are home desktop computers with a single 
physical user; in this case, the distinction between "administrator" and 
"user" may well only exist as a hallucination of the computer, with no 
basis in the external physical world. If the computer I'm typing this 
e-mail on breaks down, I have to fix it myself.


* systemd can, in any event, be used to manage service-like processes 
that form part of a user's login session, using unit files stored in 
that user's XDG Base Directories.

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 03:17:00PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Greg Wooledge a écrit :
> > Some day there will be actual end-user-friendly systemd documentation
> > somewhere, consolidating all of these pieces of wisdom together.  I hope.
> 
> Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
> distribution authors.

The end users of systemd are Linux system administrators.  You and me.
The people on this mailing list.  That's us, the users.  That's why
it's called "debian-user".

If you'd prefer "Some day there will be a system administrator's guide
for systemd", that's an acceptable wording.

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Dejan Jocic]

On 14-04-17, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Greg Wooledge a écrit :
> > Some day there will be actual end-user-friendly systemd documentation
> > somewhere, consolidating all of these pieces of wisdom together.  I hope.
> 
> Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
> distribution authors.
> 
Actually, it should be for end-user too. On personal computer, that
end-user is system administrator. I also find that systemd is very well
documented. But it could be just me. Now, please carry on, enjoyed this
thread very much, learned thing, or two :)

Thank you for your time.

Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Nicolas George]

Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Greg Wooledge a écrit :
> Some day there will be actual end-user-friendly systemd documentation
> somewhere, consolidating all of these pieces of wisdom together.  I hope.

Note: systemd is not for end-users, it is for system administrator and
distribution authors.

> 1) To override parts of a distribution's systemd unit locally, you MUST
>use the foo.service.d/ method.  You can't just put the override bits
>into an /etc/systemd/system/foo.service file.  That would be too easy.

foo.service.d/*.confis for overriding bits.
/etc/systemd/system/foo.service is for overriding the whole file.

I find that fairly natural. Otherwise, how would you override the whole
file?

> 2) The files inside foo.service.d/ MUST end with a .conf suffix.  (Cf.
>the wheezy->jessie apache2 upgrade, and having to rename every single
>one of my virtual domain config files AND the symlinks to them.)

After having been bitten by old *.conf~ backup files left by an editor,
I must say I find that restriction quite useful.

> 3) foo.service.d/ must use the CANONICAL service name of whatever it is
>that you're trying to override.  This may not be the same as the
>Debian package name.  For example, the nfs-kernel-server package
>creates a systemd unit named nfs-server.service with an ALIAS of
>nfs-kernel-server.service.  If you try to create override files in
>nfs-kernel-server.service.d/ it will not work correctly.  They have
>to be in nfs-server.service.d/ instead.
> 
>Don't even get me started on sshd.service vs. ssh.service.  Do you
>have any idea how hard it is to notice that extra/missing "d", and
>figure out why things Simply Do Not Work?

On the other hand, if systemd were to read snippets of configuration
with a subtly different name, someone else (or maybe be even yourself!)
would have complained about wasted time because of a stale config
snippet that should not have been read.

I find that strict rules are usually more convenient in the long run.

Note that you can use "systemctl edit" to have an editor started on the
exact correct file.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


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Re: Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Greg Wooledge]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 10:01:25PM +0100, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
> ... albeit poorly.  If one wants to run daemontools under systemd, svscanboot 
> is
> not the way; svscanboot is a thing of the past
> http://jdebp.eu./FGA/inittab-is-history.html#svscanboot , and was a source of
> problems long before systemd was invented.

Cool.  I wish my Google searching had stumbled upon that, when I was
trying to figure out how to do all that stuff.

> The world wants you to clean your screen
> http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233855/5132 , and this is merely one of the 
> ways
> that it makes you do so.

Some day there will be actual end-user-friendly systemd documentation
somewhere, consolidating all of these pieces of wisdom together.  I hope.

My own contributions toward that effort have been riddled with failure and
confusion, for which I am sorry.  I'm honestly *trying*, but this stuff is
really opaque at times.

For instance, just this week I learned three new things:

1) To override parts of a distribution's systemd unit locally, you MUST
   use the foo.service.d/ method.  You can't just put the override bits
   into an /etc/systemd/system/foo.service file.  That would be too easy.

2) The files inside foo.service.d/ MUST end with a .conf suffix.  (Cf.
   the wheezy->jessie apache2 upgrade, and having to rename every single
   one of my virtual domain config files AND the symlinks to them.)

3) foo.service.d/ must use the CANONICAL service name of whatever it is
   that you're trying to override.  This may not be the same as the
   Debian package name.  For example, the nfs-kernel-server package
   creates a systemd unit named nfs-server.service with an ALIAS of
   nfs-kernel-server.service.  If you try to create override files in
   nfs-kernel-server.service.d/ it will not work correctly.  They have
   to be in nfs-server.service.d/ instead.

   Don't even get me started on sshd.service vs. ssh.service.  Do you
   have any idea how hard it is to notice that extra/missing "d", and
   figure out why things Simply Do Not Work?

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Reco]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 06:37:03PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 06:44:08PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> > Describing Fedora as 'community-driven' distribution is a gross
> > oversimplification. It's not that I disagree with initial assessment -
> > they don't sell you Debian stable like Red Hat does for RHEL.
> 
> Red Hat employees do have significant involvement in Fedora. This is true.
> May I ask, what model would you prefer?
> 
> Disclaimer: I am a Red Hat employee, but I have nothing to do with Fedora.

Both, actually.

Debian stable works for me. RHEL works for my current employer.

Being realist I have to accept that it's much easier to use a Linux
distribution for *commercial purposes* if there's some price tag attached
to it (or to the support of said distribution). An ablility to redirect
responsibility to support is priceless.

But for the non-commercial purposes and personal use RHEL is way too
enterprisey for my taste. Too little software, too much 'do it our way'
approach. Hence - Debian for my needs.

Reco

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicolas George]

Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> Thanks for you nice, condescending tone. Very much appreciated.

I am sorry you take it that way. It was not meant to, and thinking about
it again, I see nothing condescending in assuming, based on your
statement, that you are not familiar with the obsession of a fringe of
the Libre software developer community.

> Besides, PERFECTLY, oh, well. ECC RAM. Redundant processors. Formally
> validated software.

Well, your irritation made you do something dishonest: ridiculing a
point of my discourse ignoring that I addressed exactly the same issue
in the next paragraph.

> I never said SysV's PID scheme is a good idea. For me it's "good enough",

Well, you realize it is good enough *for you*, there are a lot of people
who consider it not good enough for them.

> but I mentioned enough alternatives. You have to make sure that the
> monitor process doesn't die (modulo things which can happen to PID 1
> too), and that's pretty feasible whithin a current Linux system (the
> OOM killer you mention, for example: PostgreSQL excludes its postmaster
> from that; you've to make sure that the monitor process doesn't get
> out of control, but that's achieved by keeping it simple and small).

You can do all you want, PID 1 is still the only immortal process on the
system.

And if every single daemon must implement workarounds for the
limitations of SysV init, I say this is a seriously flawed design.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 11:40:29AM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> > You keep repeating this misconception. "Could be" "nobody would". By your
> > logic, Apache and PostgreSQL (among many following this model) wouldn't
> > work. They do. Pretty reliably, at that.
> 
> I am sorry, but you are mistaken here, possibly because you have only a
> vague idea of what "monitoring system" is exactly about.

Thanks for you nice, condescending tone. Very much appreciated.

> You see, when people talk about "monitoring systems", they are not after
> "pretty" reliable, they are after PERFECTLY reliable. They want
> reliability even against million-to-one coincidences.

Your condescending tone doesn't really help in keepig a good discussion.

Besides, PERFECTLY, oh, well. ECC RAM. Redundant processors. Formally
validated software.

> (With the default kernel configuration, "being killed due to a stale PID
> file" is a 1/65535 coincidence, much higher than million-to-one, except
> in Discworld logic.)

I never said SysV's PID scheme is a good idea. For me it's "good enough",
but I mentioned enough alternatives. You have to make sure that the
monitor process doesn't die (modulo things which can happen to PID 1
too), and that's pretty feasible whithin a current Linux system (the
OOM killer you mention, for example: PostgreSQL excludes its postmaster
from that; you've to make sure that the monitor process doesn't get
out of control, but that's achieved by keeping it simple and small).

[...]

> And I can say that it happened to me: I have, not often but not just
> once either, found that Apache or another daemon was not running, and
> could not find the reason easily.
> 
> If you are still not convinced, look at the other serious monitoring
> systems: all of them have at least a provision to run as PID 1.

For you, systemd might be the knee's bees: for me it's not, and I think
I've stated my reasons enough. I think we've reached the end of a
productive discussion now.

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicolas George]

Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, Joel Rees a écrit :
> > Summary: Linux has a new system call to allow process to register as
> > adopters for orphan processes.
> Ick. I hope they don't register directly with pid1.

I am sorry, but that does not even make sense.

> Or you could have pid1 monitor only the monitoring process, to keep pid1 
> simple.

Or you could have PID 1 monitor a process that monitors a process that
monitors a process that monitors a process that monitors the monitoring
process.

Sorry, I do not share your religious imperative of keeping PID 1 simple
at the cost of making everything else more complex.

> pid1 seems to be doing a lot of other things in systemd. Is it
> cooperatively multitasking with itself yet? Or have they borrowed
> threads to define a new kind of process concept, so that pid1 can
> multitask with itself preemptively?
> 
> I should go look at the source to see, I suppose

Obviously you find burning straw men more entertaining. Please go ahead,
I will try not to trouble further.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


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Description: Digital signature

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicolas George]

Le quintidi 25 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> You keep repeating this misconception. "Could be" "nobody would". By your
> logic, Apache and PostgreSQL (among many following this model) wouldn't
> work. They do. Pretty reliably, at that.

I am sorry, but you are mistaken here, possibly because you have only a
vague idea of what "monitoring system" is exactly about.

You see, when people talk about "monitoring systems", they are not after
"pretty" reliable, they are after PERFECTLY reliable. They want
reliability even against million-to-one coincidences.

(With the default kernel configuration, "being killed due to a stale PID
file" is a 1/65535 coincidence, much higher than million-to-one, except
in Discworld logic.)

Since perfectly is not possible, they settle for as-much-as-possible.
And SysV init is very far from achieving the optimum.

Look at the process hierarchy of your SysV-init-based system: Apache and
PostgreSQL are direct children of PID 1, but PID 1 does not know about
them. If they exit, PID 1 will reap them, but nothing more. There are
many reasons that can cause that: OOM killer, bug in the program,
hardware problems, stale PID file, admin mistake, etc. Some of them will
leave more or less discreet traces in the logs, but not all of them. And
you may find these reasons unlikely, but when someone interested in
"monitoring systems" hears "unlikely", they understand "possible".

And I can say that it happened to me: I have, not often but not just
once either, found that Apache or another daemon was not running, and
could not find the reason easily.

If you are still not convinced, look at the other serious monitoring
systems: all of them have at least a provision to run as PID 1.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:20:02PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:

[...]

> Yet, PID 1 is still the only immortal process, unless you have another
> new mutant power to produce, and that property is needed to have a
> reliable monitoring system. Otherwise, the monitoring process could be
> killed, and nobody would notice.

You keep repeating this misconception. "Could be" "nobody would". By your
logic, Apache and PostgreSQL (among many following this model) wouldn't
work. They do. Pretty reliably, at that.

Don't get me wrong: I think SysV gave up on something BSD init had,
and think it should (and could, in fact) re-gain it, but... it's not
as dramatic as (the less informed) systemd proponents would make you
believe.

Systemd has its strengths. If you managed to concentrate on those,
you would do systemd a bigger service. Spreading FUD, by contrast,
does it a disservice.

Regards
- -- t
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 6:20 AM, Nicolas George  wrote:
> Le quartidi 24 germinal, an CCXXV, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard a écrit :
>> Nicolas George:
>> > The process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
>> > adopts all orphan processes.
>
>> Wrong.  Indeed, it was the systemd people who drove the making it wrong.
>
> I have no idea what that sentence means.
>
>> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/177361/5132
>
> Summary: Linux has a new system call to allow process to register as
> adopters for orphan processes.

Ick. I hope they don't register directly with pid1.

> Ok, Linux has a new mutant power that I did not know about, and half my
> sentence was wrong.
>
> Yet, PID 1 is still the only immortal process, unless you have another
> new mutant power to produce, and that property is needed to have a
> reliable monitoring system. Otherwise, the monitoring process could be
> killed, and nobody would notice.

Or you could have pid1 monitor only the monitoring process, to keep pid1 simple.

> So I stand by my claim: monitoring systems must be anchored at PID 1,
> and that makes monitoring part of init's job.

Conflicting requirements generally indicates a refactoring is necessary.

Of course, it's possible to refactor things incorrectly.

> (Immortal, in this context, does not mean that it cannot die: of course,
> it can die, but if it does, the kernel panics and the hardware watchdog
> reboots it. And of course, it means it cannot be killed by things like
> the OOM killer.)

pid1 seems to be doing a lot of other things in systemd. Is it
cooperatively multitasking with itself yet? Or have they borrowed
threads to define a new kind of process concept, so that pid1 can
multitask with itself preemptively?

I should go look at the source to see, I suppose, if I could only find
the time. I assume they will eventually recognize that pid1 is doing
too much and start pushing some of the conceptual changes outside
pid1.

I, of course, being superhuman, if I could find someone to fund my
efforts, could solve all these problems without mistake. ;->

Yeah.

Still it can be painful to watch them make the mistakes they are
making. I would want them to be trying different solutions. But if I
back-seat drive over in the Fedora tech lists, it will be distracting
to them, so I back-seat drive over here.

And try not to get into too much of a panic, since that doesn't seem to help.

(If I could find someone to fund my efforts, I would sure like to try
to develop an alternative. Sometimes life is not fair. :-/ )

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicolas George]

Le quartidi 24 germinal, an CCXXV, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard a écrit :
> Nicolas George:
> > The process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> > adopts all orphan processes.

> Wrong.  Indeed, it was the systemd people who drove the making it wrong.

I have no idea what that sentence means.

> * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/177361/5132

Summary: Linux has a new system call to allow process to register as
adopters for orphan processes.

Ok, Linux has a new mutant power that I did not know about, and half my
sentence was wrong.

Yet, PID 1 is still the only immortal process, unless you have another
new mutant power to produce, and that property is needed to have a
reliable monitoring system. Otherwise, the monitoring process could be
killed, and nobody would notice.

So I stand by my claim: monitoring systems must be anchored at PID 1,
and that makes monitoring part of init's job.

(Immortal, in this context, does not mean that it cannot die: of course,
it can die, but if it does, the kernel panics and the hardware watchdog
reboots it. And of course, it means it cannot be killed by things like
the OOM killer.)

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


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Systemd services (was Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...)

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Greg Wooledge:

> 
> Suppose you want to start DJB's daemontools from a locally created systemd
> unit/service. Here's a file that will do that:
> 

... albeit poorly.  If one wants to run daemontools under systemd, svscanboot is
not the way; svscanboot is a thing of the past
http://jdebp.eu./FGA/inittab-is-history.html#svscanboot , and was a source of
problems long before systemd was invented.


Greg Wooledge:

> 
> (The Linux kernel introduced an entirely new thing called a "cgroup" to
> make this possible. That's how ridiculous self-backgrounding is.)
> 

Control groups are not jobs
http://jdebp.eu./FGA/linux-control-groups-are-not-jobs.html ; they were
introduced to do resource limiting, and the systemd developers have actually
complained quite a lot over the years that control groups did not turn out to be
what they thought they were.


Greg Wooledge:

> 
> $ systemctl status daemontools.service
> 
> * daemontools.service – daemontools supervisor
> Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/daemontools.service; enabled)
> Active: active (running) since Wed 2017-01-11 03:28:47 EST; 2 months 21
> days ago
> Main PID: 529 (svscanboot)
> CGroup: /system.slice/daemontools.service
> |- 529 /bin/sh /command/svscanboot /dev/ttyS0
> |- 531 svscan /service
> 

... and there is svscanboot being a problem again.  Notice how the main PID is
wrong, and the log output from svscan (when there is some) does not go into the
log that systemctl shows below this.


Greg Wooledge:

> 
> if you want to change the behavior of the Debian default getty@ service to
> make it stop clearing the screen all the damned time,
> 

The world wants you to clean your screen
http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233855/5132 , and this is merely one of the ways
that it makes you do so.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Nicolas George:
> The process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> adopts all orphan processes.

Wrong.  Indeed, it was the systemd people who drove the making it wrong.

* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/177361/5132

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 06:44:08PM +0300, Reco wrote:
> Describing Fedora as 'community-driven' distribution is a gross
> oversimplification. It's not that I disagree with initial assessment -
> they don't sell you Debian stable like Red Hat does for RHEL.

Red Hat employees do have significant involvement in Fedora. This is true.
May I ask, what model would you prefer?

Disclaimer: I am a Red Hat employee, but I have nothing to do with Fedora.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Reco]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:02:54PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 09:09:45AM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > Fedora is the development and test bed for RHEL much as Debian
> > Testing is for Stable.
> 
> That's not a perfect analogy by any means: Fedora is used as a test bed for
> technology that later ends up in RHEL, yes, but that's the end of it. One is a
> commercial product, the other a community-driven, desktop-oriented
> distribution.

[1] says:

The Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) is a community-elected
body empowered by the Council to manage the technical features of the
Fedora distribution and specific implementations of policy in the Fedora
Project.


[2] lists 9 current FESCo members, at least 3 of whose are Red Hat
employees. Specifically, [3], [4] and [5].


[6] also has some interesting things to say about Red Hat involvement in
Fedora.


Describing Fedora as 'community-driven' distribution is a gross
oversimplification. It's not that I disagree with initial assessment -
they don't sell you Debian stable like Red Hat does for RHEL.

Reco

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FESCo

[2] 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Engineering_Steering_Committee?rd=FESCo

[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ausil

[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Kevin 

[5] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Sgallagh

[6] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Council

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Catherine Gramze]

> On Apr 13, 2017, at 5:23 AM, GiaThnYgeia  wrote:
> 
> Catherine Gramze:
>> /snip...
> 
> I did not ask for advice on what to do, we are discussing the freedom of
> choice, remember?

Yes, your freedom of choice to attempt to do something ridiculous. Making 
choices that are not within the realm of the possible indicates a faulty thought
process. 

> What business of catering is Debian in?
> Technological developing and progressing future was what we live in.

So try joining us here, instead of in your fantasy.

> Then Debian-hierarchy should skip all this open and free moralization it
> plasters all over the place and just stick to non-free industrialists'
> puppets they have become, those decision makers, not debian!
> 
> Debian is all about choice!  It is just like claiming the same to the
> shoppers in the wal-mart racks, at this stage.

You seem to be confusing RHEL with Debian. Critical decisions like 
switching to systemd or dropping support for ancient hardware are 
not made capriciously, or because "industry" wants it, but are voted 
on by the Debian community. Sometimes just the developers, sometimes 
the users as well. 

You do still have the option of using ancient hardware. You just might 
have to use an older version of Debian with it. That is the logical 
consequence of your peculiar hardware choice.

> What is your interest in defending the authorities of this hierarchy?
> Are they hiring or are you already in? 


At one time I began the process to become a Debian package maintainer, 
but made the switch to Apple instead. So, no, I am only a user. I defend 
the "hierarchy" because I have some understanding of how it actually works, 
which is messy because it is democratic. You seem to be assuming some 
corporate structure and employees, which is not the case. Debian runs on 
volunteer labor. The developers elect the "boss" aka the project manager. 
They take Free Software seriously, donating their evening and weekend time 
and expertise to Debian while they work day jobs.

Cathy

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Catherine Gramze:
> /snip...

I did not ask for advice on what to do, we are discussing the freedom of
choice, remember?

> Debian is not in the business of catering to the special needs of conspiracy 
> theorists,
> but of looking to a technologically developing and progressing future and 
> making it ...

I'd say pushing it not making it

>  The decisions the developers and 
> project manager make are the best decisions they can make within the
> constraints ..

What business of catering is Debian in?
Technological developing and progressing future was what we live in.

Where are we?  Back in the non-central-western-european-middle-ages?
What you are saying what big oligarchic industrialist dictate is what
Debian should comply with.  Those are the constrains.  To accept such
constrains does not incorporate a value or principles judgement.

Then Debian-hierarchy should skip all this open and free moralization it
plasters all over the place and just stick to non-free industrialists'
puppets they have become, those decision makers, not debian!

Debian is all about choice!  It is just like claiming the same to the
shoppers in the wal-mart racks, at this stage.

> Cathy

What is your interest in defending the authorities of this hierarchy?
Are they hiring or are you already in?  In this case you shouldn't be on
the "users" list.

kAt

-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Joel Rees:
> kAt, write a novel.
> 
> My dad used to tell me, if I wanted to change things, I'd have to
> change them from the inside. It's a poor expression of the principle
> because you can't get "inside" far enough without X, Y, or Z, and they
> all make it very difficult to change things once you are inside.

Once you are inside you are too pre-occupied in protecting what you are
inside of.  Change will never come from inside.

Joe:
> On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 21:11:30 -0500
> David Wright  wrote:
>
>> BTW I was surprised not to see mention of the Ken Thompson hack
>> in what I snipped.
>
> Old stuff. I'd expect every significant compiler on the planet to have
> been compromised by one government or another long ago.

It makes no longer a difference, or is it worthwhile to distinguish,
between corporate and gov.  It is one long chain of domination, no
borders, no nations, no private/public separation.  One huge system of
control.  But minds can unplug themselves of the system of illusion.
There should be no need for security in a free world/system.  Isn't this
where unix started from?  No locks, no doors, no borders.  Instead we
are preoccupied in drawing 2 dimensional limits under the eye in the 3rd
dimension.

Multilingual wikipedia is probably the only thing worth saving from this
civilization.


-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:42:00PM +, GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> I have been doing some research, I have also managed to break and
> restore a few systems trying to run them without systemd.  Possibly a
> harder task than I thought it might be.  Possibly unnecessarily complex,
> I don't know.
> But here is a good source of background on part of the issue.
> http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/

I've just skimmed over this but it seems to not be particular impartial. IMHO
it over-emphasises the importance of launchd, under-emphasises the importance
of SMF, ignores Upstart being adopted by RHEL and seems to carry a bit of an
agenda elsewhere, not least by eliding systemd entirely. I would not rely on
it in isolation.


-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joe]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 21:11:30 -0500
David Wright  wrote:


> 
> BTW I was surprised not to see mention of the Ken Thompson hack
> in what I snipped.
> 

Old stuff. I'd expect every significant compiler on the planet to have
been compromised by one government or another long ago.

-- 
Joe

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Ric Moore]

On 04/12/2017 06:42 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:


Why don't you try ubuntu and tell us what it is like.  Do I strike you
like a person needing to hold hands with anyone?


From your posts, yes. VERY much so.

--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Catherine Gramze]

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 9:05 PM, GiaThnYgeia  wrote:
> 
> The "choice" of going cheap on ancient hardware is that you all knowing
> expert "technical" but not "political" folk are really clueless of what
> those non-free eight-core gadgets you port your code on contain.  It
> would take years of testing and listening to identify where those
> machines leak from.  Geewhiz, most of you can not even swear you can
> tell what Ipv6 is all about, yet!   Do you have android anonymizing
> systems and packages?  Tell that to their engineers that have leaked
> that it is impossible to do so.  7billion people around earth have self
> imposed a gps chip and monitoring system in their pocket 24hrs a day.
> Even government and corporate servers are suspect of leaking stuff.  

The rumors of backdoors built into CPUs goes back to the early days of the 
Pentium chip, which predates the first Celeron by 5 years. Your argument is not 
valid, as it is just as possible for your Celeron chip to be compromised at the 
point of manufacture, usually in China, as it for a newer chip to be 
compromised.

Debian is not in the business of catering to the special needs of conspiracy 
theorists, but of looking to a technologically developing and progressing 
future and making it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. 
The decisions the developers and project manager make are the best decisions 
they can make within the constraints of developer time and installer file size. 
If you truly need to use 18 year old hardware, get your hands on a copy of an 
old stable installer, say Potato, and use a version of Debian that is 
compatible with your hardware. Even auto manufacturers are only obligated to 
make parts for cars up to 10 years old.

Cathy

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[David Wright]

On Thu 13 Apr 2017 at 01:05:00 (+), GiaThnYgeia wrote:
[big snip]
> After all, to say "I am a technical guy not a political one" is a very
> politically loaded statement.  Dr Strangelove was a technical guy, not
> political at all.  It is those types you have to watch out for.

You've quoted my sentence out of context. I wrote:
"I'm not really interested in debating that here, sorry. I've seen
too many flame wars in public forums like this. And I'm a technical
guy, not a political one."

IOW I personally prefer to talk about political issues
elsewhere, face to face, and stick to technical issues here.
That has nothing to do with Dr Strangelove.

I've already written here that I find it difficult to follow your
arguments or decode sentences like
"Because what is discussed on this thread to me sounds as
 those who by majority have used the system (mostly for
 commercial large scale server applications) and are
 probably the number one source of bugs that feed development
 did not have much of a say on the direction taken."

So I have joined this conversation only to dispute certain
technical statements you made, and to ask why you make up
statistics to further your hypothetical arguments.

BTW I was surprised not to see mention of the Ken Thompson hack
in what I snipped.

Cheers,
David.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

kAt, write a novel.

Sure, some of the people here still don't realize just how bad things
are, but there are limits to what individuals and even groups do.

My dad used to tell me, if I wanted to change things, I'd have to
change them from the inside. It's a poor expression of the principle
because you can't get "inside" far enough without X, Y, or Z, and they
all make it very difficult to change things once you are inside.

So write a novel.

That's what I'm doing. I don't know whether I'll convince very many
people, but it's helping my ability to express myself.

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Maybe I started my explaining at the wrong end of the thread and I get
reactions on a personal level about what I am and whether I have the
right or reason to complaint.

So I'll start from scratch.

Let's say we have market players A B and C whose primary clients are
government agencies that have X-needs.  Then we have minute competitors
D E and F, and even more minute players who consult, write code to make
it all work, and abide by this market.  Due to their clientele ABC can
dump stuff on the market to keep DEF at the verge of destruction.  You
see if you know ahead of time that 30% of your production would be sold
at 200% profit, you can sell 70% at 0,01% profit.

Client-X has "needs" that must absolutely be met or there will be no
free lunch, as some 4x-billions spent on hardware that has a market
worth of x-billions.  To satisfy those needs A,B,C, have lots of
non-free work to do.  This work ends up everywhere on the non-free
market.  All a submissive puppet has to do is abide by the market rule.
"It is what puts bread on the table" and all submissive puppets bless
this bread.  Don't dare deny the blessings of the bread putter.

Now, let's say we need a complex hard to audit central "services"
controller to cover up (for some years at least) of all the dirty tricks
ABC have employed before some convicted felon running internationally
from the law blows some whistle and till that whistle is heard loud
enough to call this round of trickery off.  Then some virtuous
corporation comes out and says I blew that whistle, after the fact.

The "choice" of going cheap on ancient hardware is that you all knowing
expert "technical" but not "political" folk are really clueless of what
those non-free eight-core gadgets you port your code on contain.  It
would take years of testing and listening to identify where those
machines leak from.  Geewhiz, most of you can not even swear you can
tell what Ipv6 is all about, yet!   Do you have android anonymizing
systems and packages?  Tell that to their engineers that have leaked
that it is impossible to do so.  7billion people around earth have self
imposed a gps chip and monitoring system in their pocket 24hrs a day.
Even government and corporate servers are suspect of leaking stuff.  It
is a "heartbleeding" situation.

Now, is systemd a step on the right or the wrong direction in auditing
security?  What do security minded experts say and how did their project
leaders vote?  Don't listen to them, they are always paranoid, they like
morse radio code.

I arrest my case your honors, and I will take the rest of my science
fiction scenario elsewhere, but if I wanted lubuntu or gentoo or devuan
I would have been there long ago.  It just so happens that torproject,
tails, among other good projects are in bed with debian not antiX and
other systems.

After all, to say "I am a technical guy not a political one" is a very
politically loaded statement.  Dr Strangelove was a technical guy, not
political at all.  It is those types you have to watch out for.

kAt

-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 12 April 2017 23:42:00 GiaThnYgeia wrote:
>  Do I strike you
> like a person needing to hold hands with anyone?

Very much so.

Lisi

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 6:17 PM, GiaThnYgeia 
wrote:
>
>
> Do you folk mean to tell me that at this point Debian does not have the
> power to influence industry by selecting to support only hardware with
> open/free firmware?


No, Debian does not have that power. There are no technical issues involved
in
that state of affairs, only economic issues.


> Isn't it superficial to say we are "for" free but
> we run hundreds of servers supplying "users" with non-free stuff?
>

IMO that is a valid complaint "about" Debian, but the complaint cannot
validly be laid at Debian's doorstep. It has everything to do with the point
you make later in your posting about the "tiny oligopoly" of hardware
manufacturers. You just haven't (yet) drawn all of the valid conclusions
from that valid observation.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Jonathan Dowland:
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 04:40:00PM +, GiaThnYgeia wrote:
>> As for the other post you commented on with the same attitude I would
>> have to say that getting technical in comparing sysv with competing
>> technologies does not answer the political part of the decision making.
>> It seems as this part is what irritated people not the technical aspects
>> of it.  Unless there are those that pretend the decision making process
>> was solely on technical merits.
> 
> The decision to switch the default init to systemd was made by the Tech
> Committee. You can read the history of that decision here
> 
>   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708
> 
> There's also a related General Resolution that was written, adapted and
> voted on by Debian members. The full details of that are here
> 
>   https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003
> 
> As for "who", 483 Debian Developers voted, as listed here
> 
>   https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003_voters.txt
> 
> All this stuff is in the open for anyone to read and catch up on. I
> hope you find it enlightening.

All I read is where the money goes that get donated "officially" to
debian.  Let me ask about the cost of servers/repositories for all the
non-free packages.  Whose decision goes there?
Do you folk mean to tell me that at this point Debian does not have the
power to influence industry by selecting to support only hardware with
open/free firmware?  Isn't it superficial to say we are "for" free but
we run hundreds of servers supplying "users" with non-free stuff?
What, the customer is a priority?  80% of users would have no support
running around with a portable device and some wifi that incorporates
chips from a tiny oligopoly?  Are we talking about meritocracy or
marketing?  It is a very different approach you know.

I suspect such decision making has a value!  We don't live in a free
world.  How many did you say?  483 developers, from how many contributors?

Ohh I am enlightened alright!
Show me the money honey, and save me the "constitution" preaching.


-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[David Wright]

On Wed 12 Apr 2017 at 22:24:16 (+0200), Mart van de Wege wrote:
> David Wright  writes:
> 
> > On Mon 10 Apr 2017 at 21:21:00 (+), GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> >> For a second month under freeze not much
> >> development can take place in unstable, as it is really tomorrow's
> >> testing.
> >
> > What do you mean? Sid (unstable) is always sid. It doesn't suddenly
> > become buster (the next testing) when stretch is released.
> >
> To be fair, as someone running Sid and doing almost daily updates, it is
> noticeable when there is a testing freeze, as Sid comes to an almost
> complete standstill while developers concentrate on the freeze.

I think you're right. And then there may be an avalanche after release
day, something that tyros running sid should be aware of.

(But I was just pointing out in passing that packages don't get a
"free pass" from unstable to testing on release day. In fact,
of course, unstable's contents, and testing's too, do not change at all.)

Cheers,
David.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Ric Moore:
> On 04/12/2017 12:40 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:
>> David Wright:
 Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?
>>>
>>> If you don't like it, you're free to look elsewhere for a distribution
>>> that better suits you.
>>
>> Are you mr.Debian?  Under what authority are you telling me to either
>> shut up or leave?  What makes you more Debian than me?  Why don't you
>> leave if you don't like criticism?
> 
> 
> Simple, you are admittedly new. Perhaps it would be prudent to survey
> the issues, study up some and then ask ~good~ detailed questions. Then
> act on the resolutions provided you or answer with more details when
> requested. 

I have been doing some research, I have also managed to break and
restore a few systems trying to run them without systemd.  Possibly a
harder task than I thought it might be.  Possibly unnecessarily complex,
I don't know.
But here is a good source of background on part of the issue.
http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/

> Linux has always been a "meritocracy". You earn your chops by
> being a productive member for a longish period of time, who consistently
> helps others with good solutions.

Save me the religious preaching, I am an atheist.  GWBjr, Trump,
Erdowan, and Putin were elected by slim majority of approved voters.
Stalin and Hitler ranked much higher in the meritocracy scale, nearly
unanimous decisions by their peers got them elected.  It must be that
Jimmy Hoffa was the only one that cheated to get elected.

> You have done none of that. You might
> be better served using Ubuntu. Debian is admittedly more tricky and not
> really suited to someone new. Ubuntu might serve your needs way better
> and their users are used to holding hands with a new fish. :) Ric

Why don't you try ubuntu and tell us what it is like.  Do I strike you
like a person needing to hold hands with anyone?


-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 12 April 2017 20:42:37 David Wright wrote:
> > If you like to contribute to my lack of understanding and possibly
> > unsubstantiated criticism, help me understand the hierarchy.  Who, and
> > how are they are selected, make the decisions and how do they relate to
> > those that do the work, and how do they all relate to those who for 2
> > decades have been employing the system and feedback with problems and
> > bugs.
>
> All this information is availble on the web, so I don't know why you
> want me to paraphrase it for you.

I had already looked these up for Kat, but accidentally sent them to her 
off-list.  (I must have pressed r not l)  Here they are again, Kat:  In fact, 
here is the whole of the post I sent off-list by mistake. 
 
On Wednesday 12 April 2017 17:40:00 GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> David Wright:
> >> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?
> >
> > If you don't like it, you're free to look elsewhere for a distribution
> > that better suits you.
>
> Are you mr.Debian?  Under what authority are you telling me to either
> shut up or leave?  What makes you more Debian than me?

He is knowledgeable, helps on this list and has been using it for a long time.

> Why don't you 
> leave if you don't like criticism?
> If there is reason for madness, in which I accept I am new to, I will
> have to discover it.  Saying that simply madness is normal and whoever
> does not like it should leave doesn't justify madness.
> If you like to contribute to my lack of understanding and possibly
> unsubstantiated criticism, help me understand the hierarchy. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Debian_project_leaders
https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Social_Contract
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines

GIYF.  Do try to use the occasional accurate fact.

As David says, If you don't like Debian, use something else.  If you do like 
Debian, use it.  But do stop winging and blaming Debian for all your own 
mistakes.

> Who, and 
> how are they are selected, make the decisions and how do they relate to
> those that do the work, and how do they all relate to those who for 2
> decades have been employing the system and feedback with problems and bugs.

See above.  Why don't you EVER try to get some facts?  Just Google 
occasionally.

Lisi

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Ric Moore]

On 04/12/2017 04:27 PM, Mart van de Wege wrote:


Here's a data point: having dealt with the vagaries and shortcomings of
SysV init professionally, I *like* systemd, even if it has a few warts.

Mart


I am going out on a limb here, but here goes, as I put on my "Amazing 
Kreskin predicts" hat.


The Amazing Kreskin PREDICTS!

1.) Pottering will adopt the word "tendrils" into his systemD schema. It 
has already been convicted of having tendrils, so now it will have them 
for real. Lennart will laugh and laugh.


2.) One he adopts tendrils, with the newer cpu's with many cores, a 
super desktop will be treated as a "cluster" with systemd administering 
processes between cpu and cuda cores in parallel in unison. Oh happy day.


3.) Then the "tendrils" snake out to the localnet of the average Jane 
and Joe Lunchbucket household, and all of the laptops, tablets and other 
desktops can share Network Attached Storage (NAS), spare cpu/cuda 
resources, and utilize every pretty new shiny piece of kit that Dad 
wants, to put the digital pedal to the digital metal. Fiber network and 
super wifi within the house, more memory for the cluster machine, 
upgrades of hardware for everyone! Kid comes home, the "tendrils" snatch 
into his wifi signal as he walks into the door, syncs it up and VAROOM!! 
He can flood the NAS, at very high speeds, with all of his junk. The 
tendrils snake into all of the Internet aware appliances and you become 
spammed by your refrigerator with shopping lists.


4.) Skynet becomes a real possibility. Tendrils everywhere.


If we're going to have a Skynet, it ought to be running Linux.

--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 04:40:00PM +, GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> As for the other post you commented on with the same attitude I would
> have to say that getting technical in comparing sysv with competing
> technologies does not answer the political part of the decision making.
> It seems as this part is what irritated people not the technical aspects
> of it.  Unless there are those that pretend the decision making process
> was solely on technical merits.

The decision to switch the default init to systemd was made by the Tech
Committee. You can read the history of that decision here

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708

There's also a related General Resolution that was written, adapted and
voted on by Debian members. The full details of that are here

https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003

As for "who", 483 Debian Developers voted, as listed here

https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003_voters.txt

All this stuff is in the open for anyone to read and catch up on. I
hope you find it enlightening.
 

-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 09:09:45AM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> Fedora is the development and test bed for RHEL much as Debian
> Testing is for Stable.

That's not a perfect analogy by any means: Fedora is used as a test bed for
technology that later ends up in RHEL, yes, but that's the end of it. One is a
commercial product, the other a community-driven, desktop-oriented
distribution. RHEL is not simply a rebranded, frozen Fedora release. They're
different distributions.

> But technically, you're correct: systemd was in Fedora before RHEL. Spliting
> hairs..

The best kind of correct, and not splitting hairs at all, since Fedora and
RHEL are not the same thing.

-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Ric Moore]

On 04/12/2017 12:40 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:

David Wright:

Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?


If you don't like it, you're free to look elsewhere for a distribution
that better suits you.


Are you mr.Debian?  Under what authority are you telling me to either
shut up or leave?  What makes you more Debian than me?  Why don't you
leave if you don't like criticism?



Simple, you are admittedly new. Perhaps it would be prudent to survey 
the issues, study up some and then ask ~good~ detailed questions. Then 
act on the resolutions provided you or answer with more details when 
requested. Linux has always been a "meritocracy". You earn your chops by 
being a productive member for a longish period of time, who consistently 
helps others with good solutions. You have done none of that. You might 
be better served using Ubuntu. Debian is admittedly more tricky and not 
really suited to someone new. Ubuntu might serve your needs way better 
and their users are used to holding hands with a new fish. :) Ric



--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Mart van de Wege]

GiaThnYgeia  writes:

> Am I wrong?

You have at least nothing but opinion supporting the assertion that you
are right. So the jury is out on that one.

> I don't hear newbies single machine users having much of an issue with
> systemd, but people whose work for many years was based in fine-tuning
> other init systems seem to be having issues in adopting to this new
> status-quo whether they like it or not.

Here's a data point: having dealt with the vagaries and shortcomings of
SysV init professionally, I *like* systemd, even if it has a few warts.

Mart

-- 
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
--- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Mart van de Wege]

David Wright  writes:

> On Mon 10 Apr 2017 at 21:21:00 (+), GiaThnYgeia wrote:
>> For a second month under freeze not much
>> development can take place in unstable, as it is really tomorrow's
>> testing.
>
> What do you mean? Sid (unstable) is always sid. It doesn't suddenly
> become buster (the next testing) when stretch is released.
>
To be fair, as someone running Sid and doing almost daily updates, it is
noticeable when there is a testing freeze, as Sid comes to an almost
complete standstill while developers concentrate on the freeze.

Mart

-- 
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
--- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[David Wright]

On Wed 12 Apr 2017 at 16:40:00 (+), GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> David Wright:
> >> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?
> > 
> > If you don't like it, you're free to look elsewhere for a distribution
> > that better suits you.
> 
> Are you mr.Debian?  Under what authority are you telling me to either
> shut up or leave?

I've disagreed with your interpretation of the well known statistical
paradox (for want of a better word) that occurs before each Debian
release (look at the historical graphs, and google for the reasons),
corrected a couple of errors, and made a common sense suggestion to
someone who says that Debian is crazy. Where's the "shut up or leave"?

> What makes you more Debian than me?  Why don't you
> leave if you don't like criticism?

I don't mind criticism at all. I found the exchanges between the likes
of Nicolas, tomás, Joel etc most interesting. But I didn't see any
criticism in your (snipped) post; just misunderstood statistics etc,
which is why I commented on that one, and the other one like it.

> If there is reason for madness, in which I accept I am new to, I will
> have to discover it.  Saying that simply madness is normal and whoever
> does not like it should leave doesn't justify madness.

I don't accept your description of Debian as crazy madness, but I
accept it as your opinion, hence my suggestion. This is the only bit
of my post you've quoted, which suggests that you just want to rant
rather than understand the processes by which the Debian project
operates.

> If you like to contribute to my lack of understanding and possibly
> unsubstantiated criticism, help me understand the hierarchy.  Who, and
> how are they are selected, make the decisions and how do they relate to
> those that do the work, and how do they all relate to those who for 2
> decades have been employing the system and feedback with problems and bugs.

All this information is availble on the web, so I don't know why you
want me to paraphrase it for you.

> Because what is discussed on this thread to me sounds as those who by
> majority have used the system (mostly for commercial large scale server
> applications) and are probably the number one source of bugs that feed
> development did not have much of a say on the direction taken.  The
> direction was dictated from above and developers went to work according
> to that direction.
> Am I wrong?  I don't hear newbies single machine users having much of an
> issue with systemd, but people whose work for many years was based in
> fine-tuning other init systems seem to be having issues in adopting to
> this new status-quo whether they like it or not.

You keep making these assertions without any references, but I'm not
going to debate them with you. You can see what I'm interested in from
my previous posts. They're all in the public archive.

You can also see that someone else posted statistics (about numbers of
developers rather than RC bugs) in this thread to accompany their
rhetoric, and I asked them what they thought the statistics showed,
but no reply was forthcoming.

> As for the other post you commented on with the same attitude I would
> have to say that getting technical in comparing sysv with competing
> technologies does not answer the political part of the decision making.

I had a similar attitude to your made-up statistics there (you
actually said you had no data to prove them) as I did to the
misunderstood statistics here. I'm not interested in debating the
politics, as you can see from the rest of my posts.

> It seems as this part is what irritated people not the technical aspects
> of it.  Unless there are those that pretend the decision making process
> was solely on technical merits.
> That's where the definition of "free" comes in, which you seem to be
> having a hard time understanding.

I don't understand what you mean by "free" getting hazier, just as I
didn't understand "free" in your other thread:

| I'll stick to the "people who want ancient hardware" and ask whether you
| perceive those people as having a choice to "want ancient" hardware or
| whether this is "all" they have.  Do you anticipate those same people to
| be able to start their computing career in developing systems?
| Which relates to that world do we want Debian to prevail.  The "free"
| world or the "non-free" world in which we live in?

This last was taken from a thread in which you expressed a desire to
prevent people being able to upgrade Debian on certain hardware
("block and prohibit someone like me", "refuses the upgrade"). That's
why I don't understand _your_ use of "free" there.

> I'd say go back and read the policy
> and principles of Debian.  The realities of industry and market is not
> part of what I understand as free, on the contrary I find them
> contradictory.

I'm not really interested in debating that here, sorry. I've seen
too many flame wars in public forums like this. And I'm a technical
guy, not a political one.

Cheers,

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

David Wright:
>> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?
> 
> If you don't like it, you're free to look elsewhere for a distribution
> that better suits you.

Are you mr.Debian?  Under what authority are you telling me to either
shut up or leave?  What makes you more Debian than me?  Why don't you
leave if you don't like criticism?
If there is reason for madness, in which I accept I am new to, I will
have to discover it.  Saying that simply madness is normal and whoever
does not like it should leave doesn't justify madness.
If you like to contribute to my lack of understanding and possibly
unsubstantiated criticism, help me understand the hierarchy.  Who, and
how are they are selected, make the decisions and how do they relate to
those that do the work, and how do they all relate to those who for 2
decades have been employing the system and feedback with problems and bugs.
Because what is discussed on this thread to me sounds as those who by
majority have used the system (mostly for commercial large scale server
applications) and are probably the number one source of bugs that feed
development did not have much of a say on the direction taken.  The
direction was dictated from above and developers went to work according
to that direction.
Am I wrong?  I don't hear newbies single machine users having much of an
issue with systemd, but people whose work for many years was based in
fine-tuning other init systems seem to be having issues in adopting to
this new status-quo whether they like it or not.

> Cheers,
> David.

As for the other post you commented on with the same attitude I would
have to say that getting technical in comparing sysv with competing
technologies does not answer the political part of the decision making.
It seems as this part is what irritated people not the technical aspects
of it.  Unless there are those that pretend the decision making process
was solely on technical merits.
That's where the definition of "free" comes in, which you seem to be
having a hard time understanding.  I'd say go back and read the policy
and principles of Debian.  The realities of industry and market is not
part of what I understand as free, on the contrary I find them
contradictory.

cheers

-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Patrick Bartek]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 10:36:33 +0100 Jonathan Dowland 
wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 11:07:13PM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > Perhaps instead of "..more suited," it should have been "intended"
> > for servers.  After all, wasn't systemd adopted first for RHEL whose
> > market is mainly servers?
> 
> No, it wasn't. It was in Fedora before RHEL.

Fedora is the development and test bed for RHEL much as Debian
Testing is for Stable. But technically, you're correct: systemd was in
Fedora before RHEL. Spliting hairs..  In any case, systemd is truly Red
Hat's baby.

B

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[David Wright]

On Tue 11 Apr 2017 at 14:24:00 (+), GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> xxx:
> > On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 6:21 AM, GiaThnYgeia
> >> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?
> > 
> > Moving the goalposts always generates a bit of madness. Whether this
> > time is turning out more so than previous times I'll leave for others
> > to comment on.
> 
> Moving the goalposts is a decision that weighs on those exact
> individuals that made it, not the entire community.
> 
> Let me ask this encyclopedic question.  Would newer server hardware
> benefit more from the anticipated sysv development or from the systemd?
> I suspect that a 4 year old server had a 20% capability improvement with
> systemd development while a 1 year old server had a 40% improvement,
> despite the fact that the 1 year old one was 4 times as capable as the
> older one.  With sysV i suspect the development would maybe affect 24%,
> on both.  So was the choice made on the basis of exploiting ever newer
> hardware or to continue the human support of those employing Debian for
> years?  Disregarding community and bending over to industry, that is!
> 
> I have no real data to prove this, I am only suspecting this to be true.

What's the point of making stuff up and posting it then? Just trolling?

> Sometimes sticking to principles and protecting the survivability of the
> organization becomes contradictory.  What is meant by "free" is getting
> hazier and hazier.  It is now a gray area of market logic.
> The question then becomes, as has always been, whose side are you on
> boys?  And when I say boys I mean the decision making few that usually
> are boys anyway, unlike the woman that wrote the song.

I've no idea what all this is about.

Cheers,
David.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[David Wright]

On Mon 10 Apr 2017 at 21:21:00 (+), GiaThnYgeia wrote:
> Please excuse the intrusion, on another thread Felix Miata says:
> Re: Old 32bit PC 650kRam less VidMem 1024x768 will not run on Stretch ok
> on Jessie
> 
> > Debian-user is a user support forum, not a developer forum:
> > For bug fixes and policy modifications debian-user is the wrong place
> > for more than passing discussion. I suggest other avenues:
> 
> Ask me why I think the two threads may be related
> 
> to...@tuxteam.de:
> > On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 04:13:48PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> >> Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> >>> SysV init is broken because it has no process monitoring? No.
> >>> Process monitoring isn't in its scope.
> > 
> >> Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
> >> process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> >> adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
> >> monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
> >> turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
> >> to implement a program for PID 1.
> > 
> > Runit works. Think about how :-)
> > 
> > (And yes, double-forking trickery fools it. Don't do that then. Most
> > daemons have a command line option for that, and those that dont...
> > after all, you have to "fix" daemons to let them participate in systemd's
> > socket activation party too, don't you?
> > 
> > regards
> > -- t
> 
> The way I see things is that there are long-time server administrators
> who refuse to leave their pre-systemd platforms no matter what.
> There are "users" on Jessie where Jessie has 4 times the open bug
> reports than testing.

This ratio should increase as the release date approaches, because
the developers are squashing bugs. That's how ratios work: reducing
the denominator increases the ratio.

> For a second month under freeze not much
> development can take place in unstable, as it is really tomorrow's
> testing.

What do you mean? Sid (unstable) is always sid. It doesn't suddenly
become buster (the next testing) when stretch is released.

> All Stretch seems to be is Jessie with linux4 solving 75% of
> its bugs, meanwhile the current old-stable will no longer be supported.

That depends on the architecture. Most of us will see support for
wheezy until at least May next year.

> Meamwhile, there are critical bugs still open on testing from last year.
> 
> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?

If you don't like it, you're free to look elsewhere for a distribution
that better suits you.

Cheers,
David.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 11:07:13PM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> Perhaps instead of "..more suited," it should have been "intended" for
> servers.  After all, wasn't systemd adopted first for RHEL whose
> market is mainly servers?

No, it wasn't. It was in Fedora before RHEL.

-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Michael Fothergill]

On 9 April 2017 at 21:15, Patrick Bartek  wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 16:25:57 +0100 Michael Fothergill
>  wrote:
>
> > On 7 April 2017 at 19:27, David Niklas  wrote:
> >
> > > On  Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:30:11 -0700
> > > Patrick Bartek  wrote:
> > > > The Linux mantra has always been "choice," plethoras of choices.
> > > > So why at install time, is there no choice for the init system?
> > > > You get what the developers decide. Yes, you can install a new
> > > > one -- I've done it and it works -- but only after the install.
> > > > It'd be a lot easier, if there were a choice to begin with just
> > > > like whether you want a GUI and which one.
> > > >
> > > > Now, I know with LFS, you get to choose everything, etc.  But is a
> > > > choice of init at install time so outrageous that no one ever
> > > > considered it or is it technically unfeasible or something else.
> > > >
> > > > Just curious.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Because this reply is so late I'm CC'ing you off list.
> > >
> > > I sympathize, I run Gentoo Linux and us OpenRC. I plan on running
> > > Devuan, a Debain derivative that supports lots of different init
> > > systems. Why no one looks at their project and sees the people
> > > involved when making a statistic up for the amount of dissatisfied
> > > systemd users I don't know.
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > > David
> > >
> > >
> > ​I have been reading through some of this stuff and I think that the
> > debian users who are fans of the sysinit boot up scripts should
> > switch to running Gentoo.
> >
> > I use Gentoo with the openrc option.
>
> Gentoo is a rolling release.  I prefer the "stable" philosophy of Debian
> -- basically only bug and security fixes. I've been running Wheezy
> now for 5 years, and it's, for all practical purposes, the "same" as
> when I installed it.  After such a time, a rolling release would be a
> completely different animal versionwise.
>

​I see what you mean.  But I would say that once you get Gentoo set up you
can choose from the stable install, a testing type install version and a
more sid like version.

I use the stable option.  Furthermore, after a bit of work you end up with
a bang up to date kernel which updates and reuses the kernel config file
when you do a sync update to the portage tree with a newer stable kernel
from time to time as they are released.

In reality you do a sync update every three weeks and make sure you fix any
broken packages if you encounter any.  The community are good at helping
you with that problem.  That is the equivalent of the bug fixes and
security updates in debian.

If you use the binary package option you can create a set of binaries you
can use in other computers you have locally to maintain etc., assuming they
are using the same architecture ie compile once on the master box and run
everywhere on the other machines ie Gentoo on the master box and "DIY
debian" (sort of) on the clone boxes.

At least I think that's how it works if I understand it correctly.  I am
not sure, but maybe you could get away with not updating the binaries in
the clone boxes too often then that might create some extra stability and
low maintenance if you put some thought into it.

Just a thought.

Regards

MF
​



>
> I've tried rolling releases before.  They are usually cutting edge and
> more problematical (Unless they've gotten a lot better).  I want
> something that works for years and doesn't break. That's one of the
> reasons I chose Debian five years ago. Now, because of the systemd
> thing, I'm looking at alternatives.
>
> > Those who are OK with systemd should stick with Debian.
>
> After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
> servers than a desktop box or notebook with just one user.  It's
> like being forced to use a huge tractor-trailer rig with lots of chrome
> and lights and 24 gears when a simple mini-van will do. ;-)
>
> B
>
>

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Richard Owlett]

On 04/11/2017 08:16 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Tuesday 11 April 2017 13:54:50 Richard Owlett wrote:

'They' never told us, owners of single user laptops, why we
should chose it.


Your quoting lost important context ;<
You quoted only one sentence (as Ric did) of my post of April 8.
But you link to my reply earlier today to Ric's post.
As you argued in another thread, context can be everything,
"Which is referenced here by its own name - Exe GNU-Linux.  When
I first saw it I wondered why a Linux distro was named after a
Windows binary.  The answer is, it isn't.  It is named after the
River Exe in Devon, England."



Because they don't care whether you chose it or not?  Debian offers
alternatives, but had to chose a default.  Other distros have made
their choice.
 Ubuntu has chosen - of course - to go where the money is.

No-one cares what Richard Owlett - or Lisi Reisz - has chosen for his
(her) laptop.  And why should anyone?

Lisi



As to your question, the BMOC (Big Monopolists Of Consumerism) have 
blinded themselves to the potential size of a market.


I get a chuckle following an Android oriented USENET group. There is 
much effort going into how to 'root' an Android object because 
purchaser's actually wish to use those objects for their (the 
purchasers) purpose. After all, Android was touted as a Linux for such 
objects.


The current crop of dinosaurs (MS, Google, Canonical) should remember 
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/doomed-to-repeat-it]
Seen any T. Rex lately? They were once top of food chain.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

xxx:
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 6:21 AM, GiaThnYgeia
>> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?
> 
> Moving the goalposts always generates a bit of madness. Whether this
> time is turning out more so than previous times I'll leave for others
> to comment on.

Moving the goalposts is a decision that weighs on those exact
individuals that made it, not the entire community.

Let me ask this encyclopedic question.  Would newer server hardware
benefit more from the anticipated sysv development or from the systemd?
I suspect that a 4 year old server had a 20% capability improvement with
systemd development while a 1 year old server had a 40% improvement,
despite the fact that the 1 year old one was 4 times as capable as the
older one.  With sysV i suspect the development would maybe affect 24%,
on both.  So was the choice made on the basis of exploiting ever newer
hardware or to continue the human support of those employing Debian for
years?  Disregarding community and bending over to industry, that is!

I have no real data to prove this, I am only suspecting this to be true.

Sometimes sticking to principles and protecting the survivability of the
organization becomes contradictory.  What is meant by "free" is getting
hazier and hazier.  It is now a gray area of market logic.
The question then becomes, as has always been, whose side are you on
boys?  And when I say boys I mean the decision making few that usually
are boys anyway, unlike the woman that wrote the song.


kAt


-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Lisi Reisz]

On Tuesday 11 April 2017 13:54:50 Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> 'They' never told us, owners of single user laptops, why we should chose
> >> it.

Because they don't care whether you chose it or not?  Debian offers 
alternatives, but had to chose a default.  Other distros have made their 
choice.  Ubuntu has chosen - of course - to go where the money is.

No-one cares what Richard Owlett - or Lisi Reisz - has chosen for his (her) 
laptop.  And why should anyone?

Lisi

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Richard Owlett]

On 04/10/2017 07:59 PM, Ric Moore wrote:

On 04/08/2017 01:06 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:


'They' never told us, owners of single user laptops, why we should chose
it.


Simple, as I see it, single user laptop support doesn't pay the bills.
Neither do Desktops. Ubuntu found that one out, for all of their user
friendly features. When Red Hat broke the billion dollar amount for a
single year of support services to big iron, everyone else salivated.
The decision to switch to SystemD is simple ...Docker, clusters and "The
Cloud", where the big dollars roam.



"Simple" it ain't.
I don't believe that the "single user laptop" market has been targeted 
in recent generations of operating systems.


I suspect an underlying problem is "linguistic" rather than "technological".

Ric didn't quote a key (IMMHO;) sentence of my post. I said:

I never saw anything addressing potential advantages for a
specific organic user owning a discrete laptop.


When speaking Linux (as opposed to English) the terms "user" and "single 
user" have meanings and implications quite divergent than what the 
general population would perceive.


The mass marketers [Microsoft, Canonical(Ubuntu), Google(Android)] use 
the "high power blunderbuss" approach. They bag enough sales to keep 
bean counters happy. Please note I did NOT use the term "customer" nor 
"accountants" in the previous sentence.


Now Ric has suggested that Red Hat has developed a large caliber rifle 
known as 'systemd' which is suitable for 'big iron'. The herd of vendors 
have jumped on the band wagon.


To shift idiom a bit. When facing a charging rhino an elephant gun would 
be more useful than a blunderbuss. But when deer hunting, wouldn't a 
hunting rifle with scope be more appropriate than either?


More editorials likely to follow.
The OWL ducks fer cover ;/

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:48 AM, somebody wrote, off list:

(I'm not sure why you sent it off-list, but I want to respond on-list.

> On 04/10/2017 08:08 PM, Joel Rees wrote:
>
>> What we needed was probably for a group like Canonical to have funded
>> development of several alternative services management systems earlier
>> on. What we need now is for Redhat to back off just a little more than
>> they already have.
>
> [something about redhat earning a billion dollars in a year.]

Last year, their net wasn't even a half-billion. I don't remember if
it's going up or down, and I don't remember them actually netting a
billion. Grossing, yes. They grossed well over 2 billion last fiscal
year, if I haven't already forgotten what I just read.

But I haven't been paying attention, really.

It's (relatively) easy to saturate a market. It's much harder to turn
saturation into a stable business model. It's often much easier to
develop a stable business if you avoid saturation. One of the problems
of the current economy is that almost everyone seems to be focused on
saturation instead of stability.

Anyway, the argument of money has to be applied carefully, and
generally should not supplant the technological discussion. Unless you
want to make your killing and exit the market.

> If you know of a way for RedHat to earn more than a billion in a year, I'm
> sure they would be all ears.

I'm not sure Redhat really wants another saturation point more than
stability, and systemd, actually, was more about stability. They
needed to keep selling things to managers who wanted to believe they
could control their infrastructure.

Systemd definitely gives more apparent evidence of control.

> Until then, I'm betting they will keep on doing
> what they do quite successfully.

Success is relative, and keeping on doing exactly what you are doing
now is not a good way to maintain success. you have to adapt to
changing times to even keep your focus steady.

> It could be they aren't quite so dumb and
> that for Debian to survive they ought to be following RedHat's lead.  :) Ric

Well, if "Debian" as a company that needs to succeed (Is it?) wants to
follow Redhat's lead into a now saturated area, that's generally not
good business. Someone would need to analyze how much and what kind of
saturation has occurred, so that the theoretical company could focus
on areas that aren't saturated.

On the other hand, following Redhat's example (not lead) would mean
making their (our?) own init and service management solution, and
making it better than Redhat's.

But I'm not sure what you were trying to get at. If the systemd cabal
learns how to move important functions that have been absorbed into
pid 1 back out, systemd will become a properly usable tool. (It's only
usable now in comparison to what had not been uniformly available
before.) They haven't yet done that, even though I think they have had
time to.

Future success requires fixing things that don't currently work, even
if they aren't yet causing enough problems to impinge on the present
bottom line. Problems ignored hit the bottom line eventually.

(Unless you bail first, and no one wants that, I hope.)

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Miles Fidelman]

On 4/10/17 9:32 PM, Ric Moore wrote:


On 04/10/2017 09:37 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:


Does that mean systemd is the ideal replacement?  No.  Systemd has these
overreaching tendrils in places it's got no business sticking tendrils.
Why does it have its own ntp daemon?  Why does it implement file system
automount behavior?  These things already exist as userspace processes.
Mature, trusted userspace processes, sometimes with multiple competing
alternatives already.

But then on the other hand, what else would you use instead of systemd?
Nobody has proposed a superior alternative yet, that I've seen.

So, IMHO, the best thing to do is to use systemd, but don't use any of
its optional intrusive tendrils.  Other people have other opinions, and
that's awesome.  A healthy, vigorous competitive environment benefits
all of us.


If and when you start to manage a cluster, the need for those 
"tendrils" become apparent. You will need autostart and auto-restart 
features close to kernel level processes on node failures. SystemD 
seems to foot that bill. Ric


Funny thing, I don't hear folks who run clusters agitating for systemd - 
perhaps the contrary.  They want far more granular control of their 
systems than some huge monolithic blob of code that doesn't always 
behave as desired.


Miles Fidelman



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Ric Moore]

On 04/10/2017 09:37 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:


Does that mean systemd is the ideal replacement?  No.  Systemd has these
overreaching tendrils in places it's got no business sticking tendrils.
Why does it have its own ntp daemon?  Why does it implement file system
automount behavior?  These things already exist as userspace processes.
Mature, trusted userspace processes, sometimes with multiple competing
alternatives already.

But then on the other hand, what else would you use instead of systemd?
Nobody has proposed a superior alternative yet, that I've seen.

So, IMHO, the best thing to do is to use systemd, but don't use any of
its optional intrusive tendrils.  Other people have other opinions, and
that's awesome.  A healthy, vigorous competitive environment benefits
all of us.


If and when you start to manage a cluster, the need for those "tendrils" 
become apparent. You will need autostart and auto-restart features close 
to kernel level processes on node failures. SystemD seems to foot that 
bill. Ric


--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Ric Moore]

On 04/08/2017 01:06 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:


'They' never told us, owners of single user laptops, why we should chose
it.


Simple, as I see it, single user laptop support doesn't pay the bills. 
Neither do Desktops. Ubuntu found that one out, for all of their user 
friendly features. When Red Hat broke the billion dollar amount for a 
single year of support services to big iron, everyone else salivated. 
The decision to switch to SystemD is simple ...Docker, clusters and "The 
Cloud", where the big dollars roam.




--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 11:32 PM, Nicolas George  wrote:
> Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
>> > Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
>> > process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
>> > adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
>> > monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
>> > turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
>> > to implement a program for PID 1.
>>
>> Runit works. Think about how :-)
>
> No need to think how: runit takes PID 1. You prove my point.
>
> (runit can also be integrated with the rudimentary monitoring of SysV
> init: hacks upon hacks)

Hacks upon hacks, refactored, is another way to look at stepwise refinement.

> Regards,
>
> --
>   Nicolas George

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 11:13 PM, Nicolas George  wrote:
> Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
>> SysV init is broken because it has no process monitoring? No.
>> Process monitoring isn't in its scope.
>
> Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
> process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
> monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
> turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
> to implement a program for PID 1.

No, it means you need to redesign certain aspects of the permissions systems.

systemd essentially does that through cgroups and something else I'm
not placing, but it shouldn't be at pid 1. It can be moved off to a
higher pid daemon. It takes refactoring that ripples into the kernel.
So does systemd.

The big problem with systemd was that the design was to put it all in
pid 1, which Linus rightly protested.

> And that is what makes SysV init unsalvageable.

... without refactoring. It takes work. We should quite fighting
against the idea that something takes work.

> Socket activation, automounting, etc., are entirely optional and
> peripheral. Process monitoring is not.

Socket activation is not optional. Automounting is. Process monitoring
may not be optional, but it has to be kept out of pid 1 because pid 1
has to be kept small.

> Regards,
>
> --
>   Nicolas George



-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 10:37 PM, Greg Wooledge  wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 08:41:28AM +0100, Joe wrote:
>> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I run sid and see things come and
>> go. Didn't we have this:
>>
>> https://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts
>>
>>long before systemd?
>
> This and start-stop-daemon and probably a few other things are all
> hacks that were layered on top of sysvinit, in an attempt to work around
> its limitations and produce some kind of management system.

That's one way of looking at it.

> Ultimately, all of these hacks are fragile and doomed to failure.

The kernel was once a fragile hack. People layered things on top of
it, people helped refactor it, ...

Linus stuck with it, in no small part because he was single and in a
situation where he could.

Fragile is not quite the argument it seems. There are other factors --
a small group willing to stick with it, the formation of a community,
...

(And the group in charge, although they need to be able to assert
themselves, doesn't need to decide it is the cabal.)

> The basic design concept of sysvinit is that you launch a daemon in
> the background and record its PID in a file on disk.  Later, if you want
> to stop it, or see if it's still running, you open up this PID file,
> read the PID from it, and ask the kernel about the process with that ID.

sysvinit really never had an overarching design, but that could be
fixed with refactoring.

> Sounds OK, right?  At least, if don't have much experience with system
> administration.

Heh heh

> The problem is, PIDs get recycled.

That's one of the things that could, erm, should get redesigned and refactored.

> If the daemon died 17 days ago, and
> something else came along and used that PID, the sysvinit approach of
> checking that the PID is still running will give the wrong result.

We need two sets of pids, system pids below 1024, maybe, but, no, set
the boundary at 2^16-1. Yeah, I'm saying we need to make pids 32 bits,
which will break things.

(Or, if we think of uptime in terms of years, maybe we need 64 bit
pids. But 16 bits is not enough.)

Or, maybe we need a process fingerprint in addition to the pid, if the
pid really can't be widened without making too much other stuff blow
up.

The non-system pid processes should be managed by something not pid 1,
which means that we may need to move traditional low pid processes
down in the list.

> Add to that the very real problem of the legacy behavior of daemons that
> originated in the 1980s: they double-fork themselves into the background,
> on purpose.  This severs their tie to the parent process.  That means
> you can't even *get* the PID of the actual daemon from the outside.
> The daemon itself has to discover its *own* PID and write that to a PID
> file.  And your init structure has to rely on that somehow?  That's what
> the start-stop-daemon hack was introduced to try to work around, by
> the way.

Which means we need a daemon (but not at pid 1) that is the absolute
parent of all system processes, impossible to sever, and another that
is the absolute parent of all non-system processes, impossible to
sever. (And probably absolute parents for login sessions and absolute
parents per user, which takes some significant redesign, but we can
push that redesign work off for a while, because none of this is
directly managed by pid 1.)

Eventually, we'll have a service id or a daemon id that is separate
from the pid, and managed by a non-pid-1 process. (cgroups tries to do
this and misses the mark.)

> Hacks on top of hacks to work around hacks.  That's sysvinit.  It is not
> salvageable.

Not salvageable without a lot of work.

But the lot-of-work factor comes into play whether we start from
scratch or are willing to refactor what is there.

> Does that mean systemd is the ideal replacement?  No.  Systemd has these
> overreaching tendrils in places it's got no business sticking tendrils.
> Why does it have its own ntp daemon?  Why does it implement file system
> automount behavior?  These things already exist as userspace processes.
> Mature, trusted userspace processes, sometimes with multiple competing
> alternatives already.

And this is why systemd should have been developed in a fork of
Fedora, and why, since it wasn't, should have been integrated into a
fork of debian instead of directly.

> But then on the other hand, what else would you use instead of systemd?
> Nobody has proposed a superior alternative yet, that I've seen.

Lot's of people have proposed superior alternatives, but RedHat was
not patient enough, management didn't want to understand engineering,
etc. And the systemd cabal has a certian charisma. (If you think
"charisma" means "nice", go look the word up again.)

> So, IMHO, the best thing to do is to use systemd, but don't use any of
> its optional intrusive tendrils.  Other people have other opinions, and
> that's awesome.  A healthy, vigorous competitive environment benefits
> all of us.

Fortuna

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[deloptes]

GiaThnYgeia wrote:

> Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?

TRUE

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[GiaThnYgeia]

Please excuse the intrusion, on another thread Felix Miata says:
Re: Old 32bit PC 650kRam less VidMem 1024x768 will not run on Stretch ok
on Jessie

> Debian-user is a user support forum, not a developer forum:
> For bug fixes and policy modifications debian-user is the wrong place
> for more than passing discussion. I suggest other avenues:

Ask me why I think the two threads may be related

to...@tuxteam.de:
> On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 04:13:48PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
>> Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
>>> SysV init is broken because it has no process monitoring? No.
>>> Process monitoring isn't in its scope.
> 
>> Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
>> process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
>> adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
>> monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
>> turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
>> to implement a program for PID 1.
> 
> Runit works. Think about how :-)
> 
> (And yes, double-forking trickery fools it. Don't do that then. Most
> daemons have a command line option for that, and those that dont...
> after all, you have to "fix" daemons to let them participate in systemd's
> socket activation party too, don't you?
> 
> regards
> -- t

The way I see things is that there are long-time server administrators
who refuse to leave their pre-systemd platforms no matter what.
There are "users" on Jessie where Jessie has 4 times the open bug
reports than testing.  For a second month under freeze not much
development can take place in unstable, as it is really tomorrow's
testing.  All Stretch seems to be is Jessie with linux4 solving 75% of
its bugs, meanwhile the current old-stable will no longer be supported.
Meamwhile, there are critical bugs still open on testing from last year.

Has Debian always been this crazy and am I so new to this madness?


-- 
 "The most violent element in society is ignorance" rEG

"Who died and made you the superuser?"  Brooklinux

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 04:32:51PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> > > Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
> > > process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> > > adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
> > > monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
> > > turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
> > > to implement a program for PID 1.
> > 
> > Runit works. Think about how :-)
> 
> No need to think how: runit takes PID 1. You prove my point.

Just one of the possible usage patterns.

> (runit can also be integrated with the rudimentary monitoring of SysV
> init: hacks upon hacks)

As do PostgreSQL, where the postmaster manages all its children, or
Apache, or sshd. All hacks upon hacks. C'm on.

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicolas George]

Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> > Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
> > process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> > adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
> > monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
> > turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
> > to implement a program for PID 1.
> 
> Runit works. Think about how :-)

No need to think how: runit takes PID 1. You prove my point.

(runit can also be integrated with the rudimentary monitoring of SysV
init: hacks upon hacks)

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 04:13:48PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> > SysV init is broken because it has no process monitoring? No.
> > Process monitoring isn't in its scope.
> 
> Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
> process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
> adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
> monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
> turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
> to implement a program for PID 1.

Runit works. Think about how :-)

(And yes, double-forking trickery fools it. Don't do that then. Most
daemons have a command line option for that, and those that dont...
after all, you have to "fix" daemons to let them participate in systemd's
socket activation party too, don't you?

regards
- -- t
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Miles Fidelman]

On 4/10/17 2:07 AM, Patrick Bartek wrote:


On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 17:39:50 -0400 Miles Fidelman
 wrote:


On 4/9/17 4:15 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:


After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
servers than a desktop box or notebook with just one user.  It's
like being forced to use a huge tractor-trailer rig with lots of
chrome and lights and 24 gears when a simple mini-van will do. ;-)



Funny thing.  As far as I can tell, those of us who run production
servers are the ones who are most disturbed by the ways that systemd
wends its way into all aspects of a system.

Perhaps instead of "..more suited," it should have been "intended" for
servers.  After all, wasn't systemd adopted first for RHEL whose
market is mainly servers?


That probably has more to do with the people involved, and who they work 
for.


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Nicolas George]

Le primidi 21 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> SysV init is broken because it has no process monitoring? No.
> Process monitoring isn't in its scope.

Your other arguments make sense, but sorry, this one does not. The
process with PID one is the only immortal process on the system, and
adopts all orphan processes. For that reason, any kind of process
monitoring, if it needs reliability, must be rooted in PID 1. And in
turn, that makes process monitoring in scope for any project that aims
to implement a program for PID 1.

And that is what makes SysV init unsalvageable.

Socket activation, automounting, etc., are entirely optional and
peripheral. Process monitoring is not.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

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On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 09:37:00AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 08:41:28AM +0100, Joe wrote:
> > Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I run sid and see things come and
> > go. Didn't we have this:
> > 
> > https://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts
> > 
> >long before systemd?
> 
> This and start-stop-daemon and probably a few other things are all
> hacks that were layered on top of sysvinit [...]

Yawn.

Instead of actually answering, you distribute the leaflet.

SysV init is broken because it has no process monitoring? No.
Process monitoring isn't in its scope. Because it has no socket
activation? No.

Process monitoring: if you are serious about it, there's runit,
and daemontools. Socket activation? Try perhaps xinetd (before
this branches off to another sub-thread: I *know* it's not
*exactly* the same).

Some of us even like SysV's narrower scope, go figure.

Systemd doesn't "do" sound: is it broken for that?

C'm on. You can do better to contribute to a productive discussion
than that.

Sorry for sounding ranty, but yours was exactly the kind of post I
always see heating up the flamewars, with opinions and underhanded
contempt for the other side disguised as "facts" (no, I don't assume
it is intentional, mind you).

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 08:41:28AM +0100, Joe wrote:
> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I run sid and see things come and
> go. Didn't we have this:
> 
> https://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts
> 
>long before systemd?

This and start-stop-daemon and probably a few other things are all
hacks that were layered on top of sysvinit, in an attempt to work around
its limitations and produce some kind of management system.

Ultimately, all of these hacks are fragile and doomed to failure.
The basic design concept of sysvinit is that you launch a daemon in
the background and record its PID in a file on disk.  Later, if you want
to stop it, or see if it's still running, you open up this PID file,
read the PID from it, and ask the kernel about the process with that ID.

Sounds OK, right?  At least, if don't have much experience with system
administration.

The problem is, PIDs get recycled.  If the daemon died 17 days ago, and
something else came along and used that PID, the sysvinit approach of
checking that the PID is still running will give the wrong result.

Add to that the very real problem of the legacy behavior of daemons that
originated in the 1980s: they double-fork themselves into the background,
on purpose.  This severs their tie to the parent process.  That means
you can't even *get* the PID of the actual daemon from the outside.
The daemon itself has to discover its *own* PID and write that to a PID
file.  And your init structure has to rely on that somehow?  That's what
the start-stop-daemon hack was introduced to try to work around, by
the way.

Hacks on top of hacks to work around hacks.  That's sysvinit.  It is not
salvageable.

Does that mean systemd is the ideal replacement?  No.  Systemd has these
overreaching tendrils in places it's got no business sticking tendrils.
Why does it have its own ntp daemon?  Why does it implement file system
automount behavior?  These things already exist as userspace processes.
Mature, trusted userspace processes, sometimes with multiple competing
alternatives already.

But then on the other hand, what else would you use instead of systemd?
Nobody has proposed a superior alternative yet, that I've seen.

So, IMHO, the best thing to do is to use systemd, but don't use any of
its optional intrusive tendrils.  Other people have other opinions, and
that's awesome.  A healthy, vigorous competitive environment benefits
all of us.

My wheezy servers use wheezy's sysvinit + daemontools.  My locally
installed services are managed by daemontools.  Debian's services are
managed by sysvinit.

On my jessie machines, I have systemd (with its syvinit compat layer)
plus daemontools, started as a systemd service.  I'm slowly transitioning
my local stuff from daemontools to systemd services, but I am in no hurry
to do so.

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

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On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 11:07:13PM -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 17:39:50 -0400 Miles Fidelman
>  wrote:
> 
> > On 4/9/17 4:15 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > 
> > > After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
> > > servers [...]

I think this is the wrong "dimension". It's not "large <--> small" but
rather "dynamic" <--> "static", dynamic meaning that file systems,
networks and other things come and go (and are interdependent).

This dimension is independent from large vs. small: for example, the
old mainframe of yore learnt to pull off the trick of plugging CPUs
and RAM while running (Linux has learnt that pretty recently, AFAIR),
so they were dynamic down to the guts, while the "good ol' PC", with
its hda, hdb, hdc (and if you were well off hdd ;) was a pretty static
beast. With USB, ESATA and (gasp!) bluetooth, OTOH...

Smartphones... dynamic, I'd say.

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Patrick Bartek]

On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 17:39:50 -0400 Miles Fidelman
 wrote:

> On 4/9/17 4:15 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> 
> > After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
> > servers than a desktop box or notebook with just one user.  It's
> > like being forced to use a huge tractor-trailer rig with lots of
> > chrome and lights and 24 gears when a simple mini-van will do. ;-)
> >
> >
> Funny thing.  As far as I can tell, those of us who run production 
> servers are the ones who are most disturbed by the ways that systemd 
> wends its way into all aspects of a system.

Perhaps instead of "..more suited," it should have been "intended" for
servers.  After all, wasn't systemd adopted first for RHEL whose
market is mainly servers?

B

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Lisi Reisz]

On Sunday 09 April 2017 22:39:50 Miles Fidelman wrote:
> On 4/9/17 4:15 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> > After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
> > servers than a desktop box or notebook with just one user.  It's
> > like being forced to use a huge tractor-trailer rig with lots of chrome
> > and lights and 24 gears when a simple mini-van will do. ;-)
>
> Funny thing.  As far as I can tell, those of us who run production
> servers are the ones who are most disturbed by the ways that systemd
> wends its way into all aspects of a system.

Yes, ISTR being told during the flame wars that systemd was great for desktops 
because it speeded up the boot process, but, just possibly, not so good for 
servers.

My own experience is sadly the exact opposite.  I find it very slow, including 
some very awkward hangs.

Still, I shall just have to add the vagaries of systemd to the many things I 
need to learn urgently!

Lisi

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Miles Fidelman]

On 4/9/17 4:15 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:


After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
servers than a desktop box or notebook with just one user.  It's
like being forced to use a huge tractor-trailer rig with lots of chrome
and lights and 24 gears when a simple mini-van will do. ;-)


Funny thing.  As far as I can tell, those of us who run production 
servers are the ones who are most disturbed by the ways that systemd 
wends its way into all aspects of a system.


Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Patrick Bartek]

On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 16:25:57 +0100 Michael Fothergill
 wrote:

> On 7 April 2017 at 19:27, David Niklas  wrote:
> 
> > On  Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:30:11 -0700
> > Patrick Bartek  wrote:
> > > The Linux mantra has always been "choice," plethoras of choices.
> > > So why at install time, is there no choice for the init system?
> > > You get what the developers decide. Yes, you can install a new
> > > one -- I've done it and it works -- but only after the install.
> > > It'd be a lot easier, if there were a choice to begin with just
> > > like whether you want a GUI and which one.
> > >
> > > Now, I know with LFS, you get to choose everything, etc.  But is a
> > > choice of init at install time so outrageous that no one ever
> > > considered it or is it technically unfeasible or something else.
> > >
> > > Just curious.
> > >
> >
> > Because this reply is so late I'm CC'ing you off list.
> >
> > I sympathize, I run Gentoo Linux and us OpenRC. I plan on running
> > Devuan, a Debain derivative that supports lots of different init
> > systems. Why no one looks at their project and sees the people
> > involved when making a statistic up for the amount of dissatisfied
> > systemd users I don't know.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > David
> >
> >
> ​I have been reading through some of this stuff and I think that the
> debian users who are fans of the sysinit boot up scripts should
> switch to running Gentoo.
> 
> I use Gentoo with the openrc option.

Gentoo is a rolling release.  I prefer the "stable" philosophy of Debian
-- basically only bug and security fixes. I've been running Wheezy
now for 5 years, and it's, for all practical purposes, the "same" as
when I installed it.  After such a time, a rolling release would be a
completely different animal versionwise.

I've tried rolling releases before.  They are usually cutting edge and
more problematical (Unless they've gotten a lot better).  I want
something that works for years and doesn't break. That's one of the
reasons I chose Debian five years ago. Now, because of the systemd
thing, I'm looking at alternatives.

> Those who are OK with systemd should stick with Debian.

After much reading, I consider systemd more suited to large, busy
servers than a desktop box or notebook with just one user.  It's
like being forced to use a huge tractor-trailer rig with lots of chrome
and lights and 24 gears when a simple mini-van will do. ;-)

B

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 7:20 PM,   wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 08:20:16AM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> There is no plus to a restricted declaration syntax except the walls
>> between the controlling service and the controlled services. In other
>> words, the minus of separation is the plus of separation.
>
> To be fair, there *is* a plus: with a restricted language, you can be
> sure that some properties of the whole system are maintained. It then
> becomes easier to reason about the whole behaviour. I think it becomes
> a tradeoff.

I think that was what I was trying to say, that the plus is also a
minus and you have to weigh it as a tradeoff.

But you do have to understand, in the weighing, that the restrictions
are not a perfect wall.

Also, I was trying to refer to the restricted dependency declaration
language becoming infrastructure that allows management software to
reliably analyze the dependencies. That was what was not happening
when the shell itself was being used to declare (or search out) the
dependencies.

Assuming that the declaration language is sufficient, the plus side is
that once the declarations are made, the management tools can work on
the dependencies more or less directly.

The minus side includes the problems of new language and the question
of whether it is sufficient, and, as someone else said elsewhere, the
baggage that systemd brings along with the new language.

The language itself could be made independent of systemd, if the
systemd project would cooperate with that.

> regards
> - -- tomás
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>



-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Michael Fothergill]

On 7 April 2017 at 19:27, David Niklas  wrote:

> On  Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:30:11 -0700
> Patrick Bartek  wrote:
> > The Linux mantra has always been "choice," plethoras of choices. So why
> > at install time, is there no choice for the init system?  You get what
> > the developers decide. Yes, you can install a new one -- I've done it
> > and it works -- but only after the install.  It'd be a lot easier, if
> > there were a choice to begin with just like whether you want a GUI and
> > which one.
> >
> > Now, I know with LFS, you get to choose everything, etc.  But is a
> > choice of init at install time so outrageous that no one ever
> > considered it or is it technically unfeasible or something else.
> >
> > Just curious.
> >
>
> Because this reply is so late I'm CC'ing you off list.
>
> I sympathize, I run Gentoo Linux and us OpenRC. I plan on running Devuan,
> a Debain derivative that supports lots of different init systems.
> Why no one looks at their project and sees the people involved when
> making a statistic up for the amount of dissatisfied systemd users I don't
> know.
>
> Sincerely,
> David
>
>
​I have been reading through some of this stuff and I think that the debian
users who are fans of the sysinit boot up scripts should switch to running
Gentoo.

I use Gentoo with the openrc option.

Those who are OK with systemd should stick with Debian.

Regards

MF
​

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

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On Sun, Apr 09, 2017 at 08:20:16AM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:

[...]

> There is no plus to a restricted declaration syntax except the walls
> between the controlling service and the controlled services. In other
> words, the minus of separation is the plus of separation.

To be fair, there *is* a plus: with a restricted language, you can be
sure that some properties of the whole system are maintained. It then
becomes easier to reason about the whole behaviour. I think it becomes
a tradeoff.

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joe]

On Sun, 9 Apr 2017 08:20:16 +0900
Joel Rees  wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 4:15 PM,   wrote:
> > [...]
> > What systemd brings (mainly[1]) to the table is the decoupling of
> > different "parts" of init: just imagine you have one service (let's
> > say a web server) which depends on some other thing (say a file
> > system being present via ummm... NFS, but it could be a RAID or a
> > memory stick, you get the idea). With a SysV init you can't express
> > that: you would have to script it explicitly. With systemd you
> > can express that the web server is only to be started once that
> > file system appears.  
> 
> Well, sure you could express such relationships in the sysv scripts,
> and people did.
> 
> But sysv scripts used the shell as the declaration language, and the
> shell is very flexible, and everyone seems to have done their own
> thing in expressing such relationships. That made it hard to get an
> overall analysis.
> 
> What could have been done here was to build a simple database of
> relationships and a daemon to maintain the database. Sysv could start
> that daemon early, and other inits could simply register through that
> daemon as they came on-line.
> 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I run sid and see things come and
go. Didn't we have this:

https://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts

   long before systemd? And I have a memory of needing to add this
information to a firewall script I made from a template from a very
early version of LFS, on some version of stable. The date on the script
is July 2011.

Besides, I think the main points of contention about systemd are not
its init, but all the rest of the baggage that comes with it,
particularly the non-text log files. There does not seem to be a
compelling non-political reason for moving away from text files.

-- 
Joe

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Joel Rees]

On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 4:15 PM,   wrote:
> [...]
> What systemd brings (mainly[1]) to the table is the decoupling of
> different "parts" of init: just imagine you have one service (let's
> say a web server) which depends on some other thing (say a file
> system being present via ummm... NFS, but it could be a RAID or a
> memory stick, you get the idea). With a SysV init you can't express
> that: you would have to script it explicitly. With systemd you
> can express that the web server is only to be started once that
> file system appears.

Well, sure you could express such relationships in the sysv scripts,
and people did.

But sysv scripts used the shell as the declaration language, and the
shell is very flexible, and everyone seems to have done their own
thing in expressing such relationships. That made it hard to get an
overall analysis.

What could have been done here was to build a simple database of
relationships and a daemon to maintain the database. Sysv could start
that daemon early, and other inits could simply register through that
daemon as they came on-line.

But there were several different approaches to that, and territory
wars, and it wasn't ready for prime-time on the schedule of Fedora's
management team.

> [...]
> [1] Yeah: a "declarative" configuration, which may be considered
>   as a plus (less obscure side effects) or as a minus (stronger
>   separation between "priests" and "mortals").

There is no plus to a restricted declaration syntax except the walls
between the controlling service and the controlled services. In other
words, the minus of separation is the plus of separation.

And, of course, all the relationship database daemons used their own
subset of the shell's syntax for the declaration syntax. Systemd uses
a completely separate declaration syntax to strengthen the walls.

Noting that the walls are an illusion will invite flames, but that's
true of all the walls in software systems. They can all be got around.
If we couldn't get around the walls, no work could be done. The issue
is not the walls, it is whether processes can maintain reasonable
behavior in getting around the walls and still get their jobs done,
without too much policing and hand-holding from whatever
daemon/service is in charge of the wall.

And it was not that it could not be achieved in sysv, it was only that
it had not been uniformly achieved to meet Fedora management's
timetables.

This was and is the core of the arguments, I believe, but, if I expand
that thought too much I think it will still cause flames.

(And I don't understand why. Politics is an essential part of
management, and no one reasonable claims that open source means no
management at all. We ultimately will have to deal with the political
issues, whether we think we want to or not.)

(No, wait, I guess I do understand why. We do not have a uniform
language of politics. We can't say words like "democratic" or
"committee" and be sure that the person we are talking to understands
them they way we intend them. I should have been more careful about
that then, and I will try to be more careful now, if we can do this
conversation this time.)

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2017/01/soc500-00-00-toc.html
More of my delusions:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/p/novels-i-am-writing.html

Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On Sat, Apr 08, 2017 at 11:56:10AM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le nonidi 19 germinal, an CCXXV, Martin Read a écrit :
> > If a systemd unit for a particular service needs the attention of an expert
> > in order to be robust, the SysV-style RC script for the same service
> > probably also needs the attention of an expert in order to be robust.
> > 
> > As such, I find your suggestion that declarative configuration causes
> > 'stronger separation between "priests" and "mortals"' more than a little bit
> > questionable.
> 
> I think Tomás is perfectly aware of that, and quoted that argument from
> systemd opponents without making it his own.

I'm aware of that, but still make this argument (in part) my own. There
is a whole spectrum between a script that "works in my environment" and
a robust script, as Martin envisions, the kind you would package as part
of a distribution, having to cope with very different environments.

The beauty of that spectrum is that a "mere mortal" can walk this thing
gradually, improving in the process.

I think it's perfectly legitimate to disagree with me on that, but there
you are.

> But you raise an interesting point. The people who invoke that argument
> do not realize that they are already experts, "priests", of the shell
> scripting language.
> 
> I think that explains some of the most vocal systemd opposition: systemd
> aims to get rid of the scoriae of the past, but since it is IMHO
> somewhat over-engineered, it has a learning curve that is rather steep
> at the beginning. People who painstakingly learned the specifics of
> shell scripts and init scripts are afraid that their skill will lose
> value or become obsolete and they will need to start again.

It's more: there's a huge gap between "doing what systemd allows", in its
declarative language, and changing the way it works, which involves
grokking the C sources.

This kind of layering is what we software "engineers" do all the time, but
in this case, the layer gap is far too wide for my taste.

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On Sat, Apr 08, 2017 at 11:07:32AM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le nonidi 19 germinal, an CCXXV, to...@tuxteam.de a écrit :
> > So we always had multi-user: the trend is rather the other way:
> > since everyone has his/her own gadget, complex things like desktop
> > environments tend to do silly things spoiling the multi-user roots
> > of UNIX.
> 
> We agree on that.

Yes, this was more an answer to Richard.

> > Note that I'm a decided systemd opponent, and that might shine
> > through the above. Feel free to correct any misrepresentation.
> 
> I would not have guessed. But you forgot a very important information:
> what are you a PROponent of?

A more evolutionary approach. A de-boilerplating of SysV and perhaps
an outsourcing of process shepherding to something along the lines
of runit.

Definitely not a tightly coupled process set hooking into everything
from DBus to cgroups.

> With the SysV init system, the init program is stupid: it starts the
> master script that spawns all the individual init scripts, it reaps its
> children dutifully, but it does not keep track of anything beyond a
> single 3-bits piece information called "runlevel".

[...]

All the well-known arguments in favour of systemd. I know them by
heart, and this discussion has gone back and forth enough for all
of us. You know the counter-arguments as well as I know the pro
arguments, so I think it's no use in turning another round.

Perhaps we must accept that there are different philosophies here,
without hating each other :-)

regards
- -- tomás
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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...

[Mart van de Wege]

 writes:

>
> What systemd brings (mainly[1]) to the table is the decoupling of
> different "parts" of init: just imagine you have one service (let's
> say a web server) which depends on some other thing (say a file
> system being present via ummm... NFS, but it could be a RAID or a
> memory stick, you get the idea). With a SysV init you can't express
> that: you would have to script it explicitly. With systemd you
> can express that the web server is only to be started once that
> file system appears.
>
> So I'd rather say systemd is an adaptation to a much more volatile
> hardware landscape (which previously was only known in big iron)
> comming to the masses these days (just think USB). It corresponds
> to a more "dynamic" configuration.
>
> There are, of course alternative ways to skin the cat.
>
> Note that I'm a decided systemd opponent, and that might shine
> through the above. Feel free to correct any misrepresentation.
>
You've been perfectly fair. Would that all opponents did so.

As Nicolas said, systemd's main advantage is that it keeps better track
of what exactly it launches. Not only can it keep track of subprocesses
launched by the main process, it can also use that knowledge to manage
their resources, giving the sysadmin the power to constrain a service so
that it never eats up all system resources.

Or, by putting it in a separate scope, it can separate processes from
the user session that started them, making clear the difference between a
rogue process that should have died on logout, and a user service that
should persist across sessions.

The bad news on that last one is that it triggered another flamewar, as
the default chosen (kill all processes on user session end) was rather
unfriendly to programs like tmux and screen.

Mart

-- 
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
--- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.