Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Chris Bannister]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 02:31:15PM +0200, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> On 10/16/2014 14:07, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> >> No, what I find annoying is telling volunteer what they have to do
> >> without doing anything yourself on the issues you raise and repeating
> >> "don't break Linux" endlessly. I think everybody knows by now you
> >> believe that, there's no (constructive) use in further repeating it.
> > 
> > So, by your logic, if a horde of volunteers blow into town after a
> > crisis - then proceed to muck things up, all in the name of helping -
> > nobody has a right to complain?
> 
> No, I'm complaining exactly about that: there's a nice town and some
> guests have decided to rampage through town because they don't like what
> the people building the town do. The guests also use megaphones during
> the night hours when people would like to sleep to point out how wrong
> the people building the town are.

And the people who are trying to sleep in their comfy bachelor luxury
condos get abused when they tell them to keep the noise down.

-- 
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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Ansgar Burchardt]

On 10/16/2014 14:07, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
>> No, what I find annoying is telling volunteer what they have to do
>> without doing anything yourself on the issues you raise and repeating
>> "don't break Linux" endlessly. I think everybody knows by now you
>> believe that, there's no (constructive) use in further repeating it.
> 
> So, by your logic, if a horde of volunteers blow into town after a
> crisis - then proceed to muck things up, all in the name of helping -
> nobody has a right to complain?

No, I'm complaining exactly about that: there's a nice town and some
guests have decided to rampage through town because they don't like what
the people building the town do. The guests also use megaphones during
the night hours when people would like to sleep to point out how wrong
the people building the town are.

Ansgar


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Ansgar Burchardt wrote:

Steve Litt  writes:

Ansgar Burchardt  wrote:

Steve Litt  writes:

OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise
of ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am
free to take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my
family) and rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately
scuttled. Even though, apparently unlike 80% of today's kernel
developers, nobody pays me to do it.

You are free to do so in your free time. It would be a more
constructive use than trying to annoy other people (who spend their
free time on Linux) until they do so for you for free.

So, reading between the lines, you find my saying "don't break Linux"
annoying.

No, what I find annoying is telling volunteer what they have to do
without doing anything yourself on the issues you raise and repeating
"don't break Linux" endlessly. I think everybody knows by now you
believe that, there's no (constructive) use in further repeating it.



So, by your logic, if a horde of volunteers blow into town after a 
crisis - then proceed to muck things up, all in the name of helping - 
nobody has a right to complain?


And, it's worth noting that, given how many people working on Linux (and 
other open source projects) are paid by their employers to do so, this 
is not about the actions of volunteers.


Miles Fidelman



--
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In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 16 oct 14, 07:31:56, Joel Rees wrote:
> 2014/10/16 5:59 "Andrei POPESCU" :
> >
> > The problem with this approach is that it's not fine-grained enough,
> > i.e. it can't distinguish between users logged in locally or via ssh.
> > This means Mallory could easily spy on Alice remotely, just by being a
> > member of 'audio' and 'video'.
> 
> Two thoughts that this problem brings to mind --
> 
> (1) Why should it matter? Local? Remote? A hole is a hole.
 
It doesn't. Mallory could as well just set up a program to record from 
the audio/video devices.

> (1.5) How does ssh deal with making connections private? Any clues there?

I don't know what you mean by this.

> (2) There are times when I don't want to have to be logged in as an admin
> user to be able to make an ephemeral group. I've understood that for ten
> years. When am I going to make the time to construct the package to manage
> it within the standard unix permissions model?

Same here.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 07:33:38 +0100
Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 01:12:51AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise
> > of ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am
> > free to take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my
> > family) and rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately
> > scuttled.
> 
> You're being completely ludicrous, Steve. The extent of your sense of
> entitlement is breathtaking. 

I've asked for two software changes in my life:

1) Add character styles to LyX
2) Add real ePub export to LyX

Every other need I had, I either wrote software for it, or worked
around it. Several of the softwares I wrote for it I released as Free
Software, one of which is in the Debian repositories right now.

I'm not asking anyone to change Debian. I'm asking them *not* to change
it. Leave well enough alone. It's not too late.

> Here you are on a list dedicated to an OS
> built almost entirely by volunteers and you're not prepared to roll
> your sleeves up, but you're more than happy to tell everyone how they
> should do it, and what they should do.

You used the word ludicrous. I'll tell you what's ludicrous. Implying
that if I don't roll up my sleeve and make alternatives for everything
that systemd welded together, but instead say "don't weld it", I'm
entitled. It took a lot of people to do this damage to Linux, many of
them paid handsomely for their damage: One guy, or even a few guys,
aren't going to undo it.

You state that Linux is built almost entirely by volunteers. Do you have
a reference for that? If the whole OS is anything like the kernel, a
heck of a lot of those volunteers get a paycheck for their volunteerism.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux

Then there's this idea that if you're not writing C code, you're not
doing anything for Linux. I'm actually going to write an entire article
on that, but suffice it to say a lot of people have done a lot of
different things to make Linux succeed, and a lot of those things
weren't writing code. And very few of those things have anything to do
with writing systemd related code.

> 
> I'm not going to engage with you any more on this list.

That's your choice. Believe me, I don't like it either, and if there
were any reasonable low maintenance desktop Linux distros, I'd have
simply migrated and wouldn't be on this list. I didn't yell on the
Ubuntu list about Plymouth, I just moved.

The problem is, this systemd thing is a concerted effort to change to
all major distros to what Leonnart Poettering calls "a real OS" and I
call "fewer interchangeable parts". You can't escape it by switching
major desktop distros. The one hope is to keep talking it up on the one
major distro that might have the guts to defy Red Hat.

Actually, I take it all back: I *do* have a sense of entitlement. I
feel entitled to use a reasonable facimile of the same OS that, for
thirteen years, I've used, written about, created software for,
created user groups for, and recruited others to use.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Joe]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:54:02 +0100
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 
wrote:

> wande...@fastmail.fm:
> > I have a similar lack of  awareness and/or understanding about all
> > of
>  > the *kit packages / projects / tools / what-have-you, actually; I'm
>  > not positive I even know how many there are, much less all of their
>  > names.
> 
> This should help:
> 

Another vote of thanks.

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Steve Litt  writes:
> Ansgar Burchardt  wrote:
>> Steve Litt  writes:
>> > OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise
>> > of ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am
>> > free to take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my
>> > family) and rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately
>> > scuttled. Even though, apparently unlike 80% of today's kernel
>> > developers, nobody pays me to do it.
>> 
>> You are free to do so in your free time. It would be a more
>> constructive use than trying to annoy other people (who spend their
>> free time on Linux) until they do so for you for free.
>
> So, reading between the lines, you find my saying "don't break Linux"
> annoying.

No, what I find annoying is telling volunteer what they have to do
without doing anything yourself on the issues you raise and repeating
"don't break Linux" endlessly. I think everybody knows by now you
believe that, there's no (constructive) use in further repeating it.

As a comparison: I don't go to the PHP mailing lists and tell them that
they have to fix their namespace operator (\) or rewrite software I
might want to use in a sane[1] language. I think the current systemd
threads here are pretty much that.

In fact, I've become annoyed enough by these threads that I won't bother
to look at sysvinit support in my packages any longer -- if it breaks I
won't look at it myself. I won't spend my free time on fixing things for
people who annoy me.

Ansgar

  [1] According to my view of the world ;)


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/16 15:34 "Jonathan Dowland" :
>
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 01:12:51AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise of
> > ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am free to
> > take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my family) and
> > rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately scuttled.
>
> You're being completely ludicrous, Steve. The extent of your sense of
> entitlement is breathtaking. Here you are on a list dedicated to an OS
> built almost entirely by volunteers and you're not prepared to roll
> your sleeves up, but you're more than happy to tell everyone how they
> should do it, and what they should do.
>
> I'm not going to engage with you any more on this list.

I think it would help if we wouldn't assume the other guy is freeloading,
just because he seems to have time to be looking places we not to, or
because he shares his work in different ways.

FWIW, I've been getting three or four hours of sleep at night for the last
month, and I haven't touched any of my personal projects since before
summer, including one that should have been making my day job significantly
easier by now.

Joel Rees

Computer memory is just fancy paper,
CPUs just fancy pens.
All is a stream of text
flowing from the past into the future.

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 08:10:47 +0200
Ansgar Burchardt  wrote:

> Steve Litt  writes:
> > OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise
> > of ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am
> > free to take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my
> > family) and rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately
> > scuttled. Even though, apparently unlike 80% of today's kernel
> > developers, nobody pays me to do it.
> 
> You are free to do so in your free time. It would be a more
> constructive use than trying to annoy other people (who spend their
> free time on Linux) until they do so for you for free.

So, reading between the lines, you find my saying "don't break Linux"
annoying.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 01:12:51AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise of
> ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am free to
> take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my family) and
> rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately scuttled.

You're being completely ludicrous, Steve. The extent of your sense of
entitlement is breathtaking. Here you are on a list dedicated to an OS
built almost entirely by volunteers and you're not prepared to roll
your sleeves up, but you're more than happy to tell everyone how they
should do it, and what they should do.

I'm not going to engage with you any more on this list.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:54:02 +0100
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 
wrote:

> wande...@fastmail.fm:
> > I have a similar lack of  awareness and/or understanding about all
> > of
>  > the *kit packages / projects / tools / what-have-you, actually; I'm
>  > not positive I even know how many there are, much less all of their
>  > names.
> 
> This should help:
> 
> Put yourself in the position of someone writing a "desktop" system
> for Linux and the BSDs.  You've reached the part where you're writing
> a "control panel" gadget for allowing system administrators (and 

[clip amazingly detailed and helpful summary of the helper daemons and
apis]

Thank you Jonathan. I have a much better understanding of the situation
now.

Interestingly, the stuff Jonathan described was part of my reason for
migrating from Ubuntu to Debian. I've always felt unease at those GUI
admin tools. And also, of course, Plymouth isn't required in Debian
(unless you use Xfce, but then you can just disable Plymouth).

Let me ask you one more question: Is there any way that I personally
could make wicd independent of all of those helper daemons that are now
welded to systemd, or would I have to drop all the way back to
wpa-supplicant to get rid of the need for those daemons?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Steve Litt  writes:
> OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise of
> ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am free to
> take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my family) and
> rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately scuttled. Even
> though, apparently unlike 80% of today's kernel developers, nobody pays
> me to do it.

You are free to do so in your free time. It would be a more constructive
use than trying to annoy other people (who spend their free time on
Linux) until they do so for you for free.

Ansgar


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 19:27:20 +0100
Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > > They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> > > after systemd-logind came along.
> > 
> > I rest my case.
> 
> There's nothing at all (not even Red Hat) preventing anyone (even
> you!) from stepping up and taking over development of ConsoleKit.
> It's a considerably smaller proposition than taking over GNOME 2, a
> vastly more complex suite of software and libraries, and that
> actually did happen (). 

OK, I'll be the first to admit that after Red Hat caused the demise of
ConsoleKit (and probably lots more important software), I am free to
take significant time out of my day job (that feeds my family) and
rescue all sorts of software that Red Hat deliberately scuttled. Even
though, apparently unlike 80% of today's kernel developers, nobody pays
me to do it.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux

But that has nothing to do with my "I rest my case" statement.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Marty]

On 10/15/2014 07:54 PM, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:




* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/hostnamed/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/timedated/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/localed/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/logind/

These RPCs are supplied by server daemons, that communicate with client
programs (e.g. the aforementioned gadgets) over D-Bus.  The operating
system specific stuff, such as exactly what configuration file contains
the static hostname on the system, is intended to be contained within
these server daemons.  All that a client knows is that it makes the "set
the static hostname" RPC call, and some server does the necessary work
whatever that is. The Debian systemd package comes with its own
implementation of these server daemons. Contrary to the recommendation
of the GNOME people almost three years ago, but in line with what the
systemd people prefer, on Debian they aren't packaged separately and are
indivisible from the remainder of the package.


Did their interdependence not prevent them from being packaged 
separately or at least make it pointless?




*
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/distributor-list/2012-January/msg3.html

This is what three years' worth of hoo-hah has, at its root, all been
about: a packaging decision.  I'm not going to summarize or re-hash the
hoo-hah here.


I would read it, but I think it will all be re-hashed again anyway, in 
one way or another, and I don't think that's a necessarily a bad thing. 
I thought I was keeping up with the news, but I missed most of this.


  Suffice it to say that there are both engineering

rationales and socio-political rationales for the decision, and the
major problem is logind, the systemd server daemon that provides the
"login" API.   Even though the other three somewhat are (modulo the fact
that they all pick the particular choices of configuration file
locations that match what other programs in the systemd package, such as
systemd-machine-id-setup, use), logind is not at all severable from the
rest of the systemd package, because the operating-system specific
underpinnings of it (These daemons are intended to be abstracting a
whole bunch of operating-system-specific non-portable stuff, remember.)
target a Linux system that is running the systemd daemon and its
ancillary daemons and utilities.  Naturally enough  


When I remove systemd and replace it with sysvinit, it still seems to 
work. Can that part which is still working be refactored and turned back 
into a modular login package? Is this the main problem of maintaining a 
modular system? (It seems too simple.)


Or is it likely that the main problem is (what you call) "socio-political."

Thanks for the summary.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Chris Bannister]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 08:53:36AM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
> 2014/10/16 8:14 "Chris Bannister" :
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:30:26PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > >
> > > I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
> > > is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
> > > get your spoke.
> >
> > A wise old owl lived in an oak
> > The more he saw the less he spoke
> > The less he spoke the more he heard.
> > Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?
> 
> There are "generalisms" like "monolithic is a problem".
> 
> And then there are generalisms like "Engage brain, then engage mouth."
> 
> I might wonder which is more on-topic here.

Neither?

-- 
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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

wande...@fastmail.fm:

I have a similar lack of  awareness and/or understanding about all of

> the *kit packages / projects / tools / what-have-you, actually; I'm
> not positive I even know how many there are, much less all of their
> names.

This should help:

Put yourself in the position of someone writing a "desktop" system for 
Linux and the BSDs.  You've reached the part where you're writing a 
"control panel" gadget for allowing system administrators (and 
appropriately privileged users) to manage things like the system time, 
the hostname, the default locale, and so forth; and another "computer 
management" gadget for letting the desktop user see who is logged on 
where and suchlike.  It's a right old mess. You have to determine not 
only what kernel you are running on but what distribution you are 
running on, and access different things in different places.  You could 
find yourself variously having to make your programs read and parse 
/etc/locale.conf, /etc/default/locale, /etc/sysconfig/i18n, 
/etc/sysconfig/language, or /etc/sysconf/i18n, for just one example.  
Then there are things like fundamental differences in the utmpx binary 
logs (The BSDs have revamped theirs and got rid of some stuff.), the 
system account database (It's an actual database on most BSDs.), the 
naming systems for virtual console devices, subtle differences in 
configuration file syntax (to some, a configuration file may be a shell 
script that sets shell variables, to others, it's a list of key=value 
pairs), ...


Enter the "kits", twice since renamed.

Skipping a lot of history, such as where ConsoleKit begat systemd-logind 
became logind for one, what we have now is a suite of remote procedure 
calls that your gadgets can call.  There's a "hostname" API, a 
"timedate" API, a "locale" API, and a "login" API.  They're a whole 
bunch of RPC calls that are made using an inter-process communication 
system known as the "desktop bus", D-Bus.  (D-Bus, in its turn, is built 
on top of sockets.  It has all of the usual RPC "stuff" that has been 
done several times before, such as marshalling and unmarshalling, 
mechanisms for rendezvous between clients and servers, and API 
definitions.  It incorporates a security system to allow servers to 
restrict access to certain RPC functions to only suitably privileged 
clients.)


* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/hostnamed/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/timedated/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/localed/
* http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/logind/

These RPCs are supplied by server daemons, that communicate with client 
programs (e.g. the aforementioned gadgets) over D-Bus.  The operating 
system specific stuff, such as exactly what configuration file contains 
the static hostname on the system, is intended to be contained within 
these server daemons.  All that a client knows is that it makes the "set 
the static hostname" RPC call, and some server does the necessary work 
whatever that is. The Debian systemd package comes with its own 
implementation of these server daemons. Contrary to the recommendation 
of the GNOME people almost three years ago, but in line with what the 
systemd people prefer, on Debian they aren't packaged separately and are 
indivisible from the remainder of the package.


* 
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/distributor-list/2012-January/msg3.html


This is what three years' worth of hoo-hah has, at its root, all been 
about: a packaging decision.  I'm not going to summarize or re-hash the 
hoo-hah here.  Suffice it to say that there are both engineering 
rationales and socio-political rationales for the decision, and the 
major problem is logind, the systemd server daemon that provides the 
"login" API.  Even though the other three somewhat are (modulo the fact 
that they all pick the particular choices of configuration file 
locations that match what other programs in the systemd package, such as 
systemd-machine-id-setup, use), logind is not at all severable from the 
rest of the systemd package, because the operating-system specific 
underpinnings of it (These daemons are intended to be abstracting a 
whole bunch of operating-system-specific non-portable stuff, remember.) 
target a Linux system that is running the systemd daemon and its 
ancillary daemons and utilities.  Naturally enough.


The systemd versions of these daemons are not the only ones in 
existence.  A chap with the unlikely name of Ian Kremlin, for one, is in 
the process of writing his own implementations of these four daemons, 
speaking the same RPC APIs over D-Bus but having the operating-system 
specific underpinnings that are suitable for the BSDs.  This a good 
thing from the point of view of keeping the protocol specifications 
honest (as a heterogeneous set of implementations often does), and it is 
an example of what the GNOME people and the systemd people expected: a 
separate suite of operating-system-specific daemo

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/16 8:14 "Chris Bannister" :
>
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:30:26PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> >
> > I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
> > is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
> > get your spoke.
>
> A wise old owl lived in an oak
> The more he saw the less he spoke
> The less he spoke the more he heard.
> Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

There are "generalisms" like "monolithic is a problem".

And then there are generalisms like "Engage brain, then engage mouth."

I might wonder which is more on-topic here.

> --
> "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
> who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the
> oppressing." --- Malcolm X

--
Joel Rees

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Chris Bannister]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:30:26PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
> is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
> get your spoke.

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Joel Rees]

2014/10/16 5:59 "Andrei POPESCU" :
>
> On Mi, 15 oct 14, 09:46:47, The Wanderer wrote:
> >
> > I suspect that the answer is "they just didn't provide the functionality
> > which ConsoleKit, and later systemd-logind, now enable them to provide",
> > but I'm not aware - in a clear-understanding, defined-boundaries sense -
> > of exactly what that functionality is, or of why it would be necessary
> > or otherwise valuable, or of what the problem is which that
> > functionality was intended to address.
>
> A problem that ConsoleKit and logind is trying to address is handling
> permissions to access devices.
>
> Traditionally on *nix machines this was done with user groups, e.g.
> members of 'audio' would have full (read/write) access to all audio
> devices and members of 'video' would have full access to video cards or
> web-cams.
>
> The problem with this approach is that it's not fine-grained enough,
> i.e. it can't distinguish between users logged in locally or via ssh.
> This means Mallory could easily spy on Alice remotely, just by being a
> member of 'audio' and 'video'.
>
> Hope this explains,
> Andrei

Two thoughts that this problem brings to mind --

(1) Why should it matter? Local? Remote? A hole is a hole.

(1.5) How does ssh deal with making connections private? Any clues there?

(2) There are times when I don't want to have to be logged in as an admin
user to be able to make an ephemeral group. I've understood that for ten
years. When am I going to make the time to construct the package to manage
it within the standard unix permissions model?

:-(

Joel Rees

Computer memory is just fancy paper,
CPUs just fancy pens.
All is a stream of text
flowing from the past into the future.

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Bob Holtzman]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:08:26 +0100
> Martin Read  wrote:
> 
> > On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> > > And how were they handling this task before systemd?
> > 
> > They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> > after systemd-logind came along.
> 
> I rest my case.

That's along the lines of what I was wondering, re: the sysv 
option being maintained for more than a short period.

-- 
Bob Holtzman
Giant intergalactic brain-sucking hyperbacteria 
came to Earth to rape our women and create a race 
of mindless zombies.  Look!  It's working!


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 15 oct 14, 09:46:47, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
> I suspect that the answer is "they just didn't provide the functionality
> which ConsoleKit, and later systemd-logind, now enable them to provide",
> but I'm not aware - in a clear-understanding, defined-boundaries sense -
> of exactly what that functionality is, or of why it would be necessary
> or otherwise valuable, or of what the problem is which that
> functionality was intended to address.

A problem that ConsoleKit and logind is trying to address is handling 
permissions to access devices.

Traditionally on *nix machines this was done with user groups, e.g. 
members of 'audio' would have full (read/write) access to all audio 
devices and members of 'video' would have full access to video cards or 
web-cams.

The problem with this approach is that it's not fine-grained enough, 
i.e. it can't distinguish between users logged in locally or via ssh. 
This means Mallory could easily spy on Alice remotely, just by being a 
member of 'audio' and 'video'.

Hope this explains,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Mark Carroll]

Martin Read  writes:
(snip)
> * The set of people hostile to systemd seems to include a lot of people 
> who don't see much need for the likes of ConsoleKit either.
(snip)

This is actually a rather good point. The machines I am most
conservative about, and wanting to make sure that they boot well and can
easily be repaired when not, are pretty much exactly those I wouldn't
exactly have a heavyweight desktop environment on either.

And, indeed, even on the laptop from which I'm writing this message,
there's no consolekit or policykit or suchlike. So long as I can keep it
minimal and tractable, I'm happy: what I like about Linux is getting to
understand and control much of what goes on under the hood, and with
luck I'll get to continue being able to do exactly that. (This is one
nice thing about init systems that make heavy use of shell scripts: at
least I can easily read and understand and adjust them!)

I assume others have different desires, and in its present form systemd
may well support them better, with apparently having been designed with
different goals in mind.

-- Mark


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 07:22:55AM +1100, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> ConsoleKit has been fixed for kFreeBSD build, I expect fixing it in
> normal Debian/GNU wouldn't have been harder than choosing systemd.

It really needs (needed) adopting upstream, not just in Debian, because it's
upstream where people make decisions about what their software will support; so
that's where people have made the move to systemd, and that's the context which
I'm talking about.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrew McGlashan]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
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On 16/10/2014 6:49 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> reported bugs will get less attention nowtoo). But the consolekit
> deprecation happened a long time before the tech-ctte decision
> about systemd. Some one/people could have picked it up long ago.
> If they had, the context in which the tech-ctte decision was made
> could have been very different.

ConsoleKit has been fixed for kFreeBSD build, I expect fixing it in
normal Debian/GNU wouldn't have been harder than choosing systemd.

A.

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 03:16:38PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> In theory.  But in practice, folks make practical decisions as to
> expenditure of time and resources.  For example, once Debian
> committed to systemd, Ubuntu followed suit - I expect that upstart
> will promptly whither and die.

You're right (and I agree re upstart. Having said that I really
resent having to fix upstart bugs at work, now, and it will live
on a while in LTS Ubuntu releases. I'm starting to think that
reported bugs will get less attention nowtoo). But the consolekit
deprecation happened a long time before the tech-ctte decision
about systemd. Some one/people could have picked it up long ago.
If they had, the context in which the tech-ctte decision was made
could have been very different.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 15/10/14 17:30, Steve Litt wrote:

Pre-cisely. I see Red Hat's fingerprints all over that unmaintained
status. If not for Red Hat, somebody would have picked up ConsoleKit.
After all, as shown in
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux ,
there's plenty of money floating around to pay for free software
development.


A question for you:

Which funder of free software development do you believe would 
realistically stand to make a measurably-greater-than-unity return on 
investment (either in "reasonably foreseeable losses averted" or 
"reasonably foreseeable new profits obtained") by choosing to underwrite 
(or assign employees to) resumed development of ConsoleKit?


I have a couple of observations which I think may be relevant:

* The set of people hostile to systemd seems to include a lot of people 
who don't see much need for the likes of ConsoleKit either.


* ConsoleKit isn't, in terms of its size, particularly intimidating; the 
actual C source code is only about 20% larger than the 
autotools-associated shell scripts.




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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
after systemd-logind came along.

I rest my case.

There's nothing at all (not even Red Hat) preventing anyone (even you!) from
stepping up and taking over development of ConsoleKit. It's a considerably
smaller proposition than taking over GNOME 2, a vastly more complex suite of
software and libraries, and that actually did happen
().



In theory.  But in practice, folks make practical decisions as to 
expenditure of time and resources.  For example, once Debian committed 
to systemd, Ubuntu followed suit - I expect that upstart will promptly 
whither and die.


Whether a conspiracy or not, decisions by big players (in this case the 
Debian TC), can have serious and widespread impacts.


Miles Fidelman


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


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:42:58PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> > after systemd-logind came along.
> 
> I rest my case.

There's nothing at all (not even Red Hat) preventing anyone (even you!) from
stepping up and taking over development of ConsoleKit. It's a considerably
smaller proposition than taking over GNOME 2, a vastly more complex suite of
software and libraries, and that actually did happen
(). 


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:08:26 +0100
Martin Read  wrote:

> On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:

> > And how were they handling this task before systemd?
> 
> They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> after systemd-logind came along.

I rest my case.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:02:03 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

> On Ma, 14 oct 14, 17:56:58, Steve Litt wrote:
> > 
> > Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into
> > your Desktop Environment just to do a few things.
> 
> If you compare systemd with a Desktop Environment I'm not quite sure 
> who's the giant ;)

Yeah, I wasn't clear. I meant giant relative to what needed to be done.
In other words, you need to verify passwords, so you bring in the
entirety of systemd to do it, instead of just writing the code yourself.

I completely understand not reinventing the wheel, but if all you need
is a spoke, you don't construct an interface to a whole wheel just to
get your spoke.

> 
> > And how were they handling
> > this task before systemd? It's not like Desktops, Window Managers
> > and whatever things like lightdm are called didn't exist before
> > systemd.
> 
> ConsoleKit, unmaintained.

Pre-cisely. I see Red Hat's fingerprints all over that unmaintained
status. If not for Red Hat, somebody would have picked up ConsoleKit.
After all, as shown in
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/whos-writing-linux ,
there's plenty of money floating around to pay for free software
development.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 04:15 PM, Olav Vitters wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 06:18:01PM +0200, lee wrote:
> 
>> Considering that the users are Debians' priority, couldn't this
>> issue be a case in which significant concerns from/of the users
>> about an issue might initiate a GR?  Wouldn't it speak loudly for
>> Debian and its ways and for what it stands for, or used to stand
>> for, if it was established procedure that issues arising
>> significant concerns amongst the users can lead to a GR?
>> 
>> I'm sure we could find quite a few supporters for having a GR
>> amongst the users (here).  And after all, we're all kinda stuck in
>> the same boat.  A GR might have the potential to make the gap
>> between users and devs/maintainers a lot smaller.  Otherwise, this
>> gap will only continue to become wider and wider.
> 
> Debian is known for focussing a lot on focussing on quality.
> Upgrading from one version to the next is expected to be utterly
> smooth. Any bug encountered is exceptional.

Definitions of what constitutes "utterly smooth" may vary, however.


The "should upgrading from wheezy to jessie automatically switch the
init system to systemd, unless the admin has taken some sufficiently
clear action to prevent it?" question is one possible example. One side
of that debate seems to think that a properly smooth upgrade requires
that such an automatic switch take place (because otherwise the init
system doesn't get upgraded to what would be put in place by a new
install, so the upgrade can't be said to have actually completed);
another seems to think that a properly smooth upgrade requires that such
an automatic switch *not* take place (because of the chance of breaking
existing local configuration, among possibly other things).


For another example: some time ago, on debian-devel, the question arose
of whether it's reasonable to expect people to reboot promptly after
installing e.g. a new kernel, or a new init system. While of course you
can't expect to gain any functionality advantage from the
newly-installed software until the reboot in those cases, it still seems
reasonable to me to expect that no previously-existing functionality
will be *lost* in the window between such an upgrade and the next reboot.

However, at least one of the systemd Debian maintainers stated in that
discussion that while having a "keep going as normal and reboot at
leisure" scenario work smoothly would be nice, he does not consider it a
hard requirement. (The functionality at hand apparently included, but
was not necessarily limited to, power-management functionality - such as
the "reboot" button. I think that particular piece of functionality may
have been addressed since then, but the larger principle still exists.)

I think that for such a scenario to not work would place the upgrade
outside the bounds of what constitutes "utterly smooth", and I would
consider any such functionality loss to be a bug - quite possibly an RC
bug. The maintainer in question, at least, does not appear to think
that; he does appear to agree that it would be a bug, but a minor one at
best. Thus, definitions vary, Q.E.D..

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/15/2014 at 04:08 AM, Martin Read wrote:

> On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:15:40 +0300 Andrei POPESCU
>>  wrote:

>>> And it also seems to make sense (why should every Desktop
>>> Environment implement it's own solution for this?).

>> And how were they handling this task before systemd?
> 
> They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time
> after systemd-logind came along.

And how were they handling it (or an analogous / equivalent task) before
ConsoleKit, and the other *kit thingies, became a thing?

I suspect that the answer is "they just didn't provide the functionality
which ConsoleKit, and later systemd-logind, now enable them to provide",
but I'm not aware - in a clear-understanding, defined-boundaries sense -
of exactly what that functionality is, or of why it would be necessary
or otherwise valuable, or of what the problem is which that
functionality was intended to address.

I have a similar lack of awareness and/or understanding about all of the
*kit packages / projects / tools / what-have-you, actually; I'm not
positive I even know how many there are, much less all of their names.
This has probably contributed to the lack of that awareness /
understanding, since any partial explanation I see for one of them gets
partly conflated with and/or applied to the other(s?), and the whole
thing gets muddied by that mire.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrew McGlashan]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 15/10/2014 6:02 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> ConsoleKit, unmaintained.

But fixed, for kFreeBSD

A.

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 14/10/14 22:56, Steve Litt wrote:

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:15:40 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

As far as I understand none of the upstreams are actually requiring
systemd itself (or more accurately systemd-logind), but the
interfaces it is providing.


I fail to see the distinction.


As long as the interface is there (and works), they don't care how it's 
implemented. The interface is defined, and it certainly *looks* 
externally reimplementable.



And it also seems to make sense (why
should every Desktop Environment implement it's own solution for
this?).


Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into your
Desktop Environment just to do a few things.


"If I have seen further than other men, it is by standing on the 
shoulders of giants."


The alleged monolith does a bunch of (probably mostly neither 
interesting nor trivial) stuff for me. That means I don't have to do 
that stuff myself, and can concentrate on doing the things that are 
either interesting or trivial.


Besides, the average DE is pretty beefy itself.


And how were they handling this task before systemd?


They were using ConsoleKit, which was orphaned upstream some time after 
systemd-logind came along.



It's not like Desktops, Window Managers and whatever things like
lightdm are called didn't exist before systemd.


(For reference: things like lightdm, xdm, slim, gdm3, etc. are called 
"display managers", and have been since 1988.)



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 22:56:15, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
> Not to mention that just offhand I'm not sure I'd even know how to turn
> off basic tab completion - whereas turning off programmable tab
> completion is pretty much just a matter of not sourcing the
> tab-completion files in the effective bash environment, IIRC. (Though I
> always have to look up where to do it, every time I build a new system.)

Removing the package bash-completion (package name verified by courtesy 
of programmable tab completion) should do it ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 17:56:58, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into your
> Desktop Environment just to do a few things.

If you compare systemd with a Desktop Environment I'm not quite sure 
who's the giant ;)

> And how were they handling
> this task before systemd? It's not like Desktops, Window Managers and
> whatever things like lightdm are called didn't exist before systemd.

ConsoleKit, unmaintained.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Scott Ferguson]

On 15/10/14 06:01, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Scott Ferguson wrote:
>> On 15/10/14 03:33, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>> Scott Ferguson wrote:
 On 15/10/14 01:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Scott Ferguson wrote:
>> On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
 On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Gee assuming that you don't run anything that
> has systemd dependencies and/or systemd-shim is
> actually maintained and kept up-to-date.
 Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?
 
---8<--->8-
> 
> What, it's NOT a football match?!  Anyway - points as in bullet
> points :-)
:)
'twas understood - put it down to a poor attempt to lighten a heated topic.

---8<--->8->
> There's also stable as in interfaces and behavior - particularly 
> important in a platform.

Yes. Agreed. That I've had no insurmountable problems is not to say you
haven't - or that your problems are trivial. I don't know what I don't
know (now I sound like Yogi Beara) and I don't know your situation.
While an increasing complexity does mean my learning curve increases
it's a price I'm prepared to pay so I can deal with hardware and user
changes that are forced upon me - e.g. efi, cryptographic support,
bluetooth and multi-state USB devices (cdc_ether particularly) - and
(sob) touch-screens. I can barely bring myself to mention BYOD without
reaching for Lithium... (yes, of course you should be able to stream
music from your phone through the desktop speakers - via bluetooth, as
you walk into your office, and update your Twatter status while in the
carpark? - give me ten minutes while I update my Friendface status, sigh).

> 
> As to "no crashes" - well, not exactly, but that has more to do with
> Xen than Debian.

I'm not saying all my Debian builds, or Xen experiences have been
perfect - but damn near perfect-able (problems have always been fixed
eventually).

---8<--->8->
> Parenthetically, I do notice that some here (not you) seem to take 
> offense at mentions of and/or comparisons with other distros and
> O/Ss. 

I'm not entirely innocent - people using Debian derivatives and claiming
to use Debian in order to get support do, um, bring out my more
unpleasant emotions. And fanbois.

> Personally, I think sharing experiences about alternatives is
> an important topic.

Yes. Constructive criticism and comparisons. Just as I want to hear from
users of my Debian builds about what they see as better in other builds.
Quite distinct from fanboi chants and non-constructive "I'm going to
camp out in the foyer and annoy everyone until I get what I want while
simultaneously and continually threatening to leave (perhaps they lack
the bus fare?)".
It's a long time since I've seen many user-support posts on this list -
too many rent-a-mob protesters in the foyer?

---8<--->8->
> Similar situation.  Out of more than curiousity, if not for embedded 
> devices and desktop, what derivatives appeal to you?

Did - no longer in production, Debian From Scratch.
For me there is nothing that compares:- strict separation of software by
license; multiple kernel choices; sheer number of packages; brilliant
packaging system; (relatively) healthy community; range of architectures
supported. And no animal fetish mascot. :)
That I've years invested in it is a dangerous bias I'm aware of.

> 
> Re. pre-seeding and post-seeding:  So far, my experience with 
> pre-seeding has been largely to automate the Q&A that's built into
> the standard installer, and to install a few extra packages. I'm
> wondering how granular one can get in terms of defining the install
> of the base system -- i.e., to what extent one could define a
> pre-seed file that installs sysvinit-core. Any thoughts on this?

It's something I'd 'probably' try with a post-seed (easier than hacking
the d-i). In many instances I do that already, at a minimum a server
build (that's not based on a image) has a post-seed that modifies config
files, installs keys, and removes packages (e.g. debconf-i18n, aptitude,
tasksel doc-debian, laptop-detect, man, man-db etc) and installs
packages (e.g. mc, localepurge, zip, unzip, bzip2, arj, rar, unrar,
deborphan, custom kernel, etc). I doubt I could pre-seed to change the
init without an init-choice mechanism pre-existing in the d-i (I
understand that is the plan). No different to radical embedded builds
that require custom compiled packages - d-i would have to be modified,
which is only economical in some situations (scale/demand).

---8<--->8->>
>> I don't want to learn multiple inits - I'm lazy (pick one).
> 
> Me to.  Since I've already learned sysvinit, customized some of 

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrew McGlashan]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 14/10/2014 3:14 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Joey Hess wrote:
> Well I guess I'd find it a lot cleaner to make the choice as part of
> installation, rather than have systemd installed as a default and then
> have to uninstall it.   I hate unwinding dependencies, particularly for
> something as central as the init system.  That's just asking for trouble.

If it was init only, then it would be much less unwinding, but it is so
much more today and will be so much more again later!  A point that many
seem to be forgetting.

I would prefer to install an older release, then upgrade from it -- and
hopefully the upgrade doesn't try to install systemd.

> So, yes, if you're taking requests, I'd sure like to see that in expert
> mode.

For sure.

A.
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 08:02 PM, lee wrote:

> The Wanderer  writes:
> 
>> In my case, I don't install popcon because it pollutes the
>> tab-completion namespace for 'popd' in a root shell. That
>> interferes with my workflow
> 
> Are you actually using this completion stuff?  It always gets into
> my way and I keep it disabled or removed.

Programmable completion, no; I find that awkward in too many ways, and
it breaks some of the assumptions I'd come to rely on from basic tab
completion before programmable tab completion became default-available
in Debian.

But basic tab completion (executables in PATH, absolute pathnames,
pathnames relative to the current directory), yes. It saves so much
typing and so many typos, I can hardly imagine working without it
anymore. (Except that I kind of have to, or at least to work with a more
limited version of it, in Windows at my day job. But even there, basic
tab completion works in cmd, just with some awkward quirks.)

Not to mention that just offhand I'm not sure I'd even know how to turn
off basic tab completion - whereas turning off programmable tab
completion is pretty much just a matter of not sourcing the
tab-completion files in the effective bash environment, IIRC. (Though I
always have to look up where to do it, every time I build a new system.)

-- 
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persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 04:35 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Ma, 14 oct 14, 09:55:55, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> I could, but that would have to be re-done on every upgrade of the 
>> package, and doing it on every machine where I'm likely to want to
>> work in a root shell would be a pain at best - and doing it on just
>> some of them would result in my tripping over the inconsistency
>> when I happen to use one where it hasn't been done, which defeats
>> the entire point.
> 
> dpkg-divert(8)

That's a thought; I thought there might be a way of doing something like
this, but I couldn't think of one or dig one up.

It's still not a perfect solution for a few reasons, but I'll look into
doing it that way, and see whether it works well enough for my purposes.
Thanks for the suggestion!

-- 
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jerry Stuckle]

On 10/14/2014 6:50 PM, lee wrote:
> Jerry Stuckle  writes:
> 
>> On 10/13/2014 7:57 PM, lee wrote:
>>> Martin Read  writes:
>>>
 On 12/10/14 23:04, lee wrote:
> Bas Wijnen  writes:
>> Because for a GR, a member of Debian has to request it and it needs to
>> be seconded by at least 5 other members (constitution 4.2.1, 4.2.7).
>> This has not happened.
>
> I know, and I'm suggesting to omit this requirement.

 Technically, there *is* a way for a GR to be brought forward for
 discussion and voting without having six DDs supporting it: the
 Project Leader can personally propose it. The Project Leader has not
 done so, and the Debian Constitution does not place any obligation on
 the holder of the post of Project Leader to propose any particular
 General Resolution.

 Any change to these constitutional arrangements would require the
 Debian Constitution to be amended, which (per the Constitution)
 requires a General Resolution validly proposed under the existing
 arrangements and then passed by a 3:1 supermajority in the ensuing
 vote.

 I would argue in any event that it's probably inappropriate for the
 Project Leader to propose a General Resolution which has already been
 proposed by a DD and failed to receive the required number of
 sponsors.
>>>
>>> This sounds like a very bad situation to me in which Debian has gotten
>>> stuck.  It's a good reason to re-consider the rules and to change them
>>> so that getting stuck with an issue these rules are not adequate to deal
>>> with hopefully doesn't come up so easily again.  It's also a good reason
>>> to let the rules be rules and to do what it is right instead --- no harm
>>> would come from having a GR.
>>>
>>
>> Actually, I have to agree with Martin on this.  Although I don't like
>> systemd, I also think it would be inappropriate for the Project Leader
>> to propose a GR if it has already failed to get enough votes.  Now if a
>> DD wishes to propose it again, that would be more appropriate.
> 
> "Appropriate" in which sense?
>

In the sense that it is appropriate for a DD to bring it up.

> Then they shouldn't say in their social contract that the users and
> their needs are the priority.

 It is precisely *because* decisions in Debian are not made by the
 users-at-large, but only by the Debian developers, that the social
 contract by which the developers are expected to abide when working on
 the Debian project must explicitly state that the interests and needs
 of the users are important.
>>>
>>> The contract doesn't claim that the interests and needs of the users are
>>> important.  It says:
>>>
>>>
>>> "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software
>>> community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We
>>> will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
>>> kinds of computing environments [...]"[1]
>>>
>>>
>>> It is irrelevant whether the needs or interests of the users are
>>> important.  The contract merely claims that the interests of the users
>>> are the first priority.  That's a pretty strong statement, actually.
>>>
>>> Do you feel more like that what the contract says is actually true or
>>> more like that it is not?  If the contract was true, then how could
>>> Debian let itself get stuck in the bad situation as decribed above?
>>>
>>
>> Obviously the DDs think they are doing the right thing.  I happen to
>> disagree with them, but I don't think this invalidates the social contract.
> 
> Do you think that the DDs thinking that they are doing the right thing
> automatically makes them guided by the needs of the users?
> 

I think they know a lot more about it than either you or I do.

> I would like to see some evidence that the DDs are guided by the needs
> of the users.  If this statement about being guided by the needs of the
> users is solely in the social contract to remind DDs
> 

Ask them.

 that the interests and needs of the users are important
> 
> then I'd suggest to clarify things and to perhaps change this statement
> so that it says what Martin(?) says that it says, if it actually is
> supposed to mean what he says it does.
> 

Once again, I see no need for a change.

> 
>>> [1]: https://www.debian.org/social_contract
>>>
>>>
 This, of course, leads us to two interesting points:
 1) the Debian Developers are themselves users of Debian
>>>
>>> Then they should have no more or less power to make decisions than users
>>> have.  As long as they have more power to make decisions than users
>>> have, the interests of the users are not the first priority of the
>>> developers.
>>>
>>
>> I disagree.  I think they are doing the work and should have the power.
> 
> Then they aren't really users.  Users don't have power and are either
> doing the work or not.
>

Sure, they are users.  Do you think they are running some other OS?

No, the hundr

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[lee]

Olav Vitters  writes:

> On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 06:18:01PM +0200, lee wrote:
>> Considering that the users are Debians' priority, couldn't this issue be
>> a case in which significant concerns from/of the users about an issue
>> might initiate a GR?  Wouldn't it speak loudly for Debian and its ways
>> and for what it stands for, or used to stand for, if it was established
>> procedure that issues arising significant concerns amongst the users can
>> lead to a GR?
>> 
>> I'm sure we could find quite a few supporters for having a GR amongst
>> the users (here).  And after all, we're all kinda stuck in the same
>> boat.  A GR might have the potential to make the gap between users and
>> devs/maintainers a lot smaller.  Otherwise, this gap will only continue
>> to become wider and wider.
>
> Debian is known for focussing a lot on focussing on quality. Upgrading
> from one version to the next is expected to be utterly smooth. Any bug
> encountered is exceptional. While in some other distributions an upgrade
> might sometimes result in problems or is not even really supported very
> well, Debian has a great focus on ensuring that the stable release is
> utterly stable.
>
> If you encounter problems there are known ways to have a great deal of
> influence: file bugs and ensure that they're blocking the release of
> Debian. AFAIK the criteria for when something can block the release of
> the stable version is pretty broad, though I might be mistaken.
>
> You can file bugs for both systemd, as well as the integration of other
> init systems. Though uncertain if others would be considered to block
> the release. If you encounter bugs in the support of others and they're
> not considered as "blocking the release", then maybe good to start a
> thread about that. I'm guessing you'll have a good chance to ensure that
> those bugs are looked at and maybe exceptions made if need be.
>
> However, if your argument is that "systemd against the users' will",
> or that you have no influence. Then 1) whatever, I'd argue the opposite
> and 2) you have, see above. Positive attitude helps.

I'm not sure why you suggest making bug reports.  The last time I made
one, the package maintainer didn't show any interest in fixing anything,
and that's nowadays the usual experience with bug reports, with very few
exceptions.

In any case, I can't think of a bug report that would prevent the
inclusion of systemd into Debian or that could properly address the
problems systemd brings about.  If I could, I would make that bug
report, even though I'd expect it not to get fixed anyway.

Bug reports just aren't the right means in this case.

Do you think I should make a bug report about the social contract or
about Debian itself?  Is that even possible?  Would that be the right
means?

The DDs cannot prove that they are guided by the needs of the users, and
I cannot prove that they aren't.  Bug reports require facts that can be
verified and examined, and those aren't available.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[lee]

The Wanderer  writes:

> In my case, I don't install popcon because it pollutes the
> tab-completion namespace for 'popd' in a root shell. That interferes
> with my workflow

Are you actually using this completion stuff?  It always gets into my
way and I keep it disabled or removed.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[lee]

Jerry Stuckle  writes:

> On 10/13/2014 7:57 PM, lee wrote:
>> Martin Read  writes:
>> 
>>> On 12/10/14 23:04, lee wrote:
 Bas Wijnen  writes:
> Because for a GR, a member of Debian has to request it and it needs to
> be seconded by at least 5 other members (constitution 4.2.1, 4.2.7).
> This has not happened.

 I know, and I'm suggesting to omit this requirement.
>>>
>>> Technically, there *is* a way for a GR to be brought forward for
>>> discussion and voting without having six DDs supporting it: the
>>> Project Leader can personally propose it. The Project Leader has not
>>> done so, and the Debian Constitution does not place any obligation on
>>> the holder of the post of Project Leader to propose any particular
>>> General Resolution.
>>>
>>> Any change to these constitutional arrangements would require the
>>> Debian Constitution to be amended, which (per the Constitution)
>>> requires a General Resolution validly proposed under the existing
>>> arrangements and then passed by a 3:1 supermajority in the ensuing
>>> vote.
>>>
>>> I would argue in any event that it's probably inappropriate for the
>>> Project Leader to propose a General Resolution which has already been
>>> proposed by a DD and failed to receive the required number of
>>> sponsors.
>> 
>> This sounds like a very bad situation to me in which Debian has gotten
>> stuck.  It's a good reason to re-consider the rules and to change them
>> so that getting stuck with an issue these rules are not adequate to deal
>> with hopefully doesn't come up so easily again.  It's also a good reason
>> to let the rules be rules and to do what it is right instead --- no harm
>> would come from having a GR.
>>
>
> Actually, I have to agree with Martin on this.  Although I don't like
> systemd, I also think it would be inappropriate for the Project Leader
> to propose a GR if it has already failed to get enough votes.  Now if a
> DD wishes to propose it again, that would be more appropriate.

"Appropriate" in which sense?

 Then they shouldn't say in their social contract that the users and
 their needs are the priority.
>>>
>>> It is precisely *because* decisions in Debian are not made by the
>>> users-at-large, but only by the Debian developers, that the social
>>> contract by which the developers are expected to abide when working on
>>> the Debian project must explicitly state that the interests and needs
>>> of the users are important.
>> 
>> The contract doesn't claim that the interests and needs of the users are
>> important.  It says:
>> 
>> 
>> "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software
>> community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We
>> will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
>> kinds of computing environments [...]"[1]
>> 
>> 
>> It is irrelevant whether the needs or interests of the users are
>> important.  The contract merely claims that the interests of the users
>> are the first priority.  That's a pretty strong statement, actually.
>> 
>> Do you feel more like that what the contract says is actually true or
>> more like that it is not?  If the contract was true, then how could
>> Debian let itself get stuck in the bad situation as decribed above?
>> 
>
> Obviously the DDs think they are doing the right thing.  I happen to
> disagree with them, but I don't think this invalidates the social contract.

Do you think that the DDs thinking that they are doing the right thing
automatically makes them guided by the needs of the users?

I would like to see some evidence that the DDs are guided by the needs
of the users.  If this statement about being guided by the needs of the
users is solely in the social contract to remind DDs

>>> that the interests and needs of the users are important

then I'd suggest to clarify things and to perhaps change this statement
so that it says what Martin(?) says that it says, if it actually is
supposed to mean what he says it does.


>> [1]: https://www.debian.org/social_contract
>> 
>> 
>>> This, of course, leads us to two interesting points:
>>> 1) the Debian Developers are themselves users of Debian
>> 
>> Then they should have no more or less power to make decisions than users
>> have.  As long as they have more power to make decisions than users
>> have, the interests of the users are not the first priority of the
>> developers.
>> 
>
> I disagree.  I think they are doing the work and should have the power.

Then they aren't really users.  Users don't have power and are either
doing the work or not.

> And even if as you said - how are you going to get all of the users in
> the world (or even 1% of them) to understand and make an intelligent
> choice on any situation.

I don't have a solution for this problem.

>>> 2) the Debian user community is not a monolithic entity whose
>>> constituent parts have uniform and identical interests and needs
>> 
>> Isn't that another good reason to not let a (small) part o

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[lee]

Jonathan Dowland  writes:

> ask questions anyway. But I, and I imagine many of my DD colleagues, are
> particularly interested in ensuring -user is a useful resource for our users,
> and by filtering out people, we don't get a clear picture of just how broken
> the list is.

There is a lot of tolerance on this list, it allows a wide range of
interesting discussion and at the same time, questions are being
answered.  This is a great achievement, a very useful resource and
anything /but/ broken.

This at least is something that hasn't changed much over the years, and
I'm glad that it hasn't.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[lee]

Steve Litt  writes:

> On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:50:32 +0200
> lee  wrote:
>
>> Joey Hess  writes:
>> 
>> > So at this point, most of us are pretty tired of the subject.
>> 
>> And just ignore it and the consequences because you're tired of
>> thinking about it?
>
> Lee, he has a point. He sees nothing wrong with a Red Hat owned and
> controlled Linux, and is tired of hearing from those of us who do.
>
> The solution is trivial. If, as everyone claims, we're such a minority,
> he could filter us all out and never see our posts again. Problem
> solved.

If this was his intention, then why would he be here?

I really appreciate his post for it shows some care.  That's a very rare
thing to see.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:15:40 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

> On Ma, 14 oct 14, 16:31:04, Steve Litt wrote:
> > 
> > Of course, then there's the matters of upstreams requiring
> > systemd...
> 
> As far as I understand none of the upstreams are actually requiring 
> systemd itself (or more accurately systemd-logind), but the
> interfaces it is providing. 

I fail to see the distinction.

> And it also seems to make sense (why
> should every Desktop Environment implement it's own solution for
> this?).

Because you don't want to inextricably drag a giant monolith into your
Desktop Environment just to do a few things. And how were they handling
this task before systemd? It's not like Desktops, Window Managers and
whatever things like lightdm are called didn't exist before systemd.

SteveT

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 16:31:04, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> Of course, then there's the matters of upstreams requiring systemd...

As far as I understand none of the upstreams are actually requiring 
systemd itself (or more accurately systemd-logind), but the interfaces 
it is providing. And it also seems to make sense (why should every 
Desktop Environment implement it's own solution for this?).

The good news are:

1. The public interfaces provided by systemd-logind are stable and 
documented
2. There is already one project trying to develop an alternative 
implementation (systembsd)

The bad new: systembsd is an OpenBSD project, which means there will be 
*at least* some porting involved to use in on Linux.

However, those guys have an excelent track record in writing portable 
software (e.g. OpenSSH), so I'm not too worried about this.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 09:55:55, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
> I could, but that would have to be re-done on every upgrade of the
> package, and doing it on every machine where I'm likely to want to work
> in a root shell would be a pain at best - and doing it on just some of
> them would result in my tripping over the inconsistency when I happen to
> use one where it hasn't been done, which defeats the entire point.

dpkg-divert(8)

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 15:51:09, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> 
> Sadly not. If I were reading -user entirely for my own delectation, I'd have
> filtered many regulars long ago. Or simply stopped reading it, since I rarely
> ask questions anyway. But I, and I imagine many of my DD colleagues, are
> particularly interested in ensuring -user is a useful resource for our users,
> and by filtering out people, we don't get a clear picture of just how broken
> the list is.

At this point I have to say *Thank You and all the other DDs/DMs* 
following -user. I would mention some names, but I'm afraid I might miss 
somebody.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 18:35:34 +0100
Martin Read  wrote:

> On 14/10/14 16:48, Steve Litt wrote:
> > So are you saying I could use sysvinit or nosh as my PID1, drop in
> > libpam-systemd and no other systemd components, and have all PAM
> > functionalities run properly?
> 
> Thank you for the clarification.
> 
> The short and vague answer is "no"; PAM modules that depend on
> external programs for correct operation don't run properly if those
> programs aren't present. (pam_systemd is not the only such module
> that is part of Debian.)
> 
> For a longer and more accurate answer, I refer to the pam_systemd(8)
> man page:
> 
> If the system was not booted up with systemd as init system,
> this module does nothing and immediately returns PAM_SUCCESS.
> 
> It appears, then, that the answer is that your other PAM modules will 
> not be prevented from running properly, while the pam_systemd
> module's behaviour will be reduced to a no-op returning PAM_SUCCESS,
> presumably meaning that it won't cause any PAM failures but that
> programs which expect it to have done something useful will probably
> not work correctly.

Thanks for the clarification Martin,

I therefore drop my PAM based objection, if and only if I see
convincing evidence that Debian will always give and additional PID1
choice that is PID1 and nothing but PID1, and works with regular PAM,
and regular PAM continues to be supported.

Of course, then there's the matters of upstreams requiring systemd...

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Olav Vitters]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 06:18:01PM +0200, lee wrote:
> Considering that the users are Debians' priority, couldn't this issue be
> a case in which significant concerns from/of the users about an issue
> might initiate a GR?  Wouldn't it speak loudly for Debian and its ways
> and for what it stands for, or used to stand for, if it was established
> procedure that issues arising significant concerns amongst the users can
> lead to a GR?
> 
> I'm sure we could find quite a few supporters for having a GR amongst
> the users (here).  And after all, we're all kinda stuck in the same
> boat.  A GR might have the potential to make the gap between users and
> devs/maintainers a lot smaller.  Otherwise, this gap will only continue
> to become wider and wider.

Debian is known for focussing a lot on focussing on quality. Upgrading
from one version to the next is expected to be utterly smooth. Any bug
encountered is exceptional. While in some other distributions an upgrade
might sometimes result in problems or is not even really supported very
well, Debian has a great focus on ensuring that the stable release is
utterly stable.

If you encounter problems there are known ways to have a great deal of
influence: file bugs and ensure that they're blocking the release of
Debian. AFAIK the criteria for when something can block the release of
the stable version is pretty broad, though I might be mistaken.

You can file bugs for both systemd, as well as the integration of other
init systems. Though uncertain if others would be considered to block
the release. If you encounter bugs in the support of others and they're
not considered as "blocking the release", then maybe good to start a
thread about that. I'm guessing you'll have a good chance to ensure that
those bugs are looked at and maybe exceptions made if need be.

However, if your argument is that "systemd against the users' will",
or that you have no influence. Then 1) whatever, I'd argue the opposite
and 2) you have, see above. Positive attitude helps.

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Olav


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 16:03:07, Martin Read wrote:
> 
> [0] I've seen the relevant fragment posted recently, but I can't remember
> where and I don't remember the exact contents.

Package: systemd-sysv
Pin: version *
Pin-Priority: -1
Explanation: prevent installation of systemd-sysv

'Package:' (and 'version' obviously) can be a pattern, see 
apt_preferences(5) for more info.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Axel Wagner]

Hi,

The Wanderer  writes:
> Unfortunately, not everyone - or even everyone who would be willing to
> provide such feedback, or even actively interested in doing so - is
> going to install that.

Luckily, popcon is opt-in anyway, so this has no effect whatsoever on
it's quality as a data source.

Best,

Axel Wagner


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[golinux]

On Tue, 10/14/14, Brian  wrote:

 Subject: Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)
 To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
 Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 12:22 PM

On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 10:47:13 -0500, goli...@riseup.net wrote:


On Tue, 10/14/14, Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

 Subject: Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)
 To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
 Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 1:56 AM

You are still writing as if you are going to be forced to run
systemd, despite
being repeatedly told that multiple init systems will be supported.
I'm really
struggling to continue to presume "good faith" on your part now.



It's about so much more than the choice of init systems. It's that
systemd shoots it's tentacles into DEs and applications. That's the
real problem. What's the point of having a non-systemd init system
if nothing will work on it?  Those 'entanglements' are the real
lock-down.


On Debian we talk about dependencies. It would make things much more
understandable for everyone if you stuck with the same terminology.



Ah so . . . ever heard of a 'rose by any other name'?  Either way, the 
problem remains the same so is this really about semantics?



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Brian]

On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 14:22:03 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> Brian wrote:
> >Depends what you mean by "supported". There is no problem in installing
> >sysvinit after an upgrade or before upgrading. It works really well.
> 
> "No problem" is easier to say than to validate.
> 
> First off, there's a big difference between a default installation
> of systemd, followed by replacing it with sysvinit-core, vs. being
> presented with an install choice (as one is when it comes to boot
> loader, for example).

I think you should look at the difficulties that d-i would have in
offering alternative init systems. It most probably isn't insurmountable
beause nothing ever is. However, the "big diffference" is not something
I follow; primarily because the install choice doesn't exist,

There is also the question of what drawbacks there are for most users
when d-i simply installs the init system Debian has decided to use. For
nearly 20 years I've never been asked which init system I want. If I'm
asked now I could very well wonder whether they know what they are
doing. Or it would confuse me. :)
> 
> Finally, there's the matter of regression testing.  Debian Policy,
> and the TC resolution, state that alternate init systems must be
> supported - with specific reference to sysvinit scripts - but I kind

I don't think Debian Policy has anything to say on the situation *at
present*. The TC resolution may not say what you think it says.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Scott Ferguson wrote:

On 15/10/14 03:33, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Scott Ferguson wrote:

On 15/10/14 01:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Scott Ferguson wrote:

On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has
systemd dependencies and/or systemd-shim is actually
maintained and kept up-to-date.

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?


---8<--->8-

the majority of development. Embracing diversity and
conservatism (aversion to change) can be "a bit of a stretch".

How do you come to that conclusion.

Which conclusion?

That this is the selection criteria for LFS.  (Mind you, building
from scratch is looking better and better - though Gentoo makes it a
lot easier.)

But, addressing (some of) your other points:

They weren't points (it's not a football match) :)
I simply didn't know which "conclusion" you meant (I made several) - so
to save time I covered them all.


What, it's NOT a football match?!  Anyway - points as in bullet points :-)



That Debian is a progressive "Universal" OS? It changes as a result
of developers seeing a need to improve - I'd call that progressive
(rather than static or regressive).



Stability is an awfully nice virtue, one that Debian used to
subscribe to.

Stable is still as stable now as it was 20 years ago - no crashes. Do
you have different experiences?


There's also stable as in interfaces and behavior - particularly 
important in a platform.


As to "no crashes" - well, not exactly, but that has more to do with Xen 
than Debian.

That your own OS might suit your needs (and some others) better?
(did you take that as an offence??)

That Debian is NO LONGER a suitable operating system for my needs,
after more than a decade - yeah, that I kind of take offense to - or
at least I take offense to the inordinate amount of time that I
expect to waste on migration - be it to systemd, another distro, or
another o/s entirely.

OK - as long as you didn't take what I wrote as an offence.


Not a bit.

Parenthetically, I do notice that some here (not you) seem to take 
offense at mentions of and/or comparisons with other distros and O/Ss.  
Personally, I think sharing experiences about alternatives is an 
important topic.



Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that
Debian's plans don't match your needs.

---8<--->8-e).

Some of us actually have to plan for things like transitions - and
the lack of clarity regarding development plans makes that rather
difficult.

In that sense your experience is little different than mine. I expect
hardware and user needs to change - and we anticipate it. For the last
decade change control has changed little - 6 months testing and
documentation, 2 years support. Except that the last stable has
(tenuous) LTS - which just makes our work easier.
Jessie is something we won't begin seriously testing until it actually
becomes stable.
The major difference is that I work with server, embedded devices and
desktop - if not for the last two categories I probably would work on a
derivative. Instead I rely on pre-seed and post-seed. My aim, probably
similar to yours, is not to get locked into hardware or software
(packages or distro). Legacy support can be a nice niche but it has it's
limits (is it worth it to the client?).


Similar situation.  Out of more than curiousity, if not for embedded 
devices and desktop, what derivatives appeal to you?


Re. pre-seeding and post-seeding:  So far, my experience with 
pre-seeding has been largely to automate the Q&A that's built into the 
standard installer, and to install a few extra packages. I'm wondering 
how granular one can get in terms of defining the install of the base 
system -- i.e., to what extent one could define a pre-seed file that 
installs sysvinit-core. Any thoughts on this?



Ok... so multiple init systems are going to be supported in Jessie,
and maybe beyond - ok.  What seems to be very much up in the air is
whether that choice will be (well) supported at upgrade or install
time.  That makes a rather big difference.

I'll wait and see - planning is only possible when the task is not
nailing smoke to the wall. I allow a two year gap between testing
wholesale changes and deployment with SLA - which is more than
sufficient (I have a much easier life than those that support Windoof!)

I don't want to learn multiple inits - I'm lazy (pick one).


Me to.  Since I've already learned sysvinit, customized some of our 
scripts, and it all just works - I REALLY don't want to either:

a. learn a new init system
b. deal with the (probably subtle and hard to find) ways that systemd's 
claimed support for legacy systemv init scripts is less than 100%




I've only had major upgrade problems with userland apps on webserver.
Given the huge number of pac

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:27:14AM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 10/14/2014 11:09 AM, Ansgar Burchardt  wrote:
> > In a quest to ensure your personal happiness the systemd maintainers
> > took your problem and changed udev to assign predictable names to
> > network interfaces.
> 
> And which resulted in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Indeed. it seems predictable device naming is a problem so hard it has been
"solved" three times now. I've never met anyone who had the problem it was
designed to fix, although I'm sure they exist. I've been bitten by the
solution many times now. (centos in particular seems to be particularly
tricky; I haven't proved it but I could swear it stuffs Macaddr->ethX mappings
in the initrd to repopulate all the other places you've deleted it from).
Personally I think this is one place where the drawbacks outweigh the gains.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Brian wrote:

On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 12:33:06 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:


Scott Ferguson wrote:

I'm guessing you really don't want an OS without logging... :)

syslog works just fine - don't need (or want) systemd to take over
logging with a binary format

The journal logs to rsyslog by default on Debian. It works great and
gives far more detail than it did before. 99/100 people are impressed.


Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that Debian's
plans don't match your needs.
If you took that as a "if you don't like it b*gger off" then you took it
wrongly - I reserve that for those who continually talk about departing
Debian. It seems that you, and others, are bent on demanding something

>from developers that those developers don't want to do - it appears to

upset you and cause you stress. In short - a fruitless exercise (unless
I've seriously misjudged you and complaining does gives you pleasure).

Some of us actually have to plan for things like transitions - and
the lack of clarity regarding development plans makes that rather
difficult.

Plans are great. At some point though you need to get down to a bit of
testing. But you probably know that.


Ok... so multiple init systems are going to be supported in Jessie,
and maybe beyond - ok.  What seems to be very much up in the air is
whether that choice will be (well) supported at upgrade or install
time.  That makes a rather big difference.

Depends what you mean by "supported". There is no problem in installing
sysvinit after an upgrade or before upgrading. It works really well.




"No problem" is easier to say than to validate.

First off, there's a big difference between a default installation of 
systemd, followed by replacing it with sysvinit-core, vs. being 
presented with an install choice (as one is when it comes to boot 
loader, for example).


There's also the matter of how manual the process is.  There's been 
discussion here about things that have to be uninstalled/installed 
(Single cases of "I did this, and it worked just fine" are not that 
reassuring ).  On the other hand, there does seem to be work on an 
"init-select" package (https://packages.debian.org/jessie/init-select) - 
which looks like it should make it a simple process.


Then, there are lots of dependencies, metapackage definitions, shims and 
such that all have to work properly to build a system without systemd - 
and dependency hell is all the more likely when one has to uninstall 
something as entangled as systemd.


Finally, there's the matter of regression testing.  Debian Policy, and 
the TC resolution, state that alternate init systems must be supported - 
with specific reference to sysvinit scripts - but I kind of wonder what 
degree of regression testing will be applied as opposed to alternate 
init installations, as opposed to the default systemd configuration.  
Again, I expect that testing would be more intense if the installer 
explicitly gave a selection of init systems.


Miles Fidelman




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


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Scott Ferguson]

On 15/10/14 03:33, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Scott Ferguson wrote:
>> On 15/10/14 01:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>> Scott Ferguson wrote:
 On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>> On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>> Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has
>>> systemd dependencies and/or systemd-shim is actually
>>> maintained and kept up-to-date.
>> Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?
>> 
---8<--->8-
 the majority of development. Embracing diversity and
 conservatism (aversion to change) can be "a bit of a stretch".
>>> How do you come to that conclusion.
>> Which conclusion?
> 
> That this is the selection criteria for LFS.  (Mind you, building
> from scratch is looking better and better - though Gentoo makes it a
> lot easier.)
> 
> But, addressing (some of) your other points:

They weren't points (it's not a football match) :)
I simply didn't know which "conclusion" you meant (I made several) - so
to save time I covered them all.

>> 
>> That Debian is a progressive "Universal" OS? It changes as a result
>> of developers seeing a need to improve - I'd call that progressive
>> (rather than static or regressive).
>> 
>> 
> 
> Stability is an awfully nice virtue, one that Debian used to
> subscribe to.

Stable is still as stable now as it was 20 years ago - no crashes. Do
you have different experiences?

> 
>> 
>> That your own OS might suit your needs (and some others) better?
>> (did you take that as an offence??)
> 
> That Debian is NO LONGER a suitable operating system for my needs,
> after more than a decade - yeah, that I kind of take offense to - or
> at least I take offense to the inordinate amount of time that I
> expect to waste on migration - be it to systemd, another distro, or
> another o/s entirely.

OK - as long as you didn't take what I wrote as an offence.

> 
>> Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that
>> Debian's plans don't match your needs.
---8<--->8-e).
> 
> Some of us actually have to plan for things like transitions - and
> the lack of clarity regarding development plans makes that rather
> difficult.

In that sense your experience is little different than mine. I expect
hardware and user needs to change - and we anticipate it. For the last
decade change control has changed little - 6 months testing and
documentation, 2 years support. Except that the last stable has
(tenuous) LTS - which just makes our work easier.
Jessie is something we won't begin seriously testing until it actually
becomes stable.
The major difference is that I work with server, embedded devices and
desktop - if not for the last two categories I probably would work on a
derivative. Instead I rely on pre-seed and post-seed. My aim, probably
similar to yours, is not to get locked into hardware or software
(packages or distro). Legacy support can be a nice niche but it has it's
limits (is it worth it to the client?).

> 
> Ok... so multiple init systems are going to be supported in Jessie,
> and maybe beyond - ok.  What seems to be very much up in the air is
> whether that choice will be (well) supported at upgrade or install
> time.  That makes a rather big difference.

I'll wait and see - planning is only possible when the task is not
nailing smoke to the wall. I allow a two year gap between testing
wholesale changes and deployment with SLA - which is more than
sufficient (I have a much easier life than those that support Windoof!)

I don't want to learn multiple inits - I'm lazy (pick one).

---8<--->8-
>> 
>> 
>>> (I guess, if libreoffice is no. 2 in the popcon stats, desktop
>>> use now dominates.  Sigh...)
> 
> And understanding what the relative priorities are has major impacts.
>  With rather large regret, it sure seems like the priority on
> server-side support has gone way down in favor of desktop support (as
> far as I can infer).

That the support list is more noise than signal I agree - that server
support is degraded I don't know (and I won't use this list to plug my
business - there's another list for that). That server deployments have
increased - I have no doubt - enormously (even Gartner are forced to
admit that).
But the world is not just servers [he says as he pauses typing on his
portable Debian running from a USB key on the nearest computer to glance
at his Debian -rooted phone while running a profile backup to a Debian
file server on a box that is having Windoof replaced as a desktop with
Debian. The only thing left to install Debian on is that BTrusted (hi
Dougal!) BSD on the firewalls] ;)

---8<--->8->
>> So far I've had no problems not using udev when it's not required 
>> (static hardware).
>> 
>>> A completely unexpe

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Brian]

On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 12:33:06 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> Scott Ferguson wrote:
> >I'm guessing you really don't want an OS without logging... :)
> 
> syslog works just fine - don't need (or want) systemd to take over
> logging with a binary format

The journal logs to rsyslog by default on Debian. It works great and
gives far more detail than it did before. 99/100 people are impressed.

> >Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that Debian's
> >plans don't match your needs.
> >If you took that as a "if you don't like it b*gger off" then you took it
> >wrongly - I reserve that for those who continually talk about departing
> >Debian. It seems that you, and others, are bent on demanding something
> >from developers that those developers don't want to do - it appears to
> >upset you and cause you stress. In short - a fruitless exercise (unless
> >I've seriously misjudged you and complaining does gives you pleasure).
> 
> Some of us actually have to plan for things like transitions - and
> the lack of clarity regarding development plans makes that rather
> difficult.

Plans are great. At some point though you need to get down to a bit of
testing. But you probably know that.

> Ok... so multiple init systems are going to be supported in Jessie,
> and maybe beyond - ok.  What seems to be very much up in the air is
> whether that choice will be (well) supported at upgrade or install
> time.  That makes a rather big difference.

Depends what you mean by "supported". There is no problem in installing
sysvinit after an upgrade or before upgrading. It works really well. 



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 14/10/14 16:48, Steve Litt wrote:

So are you saying I could use sysvinit or nosh as my PID1, drop in
libpam-systemd and no other systemd components, and have all PAM
functionalities run properly?


Thank you for the clarification.

The short and vague answer is "no"; PAM modules that depend on external 
programs for correct operation don't run properly if those programs 
aren't present. (pam_systemd is not the only such module that is part of 
Debian.)


For a longer and more accurate answer, I refer to the pam_systemd(8) man 
page:


   If the system was not booted up with systemd as init system, this
   module does nothing and immediately returns PAM_SUCCESS.

It appears, then, that the answer is that your other PAM modules will 
not be prevented from running properly, while the pam_systemd module's 
behaviour will be reduced to a no-op returning PAM_SUCCESS, presumably 
meaning that it won't cause any PAM failures but that programs which 
expect it to have done something useful will probably not work correctly.



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Brian]

On Tue 14 Oct 2014 at 10:47:13 -0500, goli...@riseup.net wrote:

> On Tue, 10/14/14, Jonathan Dowland  wrote:
> 
>  Subject: Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)
>  To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
>  Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 1:56 AM
> 
> You are still writing as if you are going to be forced to run
> systemd, despite
> being repeatedly told that multiple init systems will be supported.
> I'm really
> struggling to continue to presume "good faith" on your part now.
> 
> 
> 
> It's about so much more than the choice of init systems. It's that
> systemd shoots it's tentacles into DEs and applications. That's the
> real problem. What's the point of having a non-systemd init system
> if nothing will work on it?  Those 'entanglements' are the real
> lock-down.

On Debian we talk about dependencies. It would make things much more
understandable for everyone if you stuck with the same terminology.

Please return when you have something to say which hasn't been said
before and which relates in some sensible way to the technical point
made in the mail you have replied to.

We pinned down the real problem a few months ago. He is still posting.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Scott Ferguson wrote:

On 15/10/14 01:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Scott Ferguson wrote:

On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd
dependencies
and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept up-to-date.

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?


Trying to.

As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind; all
services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so
that would be pretty much everything).

I'm guessing you really don't want an OS without logging... :)


syslog works just fine - don't need (or want) systemd to take over 
logging with a binary format



Miles Fidelman



Miles,
sounds like the selection criteria for LinuxFromScratch
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
or maybe revive Debian for Scratch instead of relying on a progressive,
"Universal" OS that struggles to fund LTS and is reliant on upstream for
the majority of development. Embracing diversity and conservatism
(aversion to change) can be "a bit of a stretch".

How do you come to that conclusion.

Which conclusion?


That this is the selection criteria for LFS.  (Mind you, building from 
scratch is looking better and better - though Gentoo makes it a lot easier.)


But, addressing (some of) your other points:


That Debian is a progressive "Universal" OS?
It changes as a result of developers seeing a need to improve - I'd call
that progressive (rather than static or regressive).




Stability is an awfully nice virtue, one that Debian used to subscribe to.



That your own OS might suit your needs (and some others) better? (did
you take that as an offence??)


That Debian is NO LONGER a suitable operating system for my needs, after 
more than a decade - yeah, that I kind of take offense to - or at least 
I take offense to the inordinate amount of time that I expect to waste 
on migration - be it to systemd, another distro, or another o/s entirely.



Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that Debian's
plans don't match your needs.
If you took that as a "if you don't like it b*gger off" then you took it
wrongly - I reserve that for those who continually talk about departing
Debian. It seems that you, and others, are bent on demanding something
from developers that those developers don't want to do - it appears to
upset you and cause you stress. In short - a fruitless exercise (unless
I've seriously misjudged you and complaining does gives you pleasure).


Some of us actually have to plan for things like transitions - and the 
lack of clarity regarding development plans makes that rather difficult.


Ok... so multiple init systems are going to be supported in Jessie, and 
maybe beyond - ok.  What seems to be very much up in the air is whether 
that choice will be (well) supported at upgrade or install time.  That 
makes a rather big difference.



For at least a decade, maybe two, Debian has been one on the short list
for linux distros suitable for use on servers, and has been viewed as a
distro for knowledgeable users - and a lot of that has come from
flexibility and a very good packaging system.  Lots of important
server-side stuff are designed for Debian first (e.g., Xen).

So, apparently, that's changed.

The number and type of deployments has (greatly) increased in recent
years. Servers are up, embedded devices are up, and so are desktops. And
they all connect to each other. So yes - changed.
Don't forget Steam... enormous changes.
But nothing compared to what's coming - the rest of the world is coming
online.



(I guess, if libreoffice is no. 2 in the
popcon stats, desktop use now dominates.  Sigh...)


And understanding what the relative priorities are has major impacts.  
With rather large regret, it sure seems like the priority on server-side 
support has gone way down in favor of desktop support (as far as I can 
infer).





DISCLAIMER: I'm happy with squeeze lts on servers - slowly being
transitioned to Wheezy where end-user requirements demand more modern
apps and libraries (I can't ignore end-users, ymmv).
In some instances I pre-populate /dev (low-resource devices), but mostly
I have no issues with udev. Systemd is something I'll deal with in a few
*years*.

Actually, udev is the ONLY thing I've had issues with in over a decade
of production use.  Changed out a nic card, and everything changed -
because udev decided to assign the new interface to some other port (or
some such - it's been a while).

I've had that happen...

nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
change eth1 to eth0 and remove the line that used to read eth0

I took a while to understand udev, but I find it extremely useful in
some circumstances. Being able to treat devices with more fine-grained
control than just any old nic=eth0 can be useful if you want to treat
different devices differently rather than generically by gross ty

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Brian]

On Wed 15 Oct 2014 at 04:29:50 +1300, Chris Bannister wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:40:59AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:50:32 +0200
> > lee  wrote:
> > 
> > > Joey Hess  writes:
> > > 
> > > > So at this point, most of us are pretty tired of the subject.
> > > 
> > > And just ignore it and the consequences because you're tired of
> > > thinking about it?
> > 
> > Lee, he has a point. He sees nothing wrong with a Red Hat owned and
> > controlled Linux, and is tired of hearing from those of us who do.
> 
> How on earth do you draw that conclusion from what he said above?

It isn't possible to draw that conclusion. Not only that but the tactic
of taking the opportunity to attack distributions and people on this
list is positively corrosive and has should have no place in the
conversation.

Is it realised that this has been going on for months and there is no
end in sight? 2,000+ posts and it is still thought constructive and
novel to view institutions through a distorting lens.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Scott Ferguson]

On 15/10/14 01:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Scott Ferguson wrote:
>> On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
 On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd
> dependencies
> and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept up-to-date.
 Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?

>>> Trying to.
>>>
>>> As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind; all
>>> services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so
>>> that would be pretty much everything).

I'm guessing you really don't want an OS without logging... :)

>>>
>>> Miles Fidelman
>>>
>>>
>> Miles,
>>sounds like the selection criteria for LinuxFromScratch
>> http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
>> or maybe revive Debian for Scratch instead of relying on a progressive,
>> "Universal" OS that struggles to fund LTS and is reliant on upstream for
>> the majority of development. Embracing diversity and conservatism
>> (aversion to change) can be "a bit of a stretch".
> 
> How do you come to that conclusion.

Which conclusion?

That Debian is a progressive "Universal" OS?
It changes as a result of developers seeing a need to improve - I'd call
that progressive (rather than static or regressive).

That Debian struggles to find the funding for LTS?
I read.

That Debian relies on upstream for the majority of development?
Where do you want to start - at the kernel?

That embracing diversity (both in architecture, hardware support, and
user requirements) is counter to conservatism (no change)??
Change and no change would seem contradictory *to me*.

That your own OS might suit your needs (and some others) better? (did
you take that as an offence??)
Based on the large number of posts you've made complaining that Debian's
plans don't match your needs.
If you took that as a "if you don't like it b*gger off" then you took it
wrongly - I reserve that for those who continually talk about departing
Debian. It seems that you, and others, are bent on demanding something
from developers that those developers don't want to do - it appears to
upset you and cause you stress. In short - a fruitless exercise (unless
I've seriously misjudged you and complaining does gives you pleasure).

> 
> For at least a decade, maybe two, Debian has been one on the short list
> for linux distros suitable for use on servers, and has been viewed as a
> distro for knowledgeable users - and a lot of that has come from
> flexibility and a very good packaging system.  Lots of important
> server-side stuff are designed for Debian first (e.g., Xen).
> 
> So, apparently, that's changed.

The number and type of deployments has (greatly) increased in recent
years. Servers are up, embedded devices are up, and so are desktops. And
they all connect to each other. So yes - changed.
Don't forget Steam... enormous changes.
But nothing compared to what's coming - the rest of the world is coming
online.


> (I guess, if libreoffice is no. 2 in the
> popcon stats, desktop use now dominates.  Sigh...)


>> DISCLAIMER: I'm happy with squeeze lts on servers - slowly being
>> transitioned to Wheezy where end-user requirements demand more modern
>> apps and libraries (I can't ignore end-users, ymmv).
>> In some instances I pre-populate /dev (low-resource devices), but mostly
>> I have no issues with udev. Systemd is something I'll deal with in a few
>> *years*.
> 
> Actually, udev is the ONLY thing I've had issues with in over a decade
> of production use.  Changed out a nic card, and everything changed -
> because udev decided to assign the new interface to some other port (or
> some such - it's been a while). 

I've had that happen...

nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
change eth1 to eth0 and remove the line that used to read eth0

I took a while to understand udev, but I find it extremely useful in
some circumstances. Being able to treat devices with more fine-grained
control than just any old nic=eth0 can be useful if you want to treat
different devices differently rather than generically by gross type.
e.g. which nic is which? udev makes that simple.

So far I've had no problems not using udev when it's not required
(static hardware).

>  A completely unexpected behavior, hard
> to track down, poorly documented.  

:)
I'd say the same about most packages.
As for unexpected - I usually read the release notes before I begin
testing - no complaints so far.
I don't understand what you mean by "hard to track down". udev gives me
much more information about devices than hal and it's predecessors.

> Given that the players are the same,
> and the scope is much larger, this gives me lots of reservations about
> systemd.

I'm *very* wary of any "gut-instincts" - but I do encourage those that
swear by them to publicly journal them for future reference.

> 
>>
>> [*1]
>> I suspect enough to support a tightly-focussed server OS (if yo

Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[golinux]

On Tue, 10/14/14, Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

 Subject: Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)
 To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
 Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 1:56 AM

You are still writing as if you are going to be forced to run systemd, 
despite
being repeatedly told that multiple init systems will be supported. I'm 
really

struggling to continue to presume "good faith" on your part now.



It's about so much more than the choice of init systems. It's that 
systemd shoots it's tentacles into DEs and applications. That's the real 
problem. What's the point of having a non-systemd init system if nothing 
will work on it?  Those 'entanglements' are the real lock-down.



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:37:30 +0100
Martin Read  wrote:

> On 14/10/14 15:56, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:25:23 +0300
> > Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> >> Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?
> >
> > PAM is enough for me, considering everything that uses PAM. They
> > could have made their PAM plug compatible with the old PAM, but
> > nooo.
> 
> I find these statements confusing, and crave enlightenment. When I
> look up libpam-systemd on packages.d.o, I see the following sentence:
> 
> "This package contains the PAM module which registers user sessions
> in the systemd control group hierarchy."
> 
> and the following dependencies:
> 
>   dep: libpam-runtime (>= 1.0.1-6)
>   Runtime support for the PAM library
> 
>   dep: libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1)
>   Pluggable Authentication Modules library
> 
> Now, I may be being dim here, but it looks to me like that means that 
> libpam-systemd is, in fact, plug-compatible with PAM.

So are you saying I could use sysvinit or nosh as my PID1, drop in
libpam-systemd and no other systemd components, and have all PAM
functionalities run properly?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 14/10/14 15:56, Steve Litt wrote:

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:25:23 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?


PAM is enough for me, considering everything that uses PAM. They could
have made their PAM plug compatible with the old PAM, but nooo.


I find these statements confusing, and crave enlightenment. When I look 
up libpam-systemd on packages.d.o, I see the following sentence:


"This package contains the PAM module which registers user sessions in 
the systemd control group hierarchy."


and the following dependencies:

dep: libpam-runtime (>= 1.0.1-6)
Runtime support for the PAM library

dep: libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1)
Pluggable Authentication Modules library

Now, I may be being dim here, but it looks to me like that means that 
libpam-systemd is, in fact, plug-compatible with PAM.



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Tony van der Hoff]

On 14/10/14 16:06, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> 1) Boycott (and be vocal about it) Gnome
> 
> 2) Pressure all other upstreams into a "no systemd dependencies"
>pledge, and to the best of our abilities, boycott (and be vocal about
>it) those who don't comply.
> 

Well, you should have no problem with the "vocal" bit :|


-- 
Tony van der Hoff| mailto:t...@vanderhoff.org
Buckinghamshire, England |


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Chris Bannister]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:40:59AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:50:32 +0200
> lee  wrote:
> 
> > Joey Hess  writes:
> > 
> > > So at this point, most of us are pretty tired of the subject.
> > 
> > And just ignore it and the consequences because you're tired of
> > thinking about it?
> 
> Lee, he has a point. He sees nothing wrong with a Red Hat owned and
> controlled Linux, and is tired of hearing from those of us who do.

How on earth do you draw that conclusion from what he said above?

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Tanstaafl]

On 10/14/2014 11:09 AM, Ansgar Burchardt  wrote:
> In a quest to ensure your personal happiness the systemd maintainers
> took your problem and changed udev to assign predictable names to
> network interfaces.

And which resulted in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 07:46:11PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

I assume you find it more productive to bury your head in the sand
about potential impacts of really major changes to the plumbing of a
platform, and wait for things to break after-the-fact?

I suspect Steve will continue to work hard on CD image generation, as he
has done for many years, so you have media from which to install Debian
from, rather than burying his head in the sand.

You are still writing as if you are going to be forced to run systemd, despite
being repeatedly told that multiple init systems will be supported. I'm really
struggling to continue to presume "good faith" on your part now.


And how is drilling down into plans for the installer a lack of good 
faith - given that the issue of how upgrades and clean installs will be 
handled is apparently still up in the air?


Those of us who run production systems have to, you know, PLAN for 
transitions, and worry about things like continuity of operations - 
understanding what an install will look like for Jessie, and 
understanding what pitfalls to look out for - seems a perfectly 
legitimate question to address.


Miles Fidelman




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


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Ansgar Burchardt wrote:

Hi Miles,

On 10/14/2014 16:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Actually, udev is the ONLY thing I've had issues with in over a decade
of production use.  Changed out a nic card, and everything changed -
because udev decided to assign the new interface to some other port (or
some such - it's been a while).  A completely unexpected behavior, hard
to track down, poorly documented.  Given that the players are the same,
and the scope is much larger, this gives me lots of reservations about
systemd.

In a quest to ensure your personal happiness the systemd maintainers
took your problem and changed udev to assign predictable names to
network interfaces. See [1], note that "Stable interface names even when
hardware is added or removed, i.e. no re-enumeration takes place" is
listed as a feature.

Ansgar

   [1]



Sarcasm not appreciated.

Then again:
- it only took >5years, and up to v197 - to restore behavior to the 
pre-udev behavior
- looks like the developers attribute unpredictable device naming to the 
kernel - which is kind of funny, because the unpredictable behavior came 
in with udev


Miles Fidelman






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


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Scott Ferguson]

On 15/10/14 01:51, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:40:59AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>> The solution is trivial. If, as everyone claims, we're such a minority,
>> he could filter us all out and never see our posts again. Problem
>> solved.
> 
> Sadly not. If I were reading -user entirely for my own delectation, I'd have
> filtered many regulars long ago. Or simply stopped reading it, since I rarely
> ask questions anyway. But I, and I imagine many of my DD colleagues, are
> particularly interested in ensuring -user is a useful resource for our users,
> and by filtering out people, we don't get a clear picture of just how broken
> the list is.
> 
> 

Kudos.

"I can't hear you I can't hear you" is neither mature, productive, or
embracing that diversity that makes Debian what it is. It smacks of
"talk to the hand" and other sophist bullying techniques - (which I'd be
certain a troubleshooting expert of Steve's calibre wouldn't stoop to).

It's difficult finding the tolerance to give fair hearing to those who
make demands on others while refusing to hear opposing views,
*especially* when they claim they are not being listened to.

Kind regards

--
"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit" ~ Joseph Stalin


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 15:51:09 +0100
Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:40:59AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > The solution is trivial. If, as everyone claims, we're such a
> > minority, he could filter us all out and never see our posts again.
> > Problem solved.
> 
> Sadly not. If I were reading -user entirely for my own delectation,
> I'd have filtered many regulars long ago. Or simply stopped reading
> it, since I rarely ask questions anyway. But I, and I imagine many of
> my DD colleagues, are particularly interested in ensuring -user is a
> useful resource for our users, and by filtering out people, we don't
> get a clear picture of just how broken the list is.

:-) I'd characterize it a little differently, and say you don't get a
clear picture of how broken systemd is, but I understand what you're
saying.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:33:56 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

> On Ma, 14 oct 14, 10:40:34, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> > On 14/10/2014 9:50 AM, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > Sysvinit will continue to be supported on servers in Debian 8
> > > (jessie) release of Debian. So you can continue to boot your
> > > production servers with sysvinit.
> > 
> > Okay, for now, that is until more packages decide that they can't do
> > without systemd.
> 
> Debian testing (Jessie) will freeze on 5. November. That's about
> three weeks from now. No serious package maintainer is going to
> introduce major changes now.

Andrei brings up an important point: We should enter phase two, where
we:

1) Boycott (and be vocal about it) Gnome

2) Pressure all other upstreams into a "no systemd dependencies"
   pledge, and to the best of our abilities, boycott (and be vocal about
   it) those who don't comply.


SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Hi Miles,

On 10/14/2014 16:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Actually, udev is the ONLY thing I've had issues with in over a decade
> of production use.  Changed out a nic card, and everything changed -
> because udev decided to assign the new interface to some other port (or
> some such - it's been a while).  A completely unexpected behavior, hard
> to track down, poorly documented.  Given that the players are the same,
> and the scope is much larger, this gives me lots of reservations about
> systemd.

In a quest to ensure your personal happiness the systemd maintainers
took your problem and changed udev to assign predictable names to
network interfaces. See [1], note that "Stable interface names even when
hardware is added or removed, i.e. no re-enumeration takes place" is
listed as a feature.

Ansgar

  [1]



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 14/10/14 14:33, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Which brings us back to how upgrades and new installs will be handled -
will there be an option to go right to sysvinit-core, or will we have to
manually uninstall systemd and anything that depends on it?  Getting all
the metapackages and dependencies right could be a real pain.


For *upgrades*, my understanding (as a user) is that you will be able to 
go straight to sysvinit-core by explicitly installing it before you 
invoke apt-get upgrade. For a belt-and-braces approach, you could also 
add an APT configuration fragment[0] pinning systemd-sysv to not be 
installable (so that *whatever* APT does, it won't involve systemd-sysv 
getting installed).


I don't know what the process is expected/intended to be for new 
installations where a non-default init system is desired.


[0] I've seen the relevant fragment posted recently, but I can't 
remember where and I don't remember the exact contents.



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:25:23 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

> On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > 
> > Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd
> > dependencies and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept
> > up-to-date.
> 
> Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?

PAM is enough for me, considering everything that uses PAM. They could
have made their PAM plug compatible with the old PAM, but nooo.
Because interchangability is not only not their goal, it gets in the
way of their goal.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 07:56:17 +0100
Jonathan Dowland  wrote:
 
> You are still writing as if you are going to be forced to run
> systemd, despite being repeatedly told that multiple init systems
> will be supported. I'm really struggling to continue to presume "good
> faith" on your part now.

Hi Jonathan,

The fact that Jessie now supports, for want of a better word,
"dual init", doesn't preclude this choice going away later.

Given the email thread of the CTTE decision and the words of Poettering
in the video, as well as *many* references in the CTTE decision that
only one choice would be kept, I think the possibility of later removal
of choice has moved from "paranoid conspiracy theory" to "yeah, it
might happen."

For the same reasons, it looks to me like a continued systemd
land-grab, resulting in Linux morphing from something anyone can work
with into something requiring Red Hat special sauce, has also moved
from "paranoid conspiracy theory" to "yeah, it might happen."

I think I said it a couple weeks ago: This systemd thing was once
merely a technical disagreement, but it's transformed into a matter of
trust.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Scott Ferguson wrote:

On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd
dependencies
and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept up-to-date.

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?


Trying to.

As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind; all
services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so
that would be pretty much everything).

Miles Fidelman



Miles,
   sounds like the selection criteria for LinuxFromScratch
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
or maybe revive Debian for Scratch instead of relying on a progressive,
"Universal" OS that struggles to fund LTS and is reliant on upstream for
the majority of development. Embracing diversity and conservatism
(aversion to change) can be "a bit of a stretch".


How do you come to that conclusion.

For at least a decade, maybe two, Debian has been one on the short list 
for linux distros suitable for use on servers, and has been viewed as a 
distro for knowledgeable users - and a lot of that has come from 
flexibility and a very good packaging system.  Lots of important 
server-side stuff are designed for Debian first (e.g., Xen).


So, apparently, that's changed. (I guess, if libreoffice is no. 2 in the 
popcon stats, desktop use now dominates.  Sigh...)

DISCLAIMER: I'm happy with squeeze lts on servers - slowly being
transitioned to Wheezy where end-user requirements demand more modern
apps and libraries (I can't ignore end-users, ymmv).
In some instances I pre-populate /dev (low-resource devices), but mostly
I have no issues with udev. Systemd is something I'll deal with in a few
*years*.


Actually, udev is the ONLY thing I've had issues with in over a decade 
of production use.  Changed out a nic card, and everything changed - 
because udev decided to assign the new interface to some other port (or 
some such - it's been a while).  A completely unexpected behavior, hard 
to track down, poorly documented.  Given that the players are the same, 
and the scope is much larger, this gives me lots of reservations about 
systemd.




[*1]
I suspect enough to support a tightly-focussed server OS (if you can
herd cats?) - maybe a Debian derivative? Strip out all the DE packages
and it might be do-able...




That used to be Debian.

Miles Fidelman

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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:40:59AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> The solution is trivial. If, as everyone claims, we're such a minority,
> he could filter us all out and never see our posts again. Problem
> solved.

Sadly not. If I were reading -user entirely for my own delectation, I'd have
filtered many regulars long ago. Or simply stopped reading it, since I rarely
ask questions anyway. But I, and I imagine many of my DD colleagues, are
particularly interested in ensuring -user is a useful resource for our users,
and by filtering out people, we don't get a clear picture of just how broken
the list is.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:50:32 +0200
lee  wrote:

> Joey Hess  writes:
> 
> > So at this point, most of us are pretty tired of the subject.
> 
> And just ignore it and the consequences because you're tired of
> thinking about it?

Lee, he has a point. He sees nothing wrong with a Red Hat owned and
controlled Linux, and is tired of hearing from those of us who do.

The solution is trivial. If, as everyone claims, we're such a minority,
he could filter us all out and never see our posts again. Problem
solved.

SteveT

Steve Litt*  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Scott Ferguson]

On 14/10/14 23:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>> On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>> Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd
>>> dependencies
>>> and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept up-to-date.
>> Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?
>>
> 
> Trying to.
> 
> As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind; all
> services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so
> that would be pretty much everything).
> 
> Miles Fidelman
> 
> 
> 
> 

Miles,
  sounds like the selection criteria for LinuxFromScratch
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
or maybe revive Debian for Scratch instead of relying on a progressive,
"Universal" OS that struggles to fund LTS and is reliant on upstream for
the majority of development. Embracing diversity and conservatism
(aversion to change) can be "a bit of a stretch".

It seems that what you 'want' is contrary to what the majority of Debian
developers demonstrably don't want - that's not to say there isn't *any*
demand for it. I don't know how many of the silent majority share your
views[*1], but perhaps you might find support in such a project. Perhaps
that would be a more productive and less stressful experience?

DISCLAIMER: I'm happy with squeeze lts on servers - slowly being
transitioned to Wheezy where end-user requirements demand more modern
apps and libraries (I can't ignore end-users, ymmv).
In some instances I pre-populate /dev (low-resource devices), but mostly
I have no issues with udev. Systemd is something I'll deal with in a few
*years*.

[*1]
I suspect enough to support a tightly-focussed server OS (if you can
herd cats?) - maybe a Debian derivative? Strip out all the DE packages
and it might be do-able...

Kind regards

--
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informed him (owing to a misunderstanding of the Rule Britannia) that
the King of England was entitled to sit on the sea without getting wet.
But finding that they were wrong he gave up this policy and decided to
take his own advice in future - thus originating the memorable proverb,
"Paddle your own Canute" …"


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 09:44 AM, Carl Fink wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 09:08:06AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> In my case, I don't install popcon because it pollutes the 
>> tab-completion namespace for 'popd' in a root shell. That
>> interferes with my workflow to the point that I've reluctantly
>> decided to just not install popcon - with the unfortunate side
>> effect that my package preferences don't get counted in this kind
>> of statistics.
> 
> Pardon a simple-minded question: can't you just _rename_ popcon?

I could, but that would have to be re-done on every upgrade of the
package, and doing it on every machine where I'm likely to want to work
in a root shell would be a pain at best - and doing it on just some of
them would result in my tripping over the inconsistency when I happen to
use one where it hasn't been done, which defeats the entire point.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Carl Fink]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 09:08:06AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:

> In my case, I don't install popcon because it pollutes the
> tab-completion namespace for 'popd' in a root shell. That interferes
> with my workflow to the point that I've reluctantly decided to just not
> install popcon - with the unfortunate side effect that my package
> preferences don't get counted in this kind of statistics.

Pardon a simple-minded question: can't you just _rename_ popcon?
-- 
Carl Fink   nitpick...@nitpicking.com 

Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com.  Reviews!  Observations!
Stupid mistakes you can correct!


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/14/2014 at 09:26 AM, Martin Read wrote:

> On 14/10/14 13:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 
>> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>> 
>>> Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?
>> 
>> Trying to.
>> 
>> As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to
>> mind;
> 
> Strictly speaking, yes, udev is part of the systemd suite. However,
> it is perfectly capable of being installed and run on a Debian jessie
> system without the rest of the systemd suite being installed; if it
> fails to work correctly in such a configuration, that is a bug and
> should be reported.

IIRC, Lennart has stated a desire/intention/goal to eventually drop
support for using udev without systemd.

Admittedly that statement was a long time ago (years now, I think), I
haven't heard of any movement or discussion in that direction on the
interim, and such support certainly has not been dropped as of now - but
I also haven't heard that he's retracted the statement in any sense or
form. (If he has, I'd be very glad to hear about it.)

-- 
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Martin Read wrote:

On 14/10/14 13:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?


Trying to.

As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind;


Strictly speaking, yes, udev is part of the systemd suite. However, it 
is perfectly capable of being installed and run on a Debian jessie 
system without the rest of the systemd suite being installed; if it 
fails to work correctly in such a configuration, that is a bug and 
should be reported.


As for logging, it turns out to be the case that Debian jessie only 
uses systemd-journald as part of its logging system if you are using 
systemd as PID 1. On otherwise-default Debian jessie systems where 
systemd is not PID 1, logging is handled directly by rsyslog, which is 
not in any way shape or form conceivably describable as being part of 
systemd.



all
services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so
that would be pretty much everything).


Per the technical committee's formally stated expectation that 
maintainers will continue to support the multiple available init 
systems in Debian [1], it is clearly a reportable bug for 
(approximately) any package in Debian to not support init systems 
other than systemd.




Which brings us back to how upgrades and new installs will be handled - 
will there be an option to go right to sysvinit-core, or will we have to 
manually uninstall systemd and anything that depends on it?  Getting all 
the metapackages and dependencies right could be a real pain.


Miles




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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Martin Read]

On 14/10/14 13:54, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?


Trying to.

As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind;


Strictly speaking, yes, udev is part of the systemd suite. However, it 
is perfectly capable of being installed and run on a Debian jessie 
system without the rest of the systemd suite being installed; if it 
fails to work correctly in such a configuration, that is a bug and 
should be reported.


As for logging, it turns out to be the case that Debian jessie only uses 
systemd-journald as part of its logging system if you are using systemd 
as PID 1. On otherwise-default Debian jessie systems where systemd is 
not PID 1, logging is handled directly by rsyslog, which is not in any 
way shape or form conceivably describable as being part of systemd.



all
services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so
that would be pretty much everything).


Per the technical committee's formally stated expectation that 
maintainers will continue to support the multiple available init systems 
in Debian [1], it is clearly a reportable bug for (approximately) any 
package in Debian to not support init systems other than systemd.


It would also be somewhat astonishing for most services, *particularly* 
those which would primarily be found in a server environment rather than 
on a desktop system, to depend on interfaces of systemd-logind, which is 
the main source of dependencies on a systemd suite component other than 
udev/libudev.


[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=746715#278



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[The Wanderer]

On 10/13/2014 at 01:01 PM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Oct 2014, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
> 
>> In any case, users _do_ have a say. They can force their systems to
>> remain on sys5 init, or switch to a different distro if that should
>> also turn out
> 
> Which, I should add, is something we measure if the user installs 
> popularity-contest and opts-in to its measurements.
> 
> http://popcon.debian.org/

Unfortunately, not everyone - or even everyone who would be willing to
provide such feedback, or even actively interested in doing so - is
going to install that.

In my case, I don't install popcon because it pollutes the
tab-completion namespace for 'popd' in a root shell. That interferes
with my workflow to the point that I've reluctantly decided to just not
install popcon - with the unfortunate side effect that my package
preferences don't get counted in this kind of statistics.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd dependencies
and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept up-to-date.

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?



Trying to.

As a start - anything that depends on udev and logging come to mind; all 
services that require startup (hmm... I run a server, not a desktop - so 
that would be pretty much everything).


Miles Fidelman




--
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In practice, there is.    Yogi Berra


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 oct 14, 10:40:34, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> On 14/10/2014 9:50 AM, Joey Hess wrote:
> > Sysvinit will continue to be supported on servers in Debian 8
> > (jessie) release of Debian. So you can continue to boot your
> > production servers with sysvinit.
> 
> Okay, for now, that is until more packages decide that they can't do
> without systemd.

Debian testing (Jessie) will freeze on 5. November. That's about three 
weeks from now. No serious package maintainer is going to introduce 
major changes now.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 13 oct 14, 19:46:11, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 
> Of course Joey is correct regarding trying out systemd on a test server.
> Personally, though, I find it a lot MORE productive to keep track of other
> people's experience in testing things, and deploy after a release is really,
> really stable... and STILL do a lot of testing.

I have much more faith in my own tests than people's experiences on 
-user (with a few notable exceptions).

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Mark Carroll]

Miles Fidelman  writes:

> Joey Hess wrote:
(snip)
>> A reasonably proactive admin would probably want to try out systemd (on
>> eg, a test server) and if it causes problems for their deployment, they
>> then have at least the year or two from when Debian jessie is released
>> until the *next* release to file bug reports and follow up on them.

Of course, it's not just a case of does it cause problems -- that's the
easy one -- it's also, if there are problems in the future (maybe not
with systemd as the root cause, maybe with some failure elsewhere that
affects its behavior), is it all simple and transparent enough that I
will be able to figure out what's going on and adjust things accordingly
and quickly repair my system?

systemd is different enough that I am going to have to find the time to
sit down and do a good bunch of reading first about the nuts and bolts
of what it does, how it does it, and how one works with it. But, yes,
absolutely, this is what test servers are for, and these days there are
very easy to spin up. The only real cost is time.

Upgrades tend to swallow time for various things, we are used to that.
For instance, for past upgrades, we had to do things like rewrite our
ipchains rules for ipfwadm, then rewrite them again for iptables, but
that's been stable for a while now: at least with jessie not mandating
systemd, we do have plenty of time to try things out.

After all, for instance, with the forced move to udev, devfs support
rotted and then vanished from the kernel, I can't really blame some
Debian conspiracy for that! (-:

>> Too early to say what will happen in Debian 9, but
>> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=746715#278
>> is not going to be overturned without a GR either.

Thank you very much for this link --

> Ok... for others who are concerned, this is the punch-line from that bug 
> report:

and for the quote from it. 

(snip)
> For the record, the TC expects maintainers to continue to support
> the multiple available init systems in Debian.  That includes
> merging reasonable contributions, and not reverting existing
> support without a compelling reason.
(snip)

That is certainly encouraging for those of us fearing atrophy of
non-systemd support. As things are, I'm happy to wait and see, no need
anytime soon to flee to CRUX or suchlike. I can appreciate that it is
difficult, extra work to offer a distribution that does a good job of
supporting everybody from server admins to naive desktop users, and I am
grateful for Debian's intentions to keep giving us plenty of choice.

-- Mark


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 13 oct 14, 18:30:41, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 
> Gee assuming that you don't run anything that has systemd dependencies
> and/or systemd-shim is actually maintained and kept up-to-date.

Have you actually looked into what depends on systemd?

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Matthias Urlichs]

Hi,

Ian Jackson:
> You put me in an awkward position.  My email was an attempt to get
> this discussion shut down on -devel, where it is off-topic and a total
> waste of energy.
> 
In that case, you did a poor job of getting this point across.
(I misinterpreted it too.)

> But your response, using phrases like `dead horse',

I agree that this response was not appropriate.

Burying this hatchet is not going to happen as long as both "sides" just
dig it up again and again. I daresay we have better things to do than that.

-- 
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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 07:46:11PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> I assume you find it more productive to bury your head in the sand
> about potential impacts of really major changes to the plumbing of a
> platform, and wait for things to break after-the-fact?

I suspect Steve will continue to work hard on CD image generation, as he
has done for many years, so you have media from which to install Debian
from, rather than burying his head in the sand.

You are still writing as if you are going to be forced to run systemd, despite
being repeatedly told that multiple init systems will be supported. I'm really
struggling to continue to presume "good faith" on your part now.


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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Joey Hess wrote:

Miles Fidelman wrote:

1. Whether or not there's a clear statement regarding the installer - will
users be presented with a clear choice of init systems during installation,
or is it going to be left to folks to figure out how to work around the
default installation of systemd?

It's not been requested, but typically we (the d-i team) don't put
things in d-i that can easily be accomplished afterwards by people
who want to customize their system by running some simple apt-get
install command.

I suppose it could be asked in expert mode, but the question then
becomes, is it worth complicating d-i with this, bothering to get the
UI about it translated into dozens of languages, so increasing the
overall size and memory usage of d-i?

d-i already has powerful preseeding capabilities that can be used to
customize the installer to eg, run that apt-get command before the
reboot. It would not be hard for some interested user to put the
necessary preseed file on a website, and then booting the installer with
"install url=http://out.out.vile.init/"; would apply the preseed file.
Although I don't know why someone would want to do that, unless it's not
kosher to have systemd ever being installed on a new system, even for
the minute it takes to boot and remove it.



Well I guess I'd find it a lot cleaner to make the choice as part of 
installation, rather than have systemd installed as a default and then 
have to uninstall it.   I hate unwinding dependencies, particularly for 
something as central as the init system.  That's just asking for trouble.


So, yes, if you're taking requests, I'd sure like to see that in expert 
mode.


Miles Fidelman



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Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)

[Miles Fidelman]

Marty wrote:

On 10/13/2014 07:13 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Joey Hess wrote:

Miles Fidelman wrote:
But that is the major objection of those of us who USE Debian -- 
the need to

do so, particularly when this concerns production servers.

Sysvinit will continue to be supported on servers in Debian 8 (jessie)
release of Debian. So you can continue to boot your production servers
with sysvinit.

A reasonably proactive admin would probably want to try out systemd (on
eg, a test server) and if it causes problems for their deployment, they
then have at least the year or two from when Debian jessie is released
until the *next* release to file bug reports and follow up on them.

Too early to say what will happen in Debian 9, but
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=746715#278
is not going to be overturned without a GR either.



Ok... for others who are concerned, this is the punch-line from that bug
report:

---
From: Don Armstrong 
To: debian-devel-annou...@lists.debian.org
Subject: [CTTE #746715] Continuing support for multiple init systems
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 19:36:30 -0700

[Message part 1 
 
(text/plain, inline)]


The technical committe was asked in #746715 to address the removal of
support for upstart in a package.

 RESOLUTION 

The issue of init system support recently came to the Technical
Committee's attention again.[1]

For the record, the TC expects maintainers to continue to support
the multiple available init systems in Debian.  That includes
merging reasonable contributions, and not reverting existing
support without a compelling reason.

[1] See #746715 for background.

 END OF RESOLUTION 

---

That's the kind of crystal clear commitment that helps put at least some
of my concerns to bed - whether this is honored in the breach (e.g., as
part of testing things) remains to be seen - but it's a very good
start.  Thanks for the pointer.

That does leave three open questions/concerns in my mind:

1. Whether or not there's a clear statement regarding the installer -
will users be presented with a clear choice of init systems during
installation, or is it going to be left to folks to figure out how to
work around the default installation of systemd?

2. How well backward compatibility and transition is supported during
the, what seems to be inevitable, ultimate prevalence of systemd - i.e.,
how well systemd-shim is supported and how complete and accurate
systemd's support for sysvinit scripts will turn out to be.

3. The general monolithic nature of systemd.

The last is a matter of design philosophy - and potentially one of
vulnerabilities to lurking bugs and security holes.

For 1 & 2 - any pointers to equally clear statements about expectations
and committments, akin to the cited resolution?


I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but this might be 
the policy being referred to:


https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s-alternateinit



Exactly what I was looking for!  Thanks!

Miles

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