Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
On 8 August 2015 09:28:42 CEST, Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net wrote: If, instead, they start removing the sysv scripts, and including homebrew systemd units - then we're in for a mess of rework. both me, Franco and other VUAs are literally aiming to a fork, either after Jessie or Ascii as infrastructure will grow and consolidate organically, as well the maintainer base will grow with usage. Its early to say, but this thread is just prospecting. I believe that on a longer term we can hardly do worse tha Debian when untangling dependencies that right now constantly drag in desktop oriented stuff, like avahi and other similar nonsense that we almost got used to swallow all these years. on the mid - long term it won't be just systemd to make the difference between Devuan and Debian. ciao In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
But now we're back into having to have a completely separate package repository, along with a full set of package maintainers. Sigh. T.J. Duchene wrote: You could always lift scripts from Wheezy and use them as a template. On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:28 AM, Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net mailto:mfidel...@meetinghouse.net wrote: T.J. Duchene wrote: On 08/07/2015 09:31 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: Trivial as in, somebody has to do it. The whole point of packaging is to automate a lot of the routine things involved in installation. And, because Debian (and presumeably Devuan) don't put stuff in default locations, packaging involves changing the default locations of things. Where this leads is that down the road, we either need a full set of Devuan-specific package maintainers, or everybody is back to compiling and installing from upstream source. Miles Fidelman Good evening, Miles! =) Good morning T.J. ! If I might offer an opinion, I do not think that the situation is quite that dire. The packages that require init scripts are a tiny fraction of the entire repository. For the moment, the scripts Devuan needs are still in the Debian archives as Jesse has System 5 support. Devuan can just replicate them and support them moving forward. Well, maybe. The original poster started with the statement Currently Debian packages contains both systemd units and init scripts. However, Debian developers refused to support several init systems. So it's only a matter of time when they remove init scripts from packages. If that's true, then we have problem. My sense is that systemd is having close to zero effect on upstream code - most stuff is shipping with traditional sysv init scripts, with some folks adding systemd units, but most basically ignoring systemd. If the Debian packagers do what makes sense - i.e., simply tweak sysv init scripts that come from upstream, and rely on systemd's support for init scripts, then all is copacetic. If, instead, they start removing the sysv scripts, and including homebrew systemd units - then we're in for a mess of rework. Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org mailto:Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
Jaromil wrote: On 8 August 2015 09:28:42 CEST, Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net wrote: If, instead, they start removing the sysv scripts, and including homebrew systemd units - then we're in for a mess of rework. both me, Franco and other VUAs are literally aiming to a fork, either after Jessie or Ascii as infrastructure will grow and consolidate organically, as well the maintainer base will grow with usage. Its early to say, but this thread is just prospecting. I believe that on a longer term we can hardly do worse tha Debian when untangling dependencies that right now constantly drag in desktop oriented stuff, like avahi and other similar nonsense that we almost got used to swallow all these years. on the mid - long term it won't be just systemd to make the difference between Devuan and Debian. But now we get into the question of can Devuan really attract a full set of package maintainers? Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
Hi Robert, So my big question here: in what ways will Devuan differ from AntiX? To be honest, I've not looked at AntiX, and thus can't comment on differences and similarities. I'm guessing that vdev will be part of the answer, but surely there is more. My perspective is that Devuan aims to be more of a continuation of what Debian was claiming to be - a universal distribution that provided as wide as possible range of choices for applications and services that makes it useful as an Operating System from low resource embedded devices thru to regular Desktop/Laptop systems, across to high end domain specific workstations such as audio|video edit workstations right out to high availability servers and super-compute clusters systems. Devuan may have been born out of anger at the decisions of the TC, but already it is shaping up to be more then just Debian with sysvinit. Vdev is certainly a step away from systemd ties, but the discussions on the mailinglist and in the irc channels indicate a desire to make the init system just another choice. Devuan also aims to be an easy ready to use base for derivatives, by simplifying and the process of building the required packaging and infrastructure for derivatives. We're doing the hard work in creating a fork of Debian, and we don't want to inflict the same pain on those who wish to build of the fantastic foundation that Debian was and Devuan is shaping up to be. Cheers, Daniel. -- Daniel Reurich Centurion Computer Technology (2005) Ltd. 021 797 722 ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
Isaac Dunham ibid...@gmail.com writes: On Thu, Aug 06, 2015 at 05:14:28PM +0200, Laurent Bercot wrote: On 06/08/2015 16:31, Isaac Dunham wrote: If differences in environment can cause problems, it's a problem with design. A program that changes what it does just due to differences between the init environment and a login environment is going to be hard to debug. There are tons of those, and you can't fix them all. Stupid example: less. Behaves differently when its stdout is a terminal and when it's not. The only way to ensure reproducible behaviour for a program, no matter what it is, is to start it in a reproducible environment. Which, fortunately, is pretty easy to do: I wrote an environment sanitizer yesterday, because I was curious how easily solved that is. Usage is cautenv [-c DIR] [-u] [-x] COMMAND [COMMAND_ARGS...] and it cleans the environment (saving some user variables if -u is specified and DISPLAY/XAUTH if -x is specified), closes all fds above 2, changes directory to DIR (/ if that's not specified, and calls execvp(argv[optind], argv+optind). It comes out at 123 lines, and could probably be made shorter. It could be split into three tools: One which changes the environment, one which changes to a certain directory and one which 'sanitizes' the set of inherited file descriptors. Presently, I have a tool which combines the last task with creating a properly backgrounded process because file descriptor leaks really only matter if the descriptor is leaked to a long-running process and because that's a somewhat dubious safeguard: File descriptors should be managed by the programs creating them and closing them on the presumption that this program surely didn't bother is a practical necessity but not theoretically sound. I don't have anything for changing the environment but in general, the same concerns apply to that: An environment variable was created in order to communicate certain information to other processes and it shouldn't be thrown away blindly. As a practical example, one of the things I'm dealing with is a tiny distributed system for creating certificates for VPN servers based on a (a number of, actually) OpenSSL based 'CA installations'. This uses ssh combined with keys as secure transport and since there's a setuid-0 program involved which talks to the network, it originally just did a environ = NULL; This caused (minor) problems later on because OpenSSL didn't know where to put its .rnd file and in order to get around these, I had to create the missing environment variables with sensible values. And this is the really sensible solution to this problem: If a program supposed to run from a non-interactive environment needs certain environment variables with 'correct' values, whatever starts the program has to create these (or overwrite them in case they're already set). The only useful task of the environment sanitizer is that it force Joe Someone to fix the startup code because relying on another program having set that up correctly won't work anymore. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 11:03:34 +0200 Jaromil jaro...@dyne.org wrote: Jaromil wrote: Its early to say, but this thread is just prospecting. I believe that on a longer term we can hardly do worse tha Debian when untangling dependencies that right now constantly drag in desktop oriented stuff, like avahi and other similar nonsense that we almost got used to swallow all these years. on the mid - long term it won't be just systemd to make the difference between Devuan and Debian. On Sat, 08 Aug 2015, Miles Fidelman wrote: But now we get into the question of can Devuan really attract a full set of package maintainers? it depends what you mean by full. To us it certainly doesn't means the size of Debian, but a core system which can be reliably used as a base by both upstream and downstream: developers, devops, sysadmins and distributions who compile the key production packages from source and/or package themselves, as yourself pointed out in this thread. what I call the hardest part we have already demonstrated we're able to do: putting together a continuous integration infrastructure for the core system, using software we wrote, hence we can scale organically and we can further develop ad-hoc to overcome initial difficulties (see for instance the caching approach taken with Amprolla, or our fixes to jenkins-debian-glue, or the upcoming fixes to qemu-arm builds). IF what we do turns out to be useful for all those professionals preferring GNU/Linux to *BSD (and realistically, the latter is today the best pro- alternative to the amateurial mess Linux is becoming) then there won't be need for an horde of mediocre package maintainers, but a pack of few good ones. There is much more to be said, for instance the emergence of new packaging systems which will be surclassing old ones in 2-3 years maximum, for instance see Guix and NixOS with the smart adoption of a declarative language for the task. I'll also refrain to observe the sort of labour relationship Debian is instaurating with its volunteers, the majority being students and people who abandon once they got a job. I'll just say we are aiming at a different approach here and it shall be focused on quality, not quantity. ciao Nice! -- Denis Jaromil Roio, Dyne.org Think ( Do) Tank We are free to share code and we code to share freedom Web: https://j.dyne.org Contact: https://j.dyne.org/c.vcf GPG: 6113 D89C A825 C5CE DD02 C872 73B3 5DA5 4ACB 7D10 Confidential communications: https://keybase.io/jaromil -- Stop slacking you lazy bum! ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 15:02:07 +0800 Robert Storey robert.sto...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone. It's been a little while since I last posted. Some of you might remember that I occasionally write reviews for DistroWatch. Not too often, because it's my policy to only write about a distro that I actually use (or would use) in everyday life. Ever since systemd starting contaminating Linux, the number of distros I consider usable has been drastically reduced. Until a few months ago I was using Ubuntu 14.04, but finally dropped it. The replacement was Manjaro OpenRC, which is pretty good but has a little systemd contamination from dbus or udev (not sure of the details). I wrote a DistroWatch of Manjaro-OpenRC which you can view here: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150601#manjaro As you might have guessed from the title of this thread, the next review I hope to write will be about AntiX. I just installed it yesterday and I'm using it right now. All things considered, it's very nice and functionally equivalent to Manjaro-OpenRC. The author of AntiX, Anticapitalista, says that there are no systemd libraries or systemd-shim in AntiX. The following command produces zero output: dpkg --get-selections | grep systemd So my big question here: in what ways will Devuan differ from AntiX? I'm guessing that vdev will be part of the answer, but surely there is more. I think that the DistroWatch readership will be interested, and any thoughts that you all have along these longs will be greatly appreciated. I will try to incorporate the best informed comments into the review, in the hopes of piquing interested in both Devuan and AntiX. Thank you all in advance, - Robert I installed antiX on my wife's old machine about five weeks ago. Though I obtain the same results as you when using your dpkg command, I get different results when I simply run locate systemd. You might want to try that before writing your review. RPTN ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] ideas for system startup
On Fri, Aug 07, 2015 at 01:58:19PM +0100, Rainer Weikusat wrote: [...] The general idea would be 1) Keep a relatively simple init which kicks off execution of commands in response to 'change the system state' request and nothing else (get rid of as much of /etc/inittab as possible at some point in time) This is something that systemd did, and one of the things about it that really ticked me off. Let me provide a couple of examples: 1. One of the things I did when playing with debian jessie was to install a virtual machine which would be accessed only via serial console and ssh (this is a real use case for me). I discovered that there is no /etc/inittab in debian jessie! Second, I discovered that while I can remove agetty on tty1, I can't do so on tty2-tty6, because systemd insists I should have a login console wherever possible. sysvinit is already something which (unsuccessfully) tried to become a univeral, monolithic service manager integrated with init. I also wrote one myself, although that was for an embedded system so it erred rather on the side of 'get rid of features' and meanwhile, I consider this a bad idea: A getty listening on some (however defined) login port is just another daemon process (it's not a server) and insofar some are needed, they should be handled like all other servers. 2. I want ctrl+alt+del to do shutdown -h, instead of shutdown -r (another real use case on another virtual system). I couldn't figure out a way to do this in debian jessie. [...] I would like to get rid of the parser. Two ideas I've been playing around with so far would be: - move the parser into a program init executes which turns the configuration file into some kind of parameter structure - just use a well-known command name This means init would do something like execute /bin/cad-handler and the behaviour could be changed by changing that. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sat, 08 Aug 2015 22:44:41 +1200 Daniel Reurich dan...@centurion.net.nz wrote: Devuan may have been born out of anger at the decisions of the TC, but already it is shaping up to be more then just Debian with sysvinit. Vdev is certainly a step away from systemd ties, but the discussions on the mailinglist and in the irc channels indicate a desire to make the init system just another choice. Should the choice be offered within Devuan ? Or should we tell people who want systemd You have the choice of installing Debian ? Cheers, Ron. -- A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say. -- Michael Winner, British film director -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org -- ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net writes:
Rainer Weikusat wrote:
[...]
Also, to re-iterate this: What an init script needs to do is really only
'start a process'/ 'stop a process'. Most of the other code which crept
in there during the last 15 - 20 years will fall into one of two
categories
1) Never did anything useful
2) Should never have been implemented in this way.
It can be a bit more than that, for example, the sympa mailing list
package consists of multiple programs that are started in order, and
includes
- start (all 4)
- stop (all 4)
- restart (stop, in order; start in order)
- status
Most server scripts do some setup and cleanup. There's also typically
a reload config files option.
I'm aware how existing init scripts look like but that's just another
example of 'coral reef' coding: Some code is needed (or believed to be
needed). Where's the most convenient place it can be added? The init
script, obviously! It's just a shell script and thus, easy to
modify. For simple modifications, this is even a good idea, because
after all, the intent is not to create a statue but to make something
work. This gets problematic when there are, say, 5 different people who
always work in this way whose small hacks keep piling up over the course
of a few years (I have some specific code in mind): The inevitable
result is a horrendous mess which doesn't work almost all of the time
and nobody can still tell which parts of it are doing what and how they
all interact.
For the example you're using, if these 4 programs really belong to the
same package, the obvious idea would be to write a script starting them
and a script stopping them and let the init script execute
these. Restart can be implemented as stop followed by start but that's
already a convenience compromise. The others have no business in the
init script as they're not about starting or stopping programs.
Dito for setup and cleanup: For as long as these are simple, limited
task, eg, something like this
CONFIG=/etc/config-file
. $CONFIG
: ${DEBUG:=3}
putting it into the init script makes sense. But not five such blocks in
a row, possibly even with some conditionals around them to execute or
not execute them in various combinations.
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Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk writes: [many words] This seems to boil down to: In its present state, I consider Devuan unusable. Was that what you actually meant to say? ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
On 08/08/15 13:46, Riccardo Boninsegna wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: various XFCE irritations for normal people made me do a full debian jessie install with systemd and all. I s wish I hadn't! XFCE doesn't work at all. Devuan Testing installs systemd by default, but it's easy to remove without breaking anything, and after installing pm-utils XFCE works perfectly on my computer! I removed systemd from Devuan Testing without breaking anything. The XFCE user problems such as not being able to shutdown or only able to shutdown after inputting your password despite 'sudo' being setup correctly seems to be a result of installing XFCE 4.12 on my iMac no matter which linux distro it is... and pm-utils is installed! ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
Jaromil wrote: Jaromil wrote: Its early to say, but this thread is just prospecting. I believe that on a longer term we can hardly do worse tha Debian when untangling dependencies that right now constantly drag in desktop oriented stuff, like avahi and other similar nonsense that we almost got used to swallow all these years. on the mid - long term it won't be just systemd to make the difference between Devuan and Debian. On Sat, 08 Aug 2015, Miles Fidelman wrote: But now we get into the question of can Devuan really attract a full set of package maintainers? snip IF what we do turns out to be useful for all those professionals preferring GNU/Linux to *BSD (and realistically, the latter is today the best pro- alternative to the amateurial mess Linux is becoming) then there won't be need for an horde of mediocre package maintainers, but a pack of few good ones. There is much more to be said, for instance the emergence of new packaging systems which will be surclassing old ones in 2-3 years maximum, for instance see Guix and NixOS with the smart adoption of a declarative language for the task. Well yes - but that raises the question of why not just Guix on day one? It strikes me that the primary value of Debian has always been dpkg and apt. Cheers, Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
Riccardo Boninsegna wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: various XFCE irritations for normal people made me do a full debian jessie install with systemd and all. I s wish I hadn't! XFCE doesn't work at all. Devuan Testing installs systemd by default, but it's easy to remove without breaking anything, and after installing pm-utils XFCE works perfectly on my computer! Wait, what I thought a primary motivation for Devuan was to NOT install systemd by default. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
On Sat, Aug 08, 2015 at 09:43:47AM +0200, Laurent Bercot wrote: On 08/08/2015 03:43, Isaac Dunham wrote: Which, fortunately, is pretty easy to do: I wrote an environment sanitizer yesterday, because I was curious how easily solved that is. Usage is cautenv [-c DIR] [-u] [-x] COMMAND [COMMAND_ARGS...] Would you mind linking it ? I'm interested in trying to break it. ;) Not a problem, now that it's online. Here's the command: https://github.com/idunham/bits/raw/master/cautenv.c Repository: https://github.com/idunham/bits CC0, so do what you wish with it. The rest of that repository is also CC0, but almost all of it is only useful for someone who wants an example of using some less-frequently seen functions. Thanks, Isaac Dunham ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
Miles, Remember that devuan is still at Aplha2. Perhaps Beta 1 will be free of systemd, but until then, aptitude is your friend! DaveT On 08/08/15 15:12, Miles Fidelman wrote: Riccardo Boninsegna wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: various XFCE irritations for normal people made me do a full debian jessie install with systemd and all. I s wish I hadn't! XFCE doesn't work at all. Devuan Testing installs systemd by default, but it's easy to remove without breaking anything, and after installing pm-utils XFCE works perfectly on my computer! Wait, what I thought a primary motivation for Devuan was to NOT install systemd by default. Miles Fidelman ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Unmingling kdbus and the Linux kernel
On 08/08/2015 05:36 AM, Rainer Weikusat wrote: to 'use of systemd', there are things which sound like they were to fear more seriously, ie, the stated intention of at least one kernel maintainer (Tejun Hejo, spelling probably wrong) that he wants to break userspace in order to turn cgroups into a private property of systemd. I really do not think that you have anything to seriously worry about. Every FOSS programmer ever born has their particular pet projects, thinking that they know better than everyone else. The community as a whole has a vested interest in *not* breaking the Linux userspace for the sake of one person's vanity project. (You might argue that systemd does that. 90% of the Linux community does not think so.) A broken Linux userspace means that huge amounts of code would have to be changed, and you can bet with some certainty that it is not in the best interests of the wider majority to tolerate that kind of disruption. I can't see how cgroups would become a private property of systemd without a serious kernel rewrite. As for the rest, I can't imagine it being a huge problem. Cgroups are a Linux specific process feature, which actually has very little affect on userspace outside of some Linux specific utilities that use it, like systemd. Cgroups not part of the POSIX standard, so the vast majority of the FOSS software does not use the feature at all. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
On Sat, 08 Aug 2015 09:46:07 +0200 Jaromil jaro...@dyne.org wrote: On 8 August 2015 09:28:42 CEST, Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net wrote: If, instead, they start removing the sysv scripts, and including homebrew systemd units - then we're in for a mess of rework. both me, Franco and other VUAs are literally aiming to a fork, either after Jessie or Ascii as infrastructure will grow and consolidate organically, as well the maintainer base will grow with usage. * * \ o / \|/ | A W R I I I G H T ! ! ! / \ _ / \/ / - This is great news. To be honest with you, I was never a fan of we'll keep on forever being Debian but removing their cruft. SteveT Steve Litt July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 06:26:40 -0500 Thaddeus Nielsen thaddeus.niel...@gmx.us wrote: On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 15:02:07 +0800 Robert Storey robert.sto...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone. It's been a little while since I last posted. Some of you might remember that I occasionally write reviews for DistroWatch. Not too often, because it's my policy to only write about a distro that I actually use (or would use) in everyday life. Ever since systemd starting contaminating Linux, the number of distros I consider usable has been drastically reduced. Until a few months ago I was using Ubuntu 14.04, but finally dropped it. The replacement was Manjaro OpenRC, which is pretty good but has a little systemd contamination from dbus or udev (not sure of the details). I wrote a DistroWatch of Manjaro-OpenRC which you can view here: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150601#manjaro As you might have guessed from the title of this thread, the next review I hope to write will be about AntiX. I just installed it yesterday and I'm using it right now. All things considered, it's very nice and functionally equivalent to Manjaro-OpenRC. The author of AntiX, Anticapitalista, says that there are no systemd libraries or systemd-shim in AntiX. The following command produces zero output: dpkg --get-selections | grep systemd So my big question here: in what ways will Devuan differ from AntiX? I'm guessing that vdev will be part of the answer, but surely there is more. I think that the DistroWatch readership will be interested, and any thoughts that you all have along these longs will be greatly appreciated. I will try to incorporate the best informed comments into the review, in the hopes of piquing interested in both Devuan and AntiX. Thank you all in advance, - Robert I installed antiX on my wife's old machine about five weeks ago. Though I obtain the same results as you when using your dpkg command, I get different results when I simply run locate systemd. You might want to try that before writing your review. RPTN The following is what I got on a Qemu VM installed Void Linux with LXDE and no lightdm or any other kind of desktop mangler: http://dpaste.com/1H8BMND == [root@voidlinux ~]# updatedb [root@voidlinux ~]# locate systemd /usr/lib/systemd /usr/lib/systemd/system /usr/lib/systemd/system/wacom-inputattach@.service [root@voidlinux ~]# == SteveT Steve Litt July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Unmingling kdbus and the Linux kernel
T.J. Duchene t.j.duch...@gmail.com writes: On 08/08/2015 05:36 AM, Rainer Weikusat wrote: to 'use of systemd', there are things which sound like they were to fear more seriously, ie, the stated intention of at least one kernel maintainer (Tejun Hejo, spelling probably wrong) that he wants to break userspace in order to turn cgroups into a private property of systemd. I really do not think that you have anything to seriously worry about. I didn't write that I was worrying about something. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
[DNG] Systemd Shims
It seems to me that it's good to have shim programs that satisfy dependencies of apps on systemd, each shim performing some systemd function. Here's why: Suppose there are 10,000 application programs (apps) for Linux, and their developers foolishly insert dependencies on systemd. If Devuan developers write 50 simple shims to fulfill those dependencies, then Devuan users can run those 10,000 apps as they are, directly from the Debian repos. And when the apps are updated, they will still run. The Devuan devs don't have to deal with those 10,000 updates at all. And the shim programs only have to be updated when the systemd API that they are emulating changes. Now suppose that systemd shims are not used. That means that all 10,000 apps have to be patched by Devuan developers so they don't depend on systemd. And all the 10,000 patched apps have to sit in a Devuan repo that has to be maintained. And every time one of those 10,000 apps is updated, the Devuan devs have to repatch it to remove the systemd dependencies and recompile it. The Devuan devs can request the app devs to remove the systemd dependencies, but that has a low probability of success, because the app devs have lemming-consciousness rather than Unix-consciousness, and think that systemd is fine because the major distros have adopted it. So using a relatively small number of shim programs in Devuan will save an enormous amount of work for the Devuan developers, which will allow them to use their time for more productive purposes -- making Devuan more generally useful and attractive, thereby gaining far more users. Now I realize that the idea of having those shim programs is going to make some Devuan people scream, Unclean! Unclean!. But the shim programs will be under our control and will save us a huge amount of constantly ongoing work of updating apps. And Devuan will succeed with only 25 developers and administrators instead of needing 500. So please drop the fear of contamination, and consider the shims as a simple, inexpensive and effective wall of defense against systemd. Mark ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
On August 8, 2015 4:12:23 PM CEST, Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net wrote: Riccardo Boninsegna wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: various XFCE irritations for normal people made me do a full debian jessie install with systemd and all. I s wish I hadn't! XFCE doesn't work at all. Devuan Testing installs systemd by default, but it's easy to remove without breaking anything, and after installing pm-utils XFCE works perfectly on my computer! Wait, what I thought a primary motivation for Devuan was to NOT install systemd by default. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng Actually devuan install sysvinit by default in pid 1… anyway systemd, not in pid 1, still present cause of some dependencies not yet updated in devuan. Starting from beta 1 systemd will not be installed by default -- nextime ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
On August 8, 2015 2:39:15 PM CEST, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: If the developers of devuan are paying a lot of attention to the various discussions on here about init systems, audio, getting rid of pulseaudio and other 'pet-hates' then it slows down the implementation of Plan A:- get rid of systemd. Preferably all references to it such as systemd-shim will be gone too. If things such as vdev _have_ to become part of devuan to make that happen then so be it. Only when there is a proper release of devuan so that anybody who wants to can build a working devuan server for use in a production environment is Plan A complete. And then all those 'wants' and 'pet-hates' and 'can XFCE be the default desktop' become relevant and the developers can decide on their priorities. Meanwhile, the Alpha release works, feel free to use it. I have been using it but various XFCE irritations for normal people made me do a full debian jessie install with systemd and all. I s wish I hadn't! desktop-file-utils, thunar and other packages don't install properly but do actually work. At every update upgrade cycle dpkg complains about them not being configured. XFCE doesn't work at all. There were the same unconfigured problems with mate, I won't install gnome or kde so I used twm (it is a good job I am so old I can remember when twm was about all there was!), but now my old iMac and me are happily working with ctwm. What fun! (But not for the normal people that have to use my computer) DaveT ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng All those changes will not slowdown release as they will enter in devuan, first in ceres and then in ascii, only after jessie release. -- nextime ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Systemd Shims
IMHO, if an external program calls a systemd API, does it because want that systemd does something. Write 10-100-1000 systemd shims that don't do anything, simply returns true is not a solution: in case, we have to translate the systemd api call to the real daemon in execution and this could be an effort bigger than evacuate systemd to 10.000 packages. On 08/08/15 17:49, Mark S Bilk wrote: It seems to me that it's good to have shim programs that satisfy dependencies of apps on systemd, each shim performing some systemd function. Here's why: Suppose there are 10,000 application programs (apps) for Linux, and their developers foolishly insert dependencies on systemd. If Devuan developers write 50 simple shims to fulfill those dependencies, then Devuan users can run those 10,000 apps as they are, directly from the Debian repos. And when the apps are updated, they will still run. The Devuan devs don't have to deal with those 10,000 updates at all. And the shim programs only have to be updated when the systemd API that they are emulating changes. Now suppose that systemd shims are not used. That means that all 10,000 apps have to be patched by Devuan developers so they don't depend on systemd. And all the 10,000 patched apps have to sit in a Devuan repo that has to be maintained. And every time one of those 10,000 apps is updated, the Devuan devs have to repatch it to remove the systemd dependencies and recompile it. The Devuan devs can request the app devs to remove the systemd dependencies, but that has a low probability of success, because the app devs have lemming-consciousness rather than Unix-consciousness, and think that systemd is fine because the major distros have adopted it. So using a relatively small number of shim programs in Devuan will save an enormous amount of work for the Devuan developers, which will allow them to use their time for more productive purposes -- making Devuan more generally useful and attractive, thereby gaining far more users. Now I realize that the idea of having those shim programs is going to make some Devuan people scream, Unclean! Unclean!. But the shim programs will be under our control and will save us a huge amount of constantly ongoing work of updating apps. And Devuan will succeed with only 25 developers and administrators instead of needing 500. So please drop the fear of contamination, and consider the shims as a simple, inexpensive and effective wall of defense against systemd. Mark ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Systemd Shims
On Sat, 8/8/15, Mark S Bilk m...@cosmicpenguin.com wrote: Subject: [DNG] Systemd Shims To: dng@lists.dyne.org Date: Saturday, August 8, 2015, 11:49 AM [cut] So please drop the fear of contamination, and consider the shims as a simple, inexpensive and effective wall of defense against systemd. Mark Interesting first post. I don't see how becoming entangled forever with systemd is a solution. Get to know Mark better at the URL implied in his email before embracing his 'wisdom'. golinux ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
Nextime wrote: On August 8, 2015 4:12:23 PM CEST, Miles Fidelman mfidel...@meetinghouse.net wrote: Riccardo Boninsegna wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: various XFCE irritations for normal people made me do a full debian jessie install with systemd and all. I s wish I hadn't! XFCE doesn't work at all. Devuan Testing installs systemd by default, but it's easy to remove without breaking anything, and after installing pm-utils XFCE works perfectly on my computer! Wait, what I thought a primary motivation for Devuan was to NOT install systemd by default. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng Actually devuan install sysvinit by default in pid 1… anyway systemd, not in pid 1, still present cause of some dependencies not yet updated in devuan. Starting from beta 1 systemd will not be installed by default Good to know. Thanks. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] How real is this?
On August 4, 2015 11:05:04 PM CEST, Rainer Weikusat rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com wrote: Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com writes: On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 12:45:19 +0100 Rainer Weikusat rainerweiku...@virginmedia.com wrote: I'm looking for an upgrade path for a Debian wheezy installation I can't keep forever. I wouldn't mind some rough edges as I'm perfectly capable of fixing any bugs I could conceivably encounter myself but I'd prefer having a workable base to start from over Linux From Scratch. I think you're asking where to go after Wheezy. My research tells me the following. * If you can wait for Devuan to go stable, that's your easiest route forward. I was asking if Devuan is complete enough that it can be used by someone willing to put work in fixing bugs. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng Yes, it is. I personally use it in production right now on all my machines. -- nextime ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Systemd Shims
From the look of Mark's website I was a bit disappointed not to find a link to www.davidicke.com! But, if the quick'n'dirty pragmatic solution is systemd shims then so be it as far as I am concerned. DaveT On 08/08/15 18:14, Go Linux wrote: On Sat, 8/8/15, Mark S Bilk m...@cosmicpenguin.com wrote: Subject: [DNG] Systemd Shims To: dng@lists.dyne.org Date: Saturday, August 8, 2015, 11:49 AM [cut] So please drop the fear of contamination, and consider the shims as a simple, inexpensive and effective wall of defense against systemd. Mark Interesting first post. I don't see how becoming entangled forever with systemd is a solution. Get to know Mark better at the URL implied in his email before embracing his 'wisdom'. golinux ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
On 08/08/15 13:58, Rainer Weikusat wrote: Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk writes: [many words] This seems to boil down to: In its present state, I consider Devuan unusable. Was that what you actually meant to say? ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng Not at all! Devuan Alpha worked perfectly well for me, but not for the normal people that use my iMac. They expect to click shutdown and have the computer shutdown, no asking for passwords, no rebooting instead of shutting down. None of us on this mailing list are what the rest of the world thinks of as 'normal people', we are sad-techie geeks one and all. DaveT ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Mission Creap
What is wrong in using shutdown -h now? I use it whenever I boot my Devuan installation 64 bit. Don't tell me opening a terminal, typing 'su' and the root password, is geeky stuff! On 08/08/2015, Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk wrote: On 08/08/15 13:58, Rainer Weikusat wrote: Dave Turner dave_t_tur...@barradas.free-online.co.uk writes: [many words] This seems to boil down to: In its present state, I consider Devuan unusable. Was that what you actually meant to say? ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng Not at all! Devuan Alpha worked perfectly well for me, but not for the normal people that use my iMac. They expect to click shutdown and have the computer shutdown, no asking for passwords, no rebooting instead of shutting down. None of us on this mailing list are what the rest of the world thinks of as 'normal people', we are sad-techie geeks one and all. DaveT ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Systemd Shims
From the look of Mark's website I was a bit disappointed not to find a link to www.davidicke.com! But, if the quick'n'dirty pragmatic solution is systemd shims then so be it as far as I am concerned. DaveT On 08/08/15 18:14, Go Linux wrote: On Sat, 8/8/15, Mark S Bilk m...@cosmicpenguin.com wrote: Subject: [DNG] Systemd Shims To: dng@lists.dyne.org Date: Saturday, August 8, 2015, 11:49 AM [cut] So please drop the fear of contamination, and consider the shims as a simple, inexpensive and effective wall of defense against systemd. Mark Interesting first post. I don't see how becoming entangled forever with systemd is a solution. Get to know Mark better at the URL implied in his email before embracing his 'wisdom'. golinux ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Systemd Shims
G'evening, On Sat, Aug 08, 2015 at 08:30:58PM +0100, Dave Turner wrote: From the look of Mark's website I was a bit disappointed not to find a link to www.davidicke.com! Well... I'm fine with what I saw, I mostly don't care because his beliefs are his own business. Yeah, even praising Ruby as the best lang is a personal belief, so transeamus. Off-topic. But, if the quick'n'dirty pragmatic solution is systemd shims then so be it as far as I am concerned. Are we talking about systemd-shim the software by Canonical, or shims for systemd compatibility? The systemd framework is a byzantine pile of features, so I can't say for sure whether stub functions added to init-neutral-to-be programs are hacks that should be replaced ASAP with snippets of more unixy, maybe ad hoc components or with calls to a uniform API, or not. logind is very difficult to emulate for example, but sometimes you mightnt just add stubs, ending with applications full of holes or regressions... -- Teodoro Santoni Something is wrong. I don't wanna compile 20 KB of Go code to list files. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
As (bad) luck would have it, I just received an email from Jesse Smith (who writes the DistroWatch Weekly Review) informing me that he already wrote a review of antiX and it will be published this Monday. It would be too late to withdraw it now, since that would leave him without a review for this coming week. That doesn't mean that I won't be writing a review of antiX eventually. But it does mean it will have to wait at least a few months, since it wouldn't do to publish two reviews of the same distro back-to-back on DistroWatch. Of course, if antiX comes up with a new release, that would change matters. All that said, I want to thank those who responded. I did pick up some good tips, especially the one to use updatedb plus locate to track down any systemd cruft. Don't know why I didn't think of that. On the other hand, it is not clear to me though how much it matters when there are subdirectories labeled /etc/systemd, /lib/systemd, and /var/lib/systemd. Running dpkg --get-selections grep systemd shows nothing on antiX. The developer, anticapitalista, says that systemd-shim is not installed on antiX. That leads me to another question: what exactly does systemd-shim do? Is it just a package to trick other packages with dependencies on systemd, without actually installing systemd? I don't really know, but it's something I need to explore if I want to write intelligently about this subject. My next review will probably be about Void Linux. Jesse wrote a very brief review of Void a few months ago, in which he basically said it didn't run on his machine, so he dismissed it as not ready. That was actually a piss-poor review. I'm particularly interested in Void since there is a version that runs on the Raspberry Pi 2. The main OS for the Raspberry Pi is Raspbian, which is essentially Debian, now infected with systemd. Since I'm a fan of the Raspberry Pi, I definitely want to see another distro available for it that is systemd-free. There is also FreeBSD for the Pi, though I understand it is very much a work in progress, but I'm interested in anything not systemd so I'll keep it on the back burner. Other suggestions for non-systemd software are welcome. The main criteria is that it actually has to be something useful, something that I might install and use daily. Thus, far-out stuff like Minix is not a consideration, even if it's fun to play with. cheers, Robert ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sun, Aug 09, 2015 at 10:13:45AM +0800, Robert Storey wrote: what exactly does systemd-shim do? Is it just a package to trick other packages with dependencies on systemd, without actually installing systemd? It allows running parts of systemd (logind, some power management functions, etc) without systemd being pid 1. -- ⢎⣉⠂⠠⠤⡀⣄⠤⡀⠠⡅⠀⠤⡧⠄⡄⠀⡄⠀⠀⠀⠠⡅⠀⡠⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⢴⠍⠀⡠⠤⡀⣄⠤⡀⠀⠀⠀⠤⡧⠄⣇⠤⡀⡠⠤⡀⠀⠀⠀⡄⠀⡄⡠⠤⡀⠠⠤⡀⡇⡠⠄⠀⠀⠀ ⠢⠤⠃⠪⠭⠇⠇⠀⠇⠀⠣⠀⠀⠣⠄⠨⠭⠃⠣⠀⠬⠭⠂⠀⠀⠀⠸⠀⠀⠣⠤⠃⠇⠀⠀⠣⠄⠇⠀⠇⠫⠭⠁⠀⠀⠀⠣⠣⠃⠫⠭⠁⠪⠭⠇⠏⠢⠄⠀⠄⠀ (https://github.com/kilobyte/braillefont for this hack) ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sun, 9 Aug 2015 10:13:45 +0800 Robert Storey robert.sto...@gmail.com wrote: My next review will probably be about Void Linux. Excellent choice! Jesse wrote a very brief review of Void a few months ago, in which he basically said it didn't run on his machine, so he dismissed it as not ready. You mean http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150406#void ? That was actually a piss-poor review. In a way it was kind of accurate. He correctly identified the documentation problem. Lots of distros have inadequate documentation, but Void goes the extra mile by having misleading, outdated, and just plain wrong documentation scattered all over the web as well as on its own website. It took me an hour of research, with suitable misdirections, to find out the name of the executable you run in order to install to the hard disk. That's just inexcusable. Jesse taught me a lesson I sort of knew, but his review really drilled it in: Install on a Qemu VM first. On the Qemu VM, you can take snapshots, you can boot three times quicker, it's much easier to boot a CD to bust back in, and you have a very well defined piece of hardware. Now that I've installed and explored it on a Qemu VM, installing it on metal won't have nearly the frustration potential as having my initial installation on metal. My impression of Void is that once you know it, it's outstanding and can be used for a daily driver desktop. Or server. But its slapstick, rake-and-banana-peel documentation make it just what Jesse said it was, at least for the average user: Not ready. SteveT Steve Litt July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sun, Aug 09, 2015 at 10:13:45AM +0800, Robert Storey wrote: Since I'm a fan of the Raspberry Pi, I definitely want to see another distro available for it that is systemd-free. There is also FreeBSD for the Pi, though I understand it is very much a work in progress, but I'm interested in anything not systemd so I'll keep it on the back burner. Supposedly M$ is coming out with a port of win10 for it as well. Probably not what you're interested in, but since you mentioned FreeBSD, I figured I'd throw that in too. Greg -- web site: http://www.gregn.net gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc skype: gregn1 (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) If we haven't been in touch before, e-mail me before adding me to your contacts. -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-mana...@eu.org ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Devuan compared to AntiX
On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 22:10:13 -0700 Isaac Dunham ibid...@gmail.com wrote: Try Alpine Linux (alpinelinux.org). Install docs are here: http://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation [snip] -init is Busybox init, with OpenRC on top. Fascinating! The Busybox PID1 with the OpenRC process adminstration is enough to make me install it. I'd love to learn Busybox init. SteveT Steve Litt July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
