Re: [Dng] Purpose of all this complicated device management?
Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult wrote: On 31.12.2014 15:44, Hendrik Boom wrote: Never mind the mechanisms for now. May I ask what all this complexity is supposed to accomplish? I'd say, it's for letting the machine do the things automatically. Probably not required for servers, but quite helpful for end user machines, where regularily new/other devices are plugged in. I wouldn't quite go as far as "not required for servers" - one does occasionally swap network cards, hot-swap a disk drive, or plug in a console. Then again, the automatic mechanisms don't necessarily work all that well - things like dynamic address assignment don't work all that well in a server environment (the cause of more than one all-nighter, in the early days of udev, trying to figure out things like why a server wouldn't talk to the net, after updgrading a network card). 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] What's new in Systemd
Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote: On Mon, 2 Feb 2015 10:56:22 -0400 Ricardo Larrañaga wrote: Take a look at the third page and see what Lennart compares systemd to Since the beginning of this systemd thing, it has been my instinctive feeling that "We are systemd of Borg, resistance is futile". Only remains to prove the talibans of systemd that resistance is not futile... Is not ISIL a better analogy? ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [Dng] What's new in Systemd
Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote: On Mon, 2 Feb 2015 12:31:54 -0500 Steve Litt wrote: I'm not a Star Trek guy. What is the exact meaning of the two "Resistance is Futile" slides? What point is the presentation trying to get across? The point as I understand it is that (according to the authors) Linux will be compelled to adopt systemd, without any possibility of staying out. We are the Borg. You will be absorbed. Resistance is futile. Combines well with the Cuckoo's egg analogy. We are the Borg... here, could you watch this egg for us..... Miles Fidelman ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [Dng] What's new in Systemd
Clarke Sideroad wrote: On 02/02/15 08:06, Aldemir Akpinar wrote: I was going to have a rude reply here until I read this at the bottom: a new secure boot implementation: this is a work-in-progress, to have more validation of the boot process that it hasn't been tampered with. It will integrate a new method of signing images and initrd's Apart from all the crap that we can tease with, why there are people who, rather than improving grub or lilo, waste their time writing a bootloader from scratch? Surely not for the benefit of oss. Just for their prides or they have too much spare time. Also for anyone, that couldn't bare to read to the end, journald (the most hated part even for systemd supporters) isn't optional now. It is rapidly becoming a self-dependent, modular, standalone OS that uses the Linux Kernel. Not what I want, and definitely not what I want forced upon me. It really is a classic case of a cuckoo (the bird) egg planted in the nest. "Oh what a nice looking init replacement, we must have that" "Oh dear where have all the other babies gone?" "Not to worry look at the size of this one." "Oh we are proud parents!" "Look at it eat everything." "We can't abandon it what would the neighbours say." "Must,mustbring it more food". Feed me, Seymour! (... I'm a mean green mother from user space.) -- 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] [OT] ISIL (was Re: What's new in Systemd)
How about dental plaque? Love that analogy. Gravis wrote: please, let's not include terrorists or their ideologies in our conversations. --Gravis On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 10:30 PM, hellekin wrote: On 02/04/2015 03:03 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: Is not ISIL a better analogy? But not the analogy I was driving at. The Taliban is a movement that started focused on Afghanistan - a revolutionary movement. ISIL's mission is to (re)establish an Islamic Caliphate over a broad swatch of territory (kind of like the Borg). The later seems a lot more like what is happening with systemd. Miles Fidelman The "Islamic Caliphate" and the general media attention of ISIL seem to me to respond to an ideological warfare painted in Samuel Huntington's 1996 opus "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order". Honestly, considering "The West" and "Islam(ism)" as monolithic entities fighting each other is a bit like confusing porn with eroticism, or McDonald's with food -- or war with peace. This heavy tendency of "Western" ideologists and mass media to draw subtle portraits with chainsaws and bulldozers is not at all helpful neither in understanding the phenomenon of the rise of ISIL in the Middle-East nor to understand the various forms of Islam, nor to understand each other as human beings, and of course it does not help bringing a sane view of complexity. I like Poettering's own choice of the Borg, because it illustrates the contradiction and paradox of his real-fictional action. Systemd is doing to the free software world what Microsoft was doing in its time to the computer world: it pushes the incentives of "progress", in the sense of fugue, to wrap a monolithic construct (Linux) with a monolithic shell (systemd) that will do it all and better than anyone else just because, please don't ask, you should know. Yes, the Borg. An invasive, unavoidable plague that will make its way like a caries down to the core of an aching tooth. I've seen the presentation with all the Borg illustrations, and frankly, I thought on some slides: how is that an advantage? Certainly Mr. Poettering is in love with his own mind and logic, but I would certainly not appreciate his poetry. The concept of "Pensée Unique", the "unique train of thought" that is delivered year after year by the all powerful "too big to fail" Western ideology has brought its heavy muddy boots into the free software world. That most of distributions adopted systemd however remains less a sign of quality and engineering prowess than a mix of developer laziness, good marketing, and general short-sightedness -- remember SSL is still around, and there's nothing worse than a bad idea whose time has come. That said, I wish the Devuan community-in-the-making would bring to a halt the criticism of Systemd and especially when it comes to demonizing it and making hardly appropriate comparisons, and start focusing on how we can make the best *universal* free software operating system that is not stuck in monomania, in bureaucracy, nor in the 1990s (although it should definitely be working on HDDs as well). Regards, == hk -- _ _ We are free to share code and we code to share freedom (_X_)yne Foundation, Free Culture Foundry * https://www.dyne.org/donate/ ___ 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 -- 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 commitments - will trade-off be applied?
Didier Kryn wrote: We all agree that Devuan was born to be systemd-free and this looks like a sustainable goal to begin with. But I understood this thread started with questioning the long term policy. For sure, if one wants systemd, this one should install Debian, or RH. Also, to all of us, anybody trying to provide systemd for Devuan would be suspect of being malevolent However, the long term policy of Devuan can't be "We hate systemd and Lennart Poetering". Instead Devuan should advertize the reasons to reject software like systemd, in the form of a set of rules for acceptability, in a sensible and attractive form, for users, developpers, and distros to easily share. I see these rules as an addendum to the definition of free software. These rules would obviously put systemd out of the free-software category, let's call it anti-freedom, which is worse than non-free. This does not mean there needs to be an anti-freedom repository, after all :-) This leaves no room for systemd-contaminated software, except if the systemd API can be replaced by a do-otherwise/do-nothing stub. That raises an interesting point - might be time to think about refining the definition of "free software" (per http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms: * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Perhaps it's time to add something along the lines of "the freedom to install software without it taking over your machine" (obviously this needs work, or we'd it would eliminate things like the kernel, file system, etc.). 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] devuan security wishlist item
Hendrik Boom wrote: On Mon, Jan 05, 2015 at 11:16:49AM +0100, Godefridus Daalmans wrote: Talking about security and ttys and login: I would like Devuan to have a clear documentation and good defaults for the Secure Attention Key (SAK). E.g. that any user at the console can expect to do Ctrl-Alt-SysRq-K to work. Wasn't there a whole seqence of ctrl-alt-letter things to gradually shut down the entire system, layer by layer? Antybody still know these, and are they still there? It's in the kernel, not the distro. https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysrq.txt or google "alt sysreq" Too few people know that this even exists in Linux. Too true. I have the magic list written on sticky, underneath my keyboard - for those eventualities where things go really South on one of our servers. 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] Which package generates /lib/systemd and /etc/systemd files?
KatolaZ wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2015 at 07:33:32PM +, Noel Torres wrote: [cut] Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I follow Lennon on this. I Imagine a world where systemd is optional (probably against its own core developers wishes), and can be installed or deinstalled as any other init system. Well, you should probably open a ticket here then: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=systemd Unfortunately, systemd has been *designed* to be unpluggable, and to munch as much as possible of the low-level userspace. We should live with it, especially because the typical answer you get about systemd compatibility issues is "it's not our problem. We won't fix it". I also have my personal (conspiracy) theory about why it is like that, which I am sure you don't want to hear Don't you mean "we should live WITHOUT it?" 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] Which package generates /lib/systemd and /etc/systemd files?
KatolaZ wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2015 at 03:53:55PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote: [cut] Unfortunately, systemd has been *designed* to be unpluggable, and to munch as much as possible of the low-level userspace. We should live with it, especially because the typical answer you get about systemd compatibility issues is "it's not our problem. We won't fix it". I also have my personal (conspiracy) theory about why it is like that, which I am sure you don't want to hear Don't you mean "we should live WITHOUT it?" I meant "we should live with the fact that systemd is not unpluggable" :) Nicely put. But do you draw any implication from that vis-a-vis supporting systemd in Devuan? (I certainly do :-) 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] Which package generates /lib/systemd and /etc/systemd files?
Harald Arnesen wrote: Noel Torres [2015-05-05 18:52]: As a resume: If you want a systemd-free system, Devuan is your distribution, and will always be. At the moment, it is either Trios or Funtoo or Slackware, right? Or some limited distro like Alpine (which I run on my netbook). I believe Gentoo is another reasonable choice. Or one of the BSDs. Personally, I'm looking more and more at building our next server update on either LSF (Linux from Scratch), and using GUIX to generate replicable packages. Or, migrating to BSD. 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] why someone might want systemd on devuan
David Harrison wrote: On 05/05/2015 20:43, dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org wrote: Well, the problem here is that systemd is*not* hot-pluggable, at all, as we have recently learned the hard way. Here's a thought. Thrown to the list with no requisite knowledge to back it up, so please don't bite! Is there any way of building a package or some other installable to create a sandboxed/containerised/quarantined/VM'd minimal systemd? That's if minimal isn't a contradiction in terms where systemd's concerned? Just complete enough for a user to install and use contaminatedware within it, when they really have no other choice, but designed not to leak out and infect their otherwise clean system? As others have alluded: If you absolutely, positively have to run something that depends on systemd, - run your base system without systemd - run your systemd-dependent code in a container or a virtual machine w/ systemd 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] I am not using systemd and plan to avoid it
Let's not get carried away here. The poll has a rather small sample size, and probably not representative of the full universe of *nix users. Then again, distrowatch visitors are probably more knowledgeable users - and are probably more likely to be looking for a new distribution. Miles Fidelman Michael Bütow wrote: dng-requ...@lists.dyne.org wrote on 16/07/15 03:39: Re: [DNG] I am not using systemd and plan to avoid it Happy to say that after I voted it was 633 users "for" and 634 "against" (not planning to use it). Due to the construction of the poll, the "plan to avoid" figure includes those of us who will be forced to use it anyway due to work requirements etc. I feel the poll would be better if it had a more explicit option "I am not using systemd and do not want to, but am forced to use it at work". This would give a clearer indication of the "coercion factor". Michael ___ Dng mailing list 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] OT: some ancient programming language history
T.J. Duchene wrote: ADA! I remember that! I've not used it in the better part of 20 years. Nicely designed language for its time - and very strict. Having learned C in advance of ADA, I never liked its Pascal style operators. Too bad the only one who really uses it in the US is the government. Actually, not true. ADA seems to have a major following in the real-time control systems community, for mission/life-critical systems like avionics and SCADA. Not surprising, actually - it was designed for that kind of thing. 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
Alexey Rochev wrote *Date: *2015-08-05 07:29 -400 *To: *dng *Subject: *[DNG] Init scripts in packages 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. What will Devuan developers do when it happens? We can use sysvinit and Devuan because these init scripts exist. It occurs to me that nobody raised the obvious questions: 1. Are we seeing upstream developers shipping systemd scripts, or systemd scripts w/o sysv init scripts? I'm not sure I have. 2. What the heck are Debian developers (packagers, actually), doing removing init scripts? Me, I've been installing key packages from upstream sources for years - avoids having to deal with out-of-date packages and such. (The basic environment is certainly easier to install and maintain via apt - but key production packages, hell no.) 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
Rainer Weikusat wrote: Miles Fidelman writes: Alexey Rochev wrote *Date: *2015-08-05 07:29 -400 *To: *dng *Subject: *[DNG] Init scripts in packages 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. What will Devuan developers do when it happens? We can use sysvinit and Devuan because these init scripts exist. It occurs to me that nobody raised the obvious questions: 1. Are we seeing upstream developers shipping systemd scripts, or systemd scripts w/o sysv init scripts? I'm not sure I have. 2. What the heck are Debian developers (packagers, actually), doing removing init scripts? There's an answer to that and it's "it doesn't matter" (I tried to point that out in an earlier reply). On the wheezy system I'm using to write this, 'init scripts' make up 6789 LOC, nobody has the power to make them disintegrate and I'd be very much surprised if there are more than 2000 LOC in there which actually do something useful. Actually, I expect yes. init scripts should be trivial and if they're not, something else is amiss. Well... it kind of does, if the idea is to leverage Debian package repos as much as possible. Right now, init script come from upstream, Debian "developers" (I really can't bring myself to call a packager a developer) test & tweak the upstream scripts to fit the Debian environment. If they stop doing that, someone is going to have to do that for Devuan. Worse, if "refuse to support multiple init systems" means that the Debian packagers start stripping out the init scripts from Debian packages, those, those packages become useless in Devuan. (Note: I did a little checking re. packages re. code that I use - postfix doesn't seem to ship systemd files, nor does sympa; Apache puts its systemd support in a module; mysql has to compiled -WITHSYSTEMD --- judging from that small sample, it seems to me that we're going to see more and more Debian packages that won't work with other init systems). 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
Rainer Weikusat wrote: Miles Fidelman writes: Rainer Weikusat wrote: Miles Fidelman writes: Alexey Rochev wrote *Date: *2015-08-05 07:29 -400 *To: *dng *Subject: *[DNG] Init scripts in packages 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. What will Devuan developers do when it happens? We can use sysvinit and Devuan because these init scripts exist. It occurs to me that nobody raised the obvious questions: 1. Are we seeing upstream developers shipping systemd scripts, or systemd scripts w/o sysv init scripts? I'm not sure I have. 2. What the heck are Debian developers (packagers, actually), doing removing init scripts? There's an answer to that and it's "it doesn't matter" (I tried to point that out in an earlier reply). On the wheezy system I'm using to write this, 'init scripts' make up 6789 LOC, nobody has the power to make them disintegrate and I'd be very much surprised if there are more than 2000 LOC in there which actually do something useful. Actually, I expect yes. init scripts should be trivial and if they're not, something else is amiss. [...] Right now, init script come from upstream, Debian "developers" (I really can't bring myself to call a packager a developer) test & tweak the upstream scripts to fit the Debian environment. If they stop doing that, someone is going to have to do that for Devuan. Do they actually come 'from upstream'? Absolutely. At least for most server code, tar xvf foo; ./configure; make install leaves you with running server code, with default configuration (as tailored by configure), and init scripts Packagers typically modify those scripts. 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. This is a non-tempest in a teapot nobody ever really saw. Worse, if "refuse to support multiple init systems" means that the Debian packagers start stripping out the init scripts from Debian packages, those, those packages become useless in Devuan. Last time I looked, the point of Apache was "it's a web server" and not "it comes with an init script" so this seems to have been blown somewhat out of proportion. Even if 'Debian developers' should stop shipping 'init scripts' as part of their packages at some point in time in the future, this won't cause them to disappear from packages people already installed. And even in the extremely unlikely case to $evil_debian_developper invades your computer in the middle of the night and steals $mission_critical_init_script (this happening simultaneously on all computers in the world), they'll be trivial to replace. 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 -- 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
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 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
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
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Re: [DNG] Init scripts in packages
Jaromil wrote: On 8 August 2015 09:28:42 CEST, Miles Fidelman 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] 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? 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 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] Mission Creap
Nextime wrote: On August 8, 2015 4:12:23 PM CEST, Miles Fidelman wrote: Riccardo Boninsegna wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Dave Turner 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] mailing list software
JeremyBekka C wrote: I have been using my gmail account to read this mailing list but I would like to move over to a program specifically designed for mailing lists. I found mailman and it looks like it would work well. Just wondering if I could get some suggestions about would program would be best to use with this and other mailing lists. Methinks you might be confusing things just a trifle: - mailman (and majordomo, and sympa, and listserve) are MAILING LIST MANAGERS - they're what keeps track of all the people on a list, and distributes mail to them - you don't use them to read mail (except that some provide web-based access to archives) - you READ mailing list, and SEND to them, from a basic email client - like gmail, or Thunderbird, or Outlook, or Mac's "Mail" program - all of which include features for sorting and filtering mail, and to a lesser or greater degree automatically displaying message threads and/or putting list mail into folders If you're not happy with the gmail web interface, I'd suggest playing with different clients that can support "IMAP" access to your mailbox 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] Detailed technical treatise of systemd
On 11/7/15 9:26 AM, Steve Litt wrote: On Thu, 05 Nov 2015 19:05:23 + Rainer Weikusat wrote: Worrying about 'starting servers in parallell' only makes sense if there's a real-world situation where this demonstrably makes a relevant difference. And I very much doubt that --- that's just another imaginary sugar-coating supposed to help selling systemd to people who are not expected to understand the issue. As someone recently wrote, I'd like to discuss this. Now, after a year of thought, I still see no benefit to "starting servers in parallel" except for boot time. There are use cases where boot time is critical (99.% uptime, or a television appliance), but for the vast majority of us the difference between a 1 second boot and a 40 second boot is we get a chance to go get a cup of coffee every day, week, month, year, whatever. And frankly, it's been a long time since I've seen any system that takes more than 30 seconds to boot. Boot time better NOT be critical for high availability situations. Any reasonable systems designer uses hot sparing & failover to achieve high uptime. Everything had better already be booted on the failover system. 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] Detailed technical treatise of systemd
On 11/7/15 10:04 AM, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote: Steve Litt writes: I'd like to discuss this. Now, after a year of thought, I still see no benefit to "starting servers in parallel" except for boot time. Because you're thinking of the happy path. Suppose you have a few dozen servers on three continents, providing a user-facing service, using something like zk or etcd to coordinate the servers. Not for nothing, but if you're coordinating distributed servers, your system design is WAY too closely coupled if boot time effects anything. 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] Detailed technical treatise of systemd
On 11/7/15 12:47 PM, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote: Miles Fidelman writes: Not for nothing, but if you're coordinating distributed servers, your system design is WAY too closely coupled if boot time effects anything. Boot time is just a kind of downtime. If downtime lasts too long, the health checks declare nodes bad and expensive recovery starts. Actually, in my experience, the problem is when downtime is too short, and worse, when things flap. With a hot failover process, once one has failed over, one wants to wait a long time before failing back to the primary system. Otherwise there's a serious risk of flapping back and forth - which is REALLY expensive. One wants lots of hysterisis in the system. 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] An abrupt end to Debian Live CD version?
On 11/12/15 1:54 PM, Steve Litt wrote: On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 16:57:19 +0300 Mitt Green wrote: I wonder how many people that use Debian for quite long time (since 90s or the beginning of this millennium) really like systemd, GNOME3 and all these controversial things. I haven't met any. And even more, most "greybeards" that I've seen oppose it. Seems like they don't have a right to vote. :s/greybeards/experienced people having a clue/ I'm not saying the following in anger. I'm simply saying it so we don't accidentally shoot ourselves in the foot... "Greybeards" and "neckbeards" are characterizations whose connotation is deliberately "people stuck in their ways, afraid of change, no longer relevant, no longer innovating." This has *especially* come to the forefront during the systemd foolishness. Additionally, "greybeards" and "neckbeards" pretty much literally mean "old people", and give credence to the belief that old people can't code, can't tech, should be put out to pasture. It's this very belief that motivates organizations to refuse to hire those over 50, regardless of past or current accomplishments, going so far as to pay a premium to offshore rent-a-programmers rather than snagging one of the glut of skilled over 50 technologists. Hey... I resemble that remark. I'm a greybeard and proud of it. In my neck of the woods (networking) it's a mark of distinction, and a credential that's jealously guarded. (I'm also 61, and just remember, 60 is the new 40. Never had a problem getting hired - as I say, greybeard is a respected credential.) 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
[DNG] meta-comment re. build systems
I'm really not sure where to bring this up, but this seems like as good a place as any, as it's been looking for alternatives to Debian that has flagged this issue for me (other suggestions welcome). In looking at Devuan, and a few other non-systemd distros (Gentoo, FreeBSD, GUIXSD in particular), I've noticed that documentation of how to install and manage unpackaged software seems to have almost disappeared. An awful lot of distros now seem to assume that EVERYTHING is packaged. Of course, the reverse is far more common - at least that's been my experience. - developers tend to distribute source, built in their language-specific development environment, "packaged" for cross-platform building (e.g., a .tar file created using gnu autotools), or a .jar file, or what have you -- (well constructed) source generally compiles, installs, and runs cleanly [parenthetically, assuming an init system that recognizes sysvinit files!] - it's pretty rare for developers to package for more than a few, particularly popular distros (if they package at all). - when building production servers, it's a lot more reliable to "./config; make; make install" than to rely on packages (yes, for a lot of the platform stuff, packages save time, but as one goes up the stack, current packages are less common) - an awful lot of stuff uses its own dependency resolution mechanisms and repositories (e.g., perl w/ cpan) Somehow, I think this is something we need to be concerned about for Devuan; but that also seems of concern to the broader Linux (and Unix?) ecosystem. Comments, thoughts? 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] meta-comment re. build systems
Follow-on question at the bottom On 12/31/15 3:10 PM, Steve Litt wrote: I guess I'm an "upstream", being the originator of the VimOutliner project (probably a few thousand users), the UMENU project (probably about 10 users), the Amounter project (2 confirmed users), and several less-used pieces of software. As a Developer, I'm not a fan of packaging, because from the very outset I try very hard to make my software have minimal dependencies, I try to make its dependencies universally available, and if it's C I make it cc -Wall myprogram with no errors or warnings. Except for the notoriously undeployable UMENU, my stuff goes on with a few copy commands and maybe a compile. No need to obfuscate it with a package. As a user, of course I'm not going to hand compile LibreOffice, Sigil or Firefox (Iceweasel). My mama didn't raise no fool. But when it comes to all of djb's stuff, alternate init systems, project supervision software, or newer than newest versions of LyX, I ./configure;make;make test;make install. Again, my mama didn't raise no fool. Packages and package managers are a great thing. I'd never want to forego a good package manager. You'll never catch me hand-compiling Firefox. But in my opinion, sometimes you're much better off kissing the package manager goodbye for a specific app, and using ./configure;make;make test;make install, or whatever else the README or INSTALL file tells you to do. AND... On 12/31/15 2:14 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote: Hi Miles, et. al. As an upstream developer/maintainer and downstream user of packages both locally built and packaged, I've come to the conclusion that, at least At least due to the FHS Debian has never taken steps to violate the idea that /usr/local is reserved for the local administrator. As a user of GNU Autotools in the projects I am involved in this is a good thing as this is the Autotools default destination directory. In short, as an upstream it's my job to make sure that 'configure; make; make install' "just work" and is documented and it's the distribution's job to make sure its packaging system is documented. Did I explain it well enough to see where the line of responsibility between upstream and distribution lies and their responsibility to the user? YUP - made it very clear, and I basically agree with delineation. I tend to agree with Steve re. when to use, and not use, package management (and with Joel's comment re. "checkinstall" making it easier to remove things later. A follow-up question: What, if anything, do you guys include in the way of init scripts? [My current observation is that systemd's biggest impact on my operation is that it kind of breaks some sysvinit scripts, and not a lot of people include systemd configs. Hence, my aversion to updating my current Debian installation, and why I'm looking at Devuan and a few other options for my next, and overdue, major update to our production servers.] 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] Ummmm, no
On 12/31/15 2:05 PM, Simon Hobson wrote: Mitt Green wrote: I reckon as long as his Fedora boots, he doesn't care. I think that's the key reason. Linus is concerned with the kernel - and while I suspect he has personal preferences about what is run on top of that, he's "detached" enough to take the attitude that what people want to run is up to them. Now, if people start demanding "broken" features go into the kernel to support their projects - then he's interested. Can you say "kdbus?" -- 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] Politics of IT in the U.S. government
Yup - COBOL is a really good niche market for programmers. On 8/3/16 3:50 PM, Simon Hobson wrote: Steve Litt wrote: At first I almost vomited when reading this sentence: The Social Security Administration, for instance, has more than 60 million lines of Cobol, My first thought: Cobol? Are you kidding? I thought I'd gotten done with that in 1985! And then a part of my mind said "sysvinit? Are you kidding? Etc. Indeed, old doesn't equal broken. As an analogy, some of my best tools are the old ones - from when they were properly made of real metal etc. The real problem, as you point out, is that it's getting harder to maintain the "old stuff" for the simple reason that the people that really understood it are retiring and the youngsters don't want to know. I strongly suspect a big part of the latter is a combination of the "teaching machine" and peer pressure - these "dead languages" just aren't "sexy". But from what I've read from time to time, there's actually a good living to be made if you are happy to be one of those unseen hermits happy to bash away maintaining old code in places like banks. The banks - they have enormous amounts of "legacy" code which isn't broken and so isn't in need of fixing. Plus, the risks to them of replacing it is quite high. ___ Dng mailing list 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] Why does systemd do such stupid things
On 11/6/16 11:15 AM, Rowland Penny wrote: One of my servers crashed because of a motherboard problem, but, as luck had it, there was something on the HD I was working on and I hadn't fully backed up. I stuck another motherboard in and started up the machine again, up it came, after fsck'ing the HD and everything worked, apart from the network. Checked lspci etc and as far as I could see, there was nothing wrong, but I just couldn't get eth0 to work (did I say there was only 1 network card?) Finally, in desperation, I ran 'dmesg | grep eth0' and found my problem: root@server:~# dmesg | grep eth0 [0.921998] r8169 :02:00.0 eth0: RTL8168b/8111b at 0xc9006000, 00:1d:60:fc:29:e6, XID 1800 IRQ 41 [0.922001] r8169 :02:00.0 eth0: jumbo features [frames: 4080 bytes, tx checksumming: ko] [7.620169] systemd-udevd[362]: renamed network interface eth0 to eth1 Why, oh why, did systemd-udevd rename eth0 to eth1 As others have pointed out, this behavior dates back to udev. (And boy did that mess me up the first time it happened.) For me, the first warning signs about systemd was that the perpetrator of udev was one of the key perpetrators of systemd. 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] We need to speak up
On 3/14/17 9:05 PM, Dan Purgert wrote: On 03/15/2017 12:00 AM, メット wrote: On 2017年3月15日 12:40:48 JST, Don Wright wrote: Steve Litt wrote: Can somebody please make a list, that we can put our names on, of people who left Debian because of systemd? And put the name Steve Litt on it please. Add mine too. I was a Debian supporter and pusher through my local LUG, showing Linux (mostly Debian-based) and handing out CDs at the occasional trade show, and also participating a bit on the debian-boot (installer development) maillist. The increasing arrogance within the project, demonstrated strongly by the systemd debacle, is what made me a former Debian user. Don Wright -- Sponsored by Berserker Express. At BE, we bring things to Goodlife. Add mine as well And my axe! ... er... :) me too! Me too. -- 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] We need to speak up
On 3/15/17 9:20 AM, Andrew McGlashan wrote: On 16/03/17 02:55, goli...@dyne.org wrote: . . . but remember that the Freedesktop/Redhat/SystemdCabal consortium has the goal of eliminating systemd as a choice . . . Er . . . not quite what you intended to say, I think. Yes, well, I read that as -- you have no choice, the world is using systemd -- like it or lump it, you have to have it as nothing else will work You know, I kind of wonder about that. Are developers actually migrating to systemd, or do most things come with standard init-scripts - then relying on systemd's ability to utilize init scripts and/or relying on packagers to add systemd scripts? I would guess that it also has to do with tooling & libraries. Our systems are pretty stable, and a lot of our stuff has been installed from the tarball, not the packages - so I don't have a current sense of the world. Anybody have a better sense of where things are going. 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] We need to speak up
On 3/15/17 9:14 PM, Christopher Clements wrote: The exact suggestion is here: <https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170315.171933.e6bda406.en.html> That is an excellent idea. Would be great if someone got organized enough to start a dialog with EVERY upstream dev individually and/or collectively. Unfortunately, that would be a mammoth task requiring more time than most people could find. I've done work like that on various issues and know from experience, it is a full time job. Perhaps just an open letter? It seemed relatively simple until you brought up the issue of actually contacting all the developers (without using debian-devel, most likely). I only thought about one aspect of it, and now it seems like it would be _impossible_ without using debian-devel or mass-mailing every single developer (out of the question). I tried raising the question on libreplanet-discuss - asking what uptream developers are doing now. Not a tremendous response, so far. But maybe this would be a good workshop topic, or BOF session, at the upcoming libreplanet conference (sponsored by the Free Software Foundation) in Boston. It's coming up right spanking now (March 25-6), at MIT. An awful lot of open source upstream developers show up, and it's a good forum for discussion policy issues related to open source software. https://www.libreplanet.org/2017/ It might be a little late to organize a formal talk or panel session, but someone might want to give the organizers a call. BOFs are easy to setup - see https://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2017 Everyone should also join FSF and the libreplanet-discuss list. It's generally a good time, with good people. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it - I live in the area, but I'm currently in AZ for an extended period, helping my 96-year-old Dad settle into a new house - not sure if I'll be back in time. Hopefully someone from the Devuan team will be there, and can organize something. 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
[DNG] anybody going to libreplanet?
Hi Folks, I didn't see any reaction to this - which makes me wonder.. is anybody here going to libreplanet? For that matter, is anybody in the Greater Boston area? forwarded message Author: Miles Fidelman Date: 2017-03-15 21:49 -700 To: dng Subject: Re: [DNG] We need to speak up On 3/15/17 9:14 PM, Christopher Clements wrote: > > The exact suggestion is here: > <https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170315.171933.e6bda406.en.html> > >> That is an excellent idea. Would be great if someone got organized >> enough to start a dialog with EVERY upstream dev individually and/or >> collectively. Unfortunately, that would be a mammoth task requiring >> more time than most people could find. I've done work like that on >> various issues and know from experience, it is a full time job. > > Perhaps just an open letter? > > It seemed relatively simple until you brought up the issue of actually > contacting all the developers (without using debian-devel, most likely). > I only thought about one aspect of it, and now it seems like it would > be _impossible_ without using debian-devel or mass-mailing every single > developer (out of the question). > I tried raising the question on libreplanet-discuss - asking what uptream developers are doing now. Not a tremendous response, so far. But maybe this would be a good workshop topic, or BOF session, at the upcoming libreplanet conference (sponsored by the Free Software Foundation) in Boston. It's coming up right spanking now (March 25-6), at MIT. An awful lot of open source upstream developers show up, and it's a good forum for discussion policy issues related to open source software. https://www.libreplanet.org/2017/ It might be a little late to organize a formal talk or panel session, but someone might want to give the organizers a call. BOFs are easy to setup - see https://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2017 Everyone should also join FSF and the libreplanet-discuss list. It's generally a good time, with good people. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it - I live in the area, but I'm currently in AZ for an extended period, helping my 96-year-old Dad settle into a new house - not sure if I'll be back in time. Hopefully someone from the Devuan team will be there, and can organize something. 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] Which is Free, Which is Open Source, is there any difference?
On 4/25/17 7:36 PM, Steve Litt wrote: On Tue, 25 Apr 2017 15:10:28 -0700 Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Bruce Perens (br...@perens.com): There isn't a licensing difference between Free Software, Open Source, and DFSG-compliant. Of course there are differences: Free Software means just that: You don't have to pay anything to use it. There's all kinds of stuff out there where object code is free to download and use, but source is not available. (And there are degrees of Free - such as "free for non-commercial use only." Open Source means that the code is available. It DOESN'T mean that you have a license to do anything with it. There's quite a bit of open source code that requires a license to use. A lot of SDKs fall into this category. For that matter, when it comes to documentation - arguably, it's inherently open source - but that doesn't mean you can freely copy it and distribute it. Any particular license defines a specific set of terms of use, which may or may not have some degree of freeness, may or may not involve open source consideration (e.g., copyleft, requiring that source be redistributed). DFSG-compliant means that the terms of a license meet a specific set of criteria set by the Debian Project - which later became the basis for certification by the Open Source Initiative. It happens that they pretty much define FOSS (Free AND Open Source). 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] Which is Free, Which is Open Source, is there any difference?
On 4/25/17 9:03 PM, Adam Borowski wrote: On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 08:27:16PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote: Free Software means just that: You don't have to pay anything to use it. There's all kinds of stuff out there where object code is free to download and use, but source is not available. (And there are degrees of Free - such as "free for non-commercial use only." Uhm, you've somehow failed to notice all the talk about "free as in speech" vs "free as in beer". In this case, it is strictly the former. The GPL explicitly allows charging a fee, the DFSG forbid any restrictions on commercial activity, including _selling_ the software. You just can't stop your recipient from distributing it further. "Free for non-commercial use only" is not free, it's at most gratis. And here I thought we were talking about licenses, and the range of terms included in different ones. The GPL is far from the only license applied to software. 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] Linus can no longer trust "init"
On 7/10/17 3:23 PM, KatolaZ wrote: On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 01:53:09PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * On 2017 10 Jul 12:45 -0500, mdn wrote: Le 10/07/2017 19:29, zap a écrit : I hope linus does something about it. I Really wish stallman would take this seriously as a security risk. I too but RMS just care about licensing and a bit community relations atm (from what I can observe). Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. Just because the code is GPL, it seems fine by him. Sorry, but I really don't see what RMS should do here. He has focussed his entire life on the fundamental problem of making sure that software remains free, as in speech, and he has always (and rightfully, IMHO) avoided to intervene in any technical battle we have seen in the free-software world in the last 30 years, with the only hilarious exception of the vi-vs-emacs farse, epitomised in the fictious character of St. IGNUcious From a technical point of view, systemd is free software, and trying to deny it is just stupid: But keep in mind that RMS is also interested in the impact of licensing, and is a firm proponent of the "Unix way." Systemd may be free, but it's approach to agglomerating function after function, and becoming a requirement for more and more other software - is an affront to software freedom. That MIGHT be, or become, of interest & concern to him. It really is time to start raising the issue through the FSF - on the libreplanet-discuss email list, at the annual conference, etc. It might also be of interest to Eric Raymond (Cathedral & The Bazaar). It might be time to make systemd-free a "campaign" (in the same sense as "anybrowser"). 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] Linus can no longer trust "init"
slight addition at the end On 7/10/17 4:07 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: On 7/10/17 3:23 PM, KatolaZ wrote: On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 01:53:09PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * On 2017 10 Jul 12:45 -0500, mdn wrote: Le 10/07/2017 19:29, zap a écrit : I hope linus does something about it. I Really wish stallman would take this seriously as a security risk. I too but RMS just care about licensing and a bit community relations atm (from what I can observe). Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. Just because the code is GPL, it seems fine by him. Sorry, but I really don't see what RMS should do here. He has focussed his entire life on the fundamental problem of making sure that software remains free, as in speech, and he has always (and rightfully, IMHO) avoided to intervene in any technical battle we have seen in the free-software world in the last 30 years, with the only hilarious exception of the vi-vs-emacs farse, epitomised in the fictious character of St. IGNUcious From a technical point of view, systemd is free software, and trying to deny it is just stupid: But keep in mind that RMS is also interested in the impact of licensing, and is a firm proponent of the "Unix way." Systemd may be free, but it's approach to agglomerating function after function, and becoming a requirement for more and more other software - is an affront to software freedom. That MIGHT be, or become, of interest & concern to him. It really is time to start raising the issue through the FSF - on the libreplanet-discuss email list, at the annual conference, etc. It might also be of interest to Eric Raymond (Cathedral & The Bazaar). It might be time to make systemd-free a "campaign" (in the same sense as "anybrowser"). Miles Fidelman It also occurs to me that the gnu tools are a big part of the ecosystem - and the support provided for various init systems is a big part of the mix. -- 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] Linus can no longer trust "init"
On 7/10/17 4:17 PM, KatolaZ wrote: On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 04:07:48PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote: [cut] Systemd may be free, but it's approach to agglomerating function after function, and becoming a requirement for more and more other software - is an affront to software freedom. That MIGHT be, or become, of interest & concern to him. It really is time to start raising the issue through the FSF - on the libreplanet-discuss email list, at the annual conference, etc. It might also be of interest to Eric Raymond (Cathedral & The Bazaar). Miles, is it of interest to *you*? Great, then raise the issue wherever you can, do whatever you can to let people know that this is bullshit, do whatever you can to help projects which are trying to develop alternatives to systemd. Why shall you wait for RMS or ESR to get into the battle? If devuan were still waiting for RMS or Linus or whoever else to join the quest, we would not have much to talk about today. The community is not an abstract mass of unspecified people. The community is a collection of *individuals*, and the actions of a community are the result of the actions of the individuals that are part of it. Well, I do. But I'm nowhere near as visible, or influential, as a Linus Torvalds, or RMS, or Eric Raymond. When it comes to distros and init systems, I'm basically a server-side user, in the context of internal operations & a tiny service bureau. I'm pretty much limited to being very careful about the distros I run, and the packages I install - and it's becoming harder and harder to avoid the systemd hairball. What we need are folks in a position to influence interfaces, standards, tools, and general design practices across the developer community (e.g., exhorting folks to develop software that is not dependent on systemd). It might be time to make systemd-free a "campaign" (in the same sense as "anybrowser"). A "campaign" is made of single actions, and does not need to be orchestrated by a supernatural entity. I know that they are doing whatever is in their ability to let us believe the contrary, but in this community each and every opinion matters, and each and every action is important and meaningful. The only meaningless action is waiting for somebody else to come up with a meaningful action on behalf of the entire community... We are the community. We need to act for ourselves. So far, that's not working all that well. 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] Linus can no longer trust "init"
On 7/10/17 4:37 PM, goli...@dyne.org wrote: On 2017-07-10 15:25, Miles Fidelman wrote: We are the community. We need to act for ourselves. So far, that's not working all that well. Miles Fidelman Miles, I just have to ask If you think think it's not working too well who is to blame? Please answer this question . . . what you have done lately for Devuan? If not you and each and everyone of us, who? For Devuan, not much. As a user, I have not installed any version of Debian that uses systemd, and I've basically stopped contributing to the Debian-user list (other than to recommend that folks avoid ecosystems that have become enmeshed with systemd). As to, who is to blame - systemd is being pushed by a very well placed, very well funded group of people - and, despite LOTS of objections, the Debian powers that be adopted systemd lock, stock, and barrel, and basically rejected all those who objected. And, as goes Debian, so goes a bunch of other distros. There's a point at which this all becomes unstoppable, unless some equally well-placed & influential folks start pushing back VERY hard. By the way - let me note that, when I posted here a few months back, asking who was going to be at the Libre Planet conference in Boston - in the hopes of organizing a panel or a BOF session - pretty much the unanimous answer was "can't make it." 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] Linus can no longer trust "init"
On 7/11/17 7:55 AM, Simon Hobson wrote: "Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" wrote: We don't need to fight anything. Just concentrate on the stuff *we* need (seriously, does anybobdy here need gnome3 ?) and patch out the crap when neccessary. And just not caring about that lennartware crap at all. Not even wasting time w/ debates about that crap, over and over again. (and yes: that's really annying me) Why do you waste your precious lifetime w/ lennartware at all ? There are (IMO) three things needed : 1) Have an alternative - ie Devuan. In that, I salute those who are actually doing the hard stuff I wouldn't know where to start with. 2) Make people aware that there is an alternative. 3) Explain (in rational, technical, non-political) terms why people should care that there is a choice - and why we think they would be wise to take it. Without 2 and 3, there won't be large scale adoption of the alternatives - and without that, there is distinctly less incentive for the upstream devs to keep support for the alternatives. As has been mentioned before, part of the "battle plan" for systemd seems to be to keep taking more and more "standard stuff", deprecate it, and introduce new systemd versions with a new API. Thus, a package they needs to run on a systemd infested system has to support the "new improved" API. This means that the dev now faces a choice - do they keep support for the old API ? To do so means more work - effectively they have to maintain two bits of code everywhere they use that function, and that means more work. If they perceive that "hardly anyone" still needs the old API - then there's a temptation to drop the old code, or stop maintaining it. If that happens, then the job of maintaining that package in a non-systemd distro becomes harder. Ideally, projects like Devuan need to get enough users that they can entice package maintainers over from Debian. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Devuan were able to take the lead, and Debian end up having to port packages from it - yes that's pie in the sky thinking at the moment, but if you don't have ambition then ... So yes, I agree that "discussing" it time and time again (especially in a "preaching to the converted" forum) isn't helpful - but just ignoring it isn't going to work either. ___ Exactly. The issue isn't whether we have systemd-free distros - there are more than Devuan (gentoo, the BSDs come to mind) - it's how the developer community moves forward. Do we start seeing important packages come out as requiring systemd. -- 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] Technical overview of init systems
Me neither. I found the "7 part series" amazingly content free, and certainly not very technical. First off, it wasn't about init systems, it was about supervisors (in fairness, it didn't actually purport to be about init systems). Second, nowhere did it actually talk about, in detail, what a supervisor does, and underlying theory of operations (what you'd expect in a "technical overview" to begin with). Instead, it was a rather rambling, and unorganized description of a bunch of different supervisors. Now what might have been useful would be: 1. An actual technical overview, including a definition of terms. 2. A comparison chart listing all of the various supervisors available. As it is, it's just a waste of time. Miles Fidelman On 8/8/17 9:02 AM, Edward Bartolo wrote: I had a look at the text and was not impressed at all. My criticism is: it is written like some private correspondence instead of technical objective text. Someone writing technical text must be objective, scientific, accurate and concise. ___ Dng mailing list 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] A shift in systemd development
It's a joke, son. On 10/29/18 6:02 PM, goli...@dyne.org wrote: OK. Having no idea what an S/390 system is (except for a scan of the wikipedia page), I'm hoping that someone can 'splain how this will affect community based Linux and everyone who jumped on the systemd bandwagon: - Lennart Poettering @pid_eins As you all know we never have been fans of portability. It will come at no surprise that in light of the recent developments we will discontinue all non-S/390 ports of systemd very soon now. Please make sure to upgrade to an S/390 system soon. Thank you for understanding. https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1056924336349691905 - ___ Dng mailing list 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] mailing list software
There's also Sieve. Not a drop-in replacement to procmail, but pretty powerful. On 12/12/18 5:08 PM, Joel Roth via Dng wrote: Jim Jackson wrote: Just an aside - what are the alternatives to procmail? so far I've only found _maildrop_ as an in-line delivery filter. I filter my incoming mail using perl script based on https://metacpan.org/pod/Email::Filter. It is designed to be a drop-in replacement for procmail, with a bit less cryptic syntax. cheers -- 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] Admins can you fix/set the header overrides?
Speaking as someone who hosts a couple of dozen email lists, I really don't understand what the fuss is about here. DMARC breaks mailing lists - it's that simple. It breaks pretty much anything that forwards mail. (FYI: Early on, it broke the IETF's lists. Rather annoying, that.) If one runs a list, and wants folks on gmail, AOL - any service that honors p=reject - then one has to: 1. adjust headers so that list mail appears to originate from the list manager, not from the original author 2. publish DKIM & SPF records for the machine hosting the list Both Sympa (which I run) and Mailman have settings that will apply the appropriate header changes (Sympa had a community supported patch within a week, which was integrated into the next release; Mailman took a bit longer, with features showing up in v 2.1). Updating the mailman settings, and publishing the appropriate DNS records, is really a no brainer for any halfway competent list administrator. The folks who administer lists.dyne.org just need to do it. (I can't believe they haven't already - but then I don't notice it - we run our own email server, and pointedly don't honor DMARC p=reject on incoming mail.) 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] Admins can you fix/set the header overrides?
On 12/27/18 11:07 AM, Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Miles Fidelman (mfidel...@meetinghouse.net): Speaking as someone who hosts a couple of dozen email lists, I really don't understand what the fuss is about here. The fuss involved people having paid no attention to the announcement of Dng's DMARC-mitigation munging starting on December 6th, and so being confused by that and the appended Reply-To. And some people, including you, still aren't getting that, even though it got re-explained yesterday, encore une fois. Ahh... missed that. Didn't really notice anything until this huge string of emails. Sigh... If one runs a list, and wants folks on gmail, AOL - any service that honors p=reject - then one has to: 1. adjust headers so that list mail appears to originate from the list manager, not from the original author Yes. But only where p=reject or p=quarantine.. Yes, indeed. 2. publish DKIM & SPF records for the machine hosting the list No, there's no obligation for either of those, to ensure deliverability of mail munged by the MLM software for DMARC-mitigation purposes. True, but it sometimes helps. And it's easy enough if one has access to one's nameserver records, as anyone who runs a list manager usually does. Updating the mailman settings, and publishing the appropriate DNS records, is really a no brainer for any halfway competent list administrator. Indeed, the Dng listadmins did exactly that, on Dec. 6th, following instructions I provided. The whole thing was covered here at the time, so I'm puzzled that so many people seem to have failed completely to read the explanations. Sorry to add to the noise - there was just so much of it. My bad. 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] Report from the first Devuan conference
Nice! Any chance of postings presentation slides as well as videos? Miles Fidelman On 4/11/19 2:16 PM, Jaromil wrote: dear dng'ers all those of you who weren't there: you were missed! this is a first report about our first conference https://www.dyne.org/the-first-devuan-conference along with links to the stream for those who have missed it in the coming days we'll publish edited (and in some cases remastered) videos of the talks, which were all of very high quality in terms of contents and worth watching. I am already looking forward to the next conference, meanwhile please spread the good vibes we all got while sharing our meatspace - but do not mistake me here, all meals were vegetarian! ciao :^) ___ Dng mailing list 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 Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] calendars, contacts, to do lists
On 5/23/19 7:52 PM, Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Hendrik Boom (hend...@topoi.pooq.com): Radicale does look good. The one thing I haven't found is sync with Google calendar. It's mentioned over and over that Google doesn't talk CalDAV. Talk about "not doing evil." They USED to talk CalDAV. Microsoft Exchange still does. Go figure. ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Identifying an installed physical hard drive without damage
On 8/11/19 3:10 PM, Hendrik Boom wrote: On Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 02:55:00PM +0200, Antony Stone wrote: On Sunday 11 August 2019 at 14:37:09, Hendrik Boom wrote: I do not know which of the hard drives on my machine is /dev/sdb/ ... Or is there some completely different way of accomplishing what I want? # hdparm -i /dev/sdb It'll tell you the drive type and the serial number, which should also be printed on the drive label. Yes, that will help! Thank you. You could also execute a command that causes heavy load on /dev/sdb - be it a test, or a search - and then see which drive's lights flash a lot (if the drive has a light). Miles Fidelman ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Re: [DNG] Nasty Linux systemd security bug revealed
Andreas Messer said on Mon, 26 Jul 2021 09:38:23 +0200 My feeling is, that you can not simply teach someone how to write safe software. Why not? You can teach a person to do anything else. But maybe not in college, because college is built to make money, not to teach. Consider the average textbook and compare to the average "For Dummies" book. The former makes the subject matter look incredibly complex, justifying the professor. The latter makes it easy to learn. What is needed is a curated document explaining the five or ten or twenty things you need to do to be secure, and then how to achieve them in a practical world. Let's start with input field cleansing and protection from errant pointers and buffer overflow. There are many more: Because there will always be new failure modes & vulnerabilities - it comes with any complex engineering activity. You can teach people to avoid KNOWN failure modes & vulnerabilities, and establish processes and methods to avoid them (e.g., tooling, testing, design reviews, etc.) - but there will always be new ones - that can only be detected in the breach. Good engineers can, perhaps, see and avoid some. Penetration testing can help find others before fielding. But ultimately, there will always be unsafe code in the field - that will only be detected in the breach. As von Moltke put it, "no plan survives contact with the enemy." It probably has something to do with computability (P/NP and all that.) We could learn from the way the aerospace industry responds to plane crashes, though. And, maybe, trash "agile" and go back to design processes that got us to the Moon (you know, serious, step-by-step, design, document, review, test). Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Yogi Berra Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown ___ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
