Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 13, 2007 2:09 PM, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Nov 13, 2007 11:37 AM, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is there a list of what each daemon does? > > I usually read the initscript source. Failing that, I'll try "man" > or "whatis" on the program the initscript starts. Failing that, I'll > try "rpm -qlf /etc/rc.d/rc.init/foo | grep doc" and look for likely > docs. Failing that, I'll disable it, because anything that poorly > documented is probably a bad idea anyway. And lots of the gnome/kde/newer linux stuff is in its own private help system :-( Everything should have a man page. Anything else is gravy. > > > I've gotten in the habit, sadly, of disabling most daemons ... > > One of my assertions is that that is not a bad habit. Indeed, I'd > argue it is a good habit, and should be a design consideration. Coming from an extreme security point, everything should be disabled. All you need is SSH :-) and that should be off too. I should be able to add services as they are needed. They should have info about what enabling them provides along with security guidelines. IMHO all these new services running out of the box isn't much different from having ftp, telnet, httpd and rsh running. Even without security issues, there's still an issue of resources. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
Bill McGonigle wrote: > > run: > >'/usr/sbin/ntsysv' > > cursor-over the service and hit F1. > > There may be a better way, but that's the one I've found and is > sufficient. > I like the entry for isdn: "Start and stop ISDN services." Thanks for that. And what's ISDN? "I Still Don't No." -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 01:46:18PM -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote: > On Nov 13, 2007, at 11:37, Tom Buskey wrote: > > Is there a list of what each daemon does? > > From the "you don't really know how to use a tool until you know > three ways to abuse it" department: > > run: > >'/usr/sbin/ntsysv' > > cursor-over the service and hit F1. > > There may be a better way, but that's the one I've found and is > sufficient. I don't know about 'better', but all that is doing is displaying the "description:" field from the initscript. If you don't want to use a special tool, you can get that same info by just looking at the top of the initscript yourself. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] OpenPGP KeyID 0x57C3430B Holder of Past Knowledge CS, O- "Forget the hug -- give that maple in your backyard some hot monkey love." Rachel Blubaugh ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 13, 2007 11:37 AM, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is there a list of what each daemon does? I usually read the initscript source. Failing that, I'll try "man" or "whatis" on the program the initscript starts. Failing that, I'll try "rpm -qlf /etc/rc.d/rc.init/foo | grep doc" and look for likely docs. Failing that, I'll disable it, because anything that poorly documented is probably a bad idea anyway. > I've gotten in the habit, sadly, of disabling most daemons ... One of my assertions is that that is not a bad habit. Indeed, I'd argue it is a good habit, and should be a design consideration. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 13, 2007, at 11:37, Tom Buskey wrote: > Is there a list of what each daemon does? From the "you don't really know how to use a tool until you know three ways to abuse it" department: run: '/usr/sbin/ntsysv' cursor-over the service and hit F1. There may be a better way, but that's the one I've found and is sufficient. -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833 Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 10, 2007 11:00 PM, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Okay, so I installed Fedora 8 today. > > As is my custom, I turned off the various and sundry magic daemons > that Fedora's been shipping for years and years. These are daemons > which do various magic things, like detect my hardware, mount my > disks, and so on. > > I've never liked those things. They're over-complicated. They > suffer from high coupling and low cohesion. They re-invent wheels > that have existed for years or decades, to no apparent gain. They're > poorly documented. They do not grok The Unix Philosophy. Is there a list of what each daemon does? I've gotten in the habit, sadly, of disabling most daemons so I can have the memory and cpu percentage back. For example, inetd is generally not needed. I don't use mDNS/Bonjour/uPNP devices on my network. Etc. There are a number of sites with information on windows services as well. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 15:21 -, quoth Bill McGonigle: => =>On Nov 12, 2007, at 11:57, Coleman Kane wrote: => =>> > deb files suck big green donkey =>> > dicks. =>> > =>> Sounds like you're in a good position to put together that document ;). => =>And he already has the killer title. I bet I'd paypal the $3 PDF if I were in =>that situation. I suppose it'd be better to explain where that phrase comes from, since the story is most of why I used it. Back in '79 or '80, I was getting my masters at night at BU. At one point I was seated, using the facilities, where I beheld one of the works of some (probably obscure) literature scholar. His particular use of the above euphemism was directed at possible proclivities of the then president of BU, John Silber. It struck me as hilarious back then, and in this context seemed as appropriate. Back then, I laughed so hard that I'm sure others using that bathroom had a raised eyebrow. -- Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0. happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0 Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000 individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday 12 November 2007 01:33:42 pm Steven W. Orr wrote: > On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 12:31 -, quoth Jarod Wilson: > > =>On Monday 12 November 2007 11:57:22 am Coleman Kane wrote: > =>> Steven W. Orr wrote: > =>> > On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 11:14 -, quoth Neil Joseph Schelly: > =>> > =>> > =>Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? > =>[...] > =>> > > > This is not a question of liking what you're familiar with. All > of us =>> > know the difference between learning from man pages and having > a proper =>> > source for learning idiomatic usage. > =>> > =>> Sounds like you're in a good position to put together that document ;). > => > =>A cheat sheet that translated all common rpm-ese into deb-ian would be > kinda =>cool (and vice versa). > => > =>Example (dpkg command examples may be on crack): > => > =>TASK | RPM | DEB > => > =>install pkg | rpm -ivh pkg.rpm | dpkg -i pkg.deb > =>get pkg info | rpm -qi pkg | dpkg --status pkg > > Such a limited rosetta stone already exists. The problem though is not > limited to maning existing .deb files. You also want to be able to create > new debs. :-( Guess I shoulda googled first, but I meant that it should also include that sorta stuff. :) -- Jarod Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 12, 2007, at 11:57, Coleman Kane wrote: >> deb files suck big green donkey >> dicks. >> > Sounds like you're in a good position to put together that > document ;). And he already has the killer title. I bet I'd paypal the $3 PDF if I were in that situation. -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833 Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/ VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Let's complain about package formats! (WAS: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy)
> The simple answer is that I highly prefesr rpm over debian. > The access is far simpler. Full use of deb files implies > about 13 different packages be loaded just to do deb things. > I'm in a situation right now where I have to create .deb > files and, while I'm getting my job done, I can tell you > there is no book that you can buy to teach you all you need > to know about the hundreds of places where documentation > exists on how it all works together. If you are compelled to creating deb packages, but don't desire to make them "properly" try checkinstall (http://asic-linux.com.mx/%7Eizto/checkinstall/). It reduces turning source into dpkgs to `checkinstall -D make install`. I've had to make debs before, and though I never had to much trouble making them right, checkinstall lets you skip a bunch of steps. You should read the readme, deb packages require you to make a few script directories in your source directory. You might be able to add gross dependency checking or alerting that a package isn't installed using a script in preinstall-pack. > I'm living with it and I have a few things I know how to do, > but compared to RPM and the available docs for it, deb files > suck big green donkey dicks. What a wonderfully non-inflammatory comment. Godwin be damned, did I mention rpm actively participated in the holocaust. -=] Patrick ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 12:31 -, quoth Jarod Wilson: =>On Monday 12 November 2007 11:57:22 am Coleman Kane wrote: =>> Steven W. Orr wrote: =>> > On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 11:14 -, quoth Neil Joseph Schelly: =>> =>> > =>Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? =>[...] =>> > > > This is not a question of liking what you're familiar with. All of us =>> > know the difference between learning from man pages and having a proper =>> > source for learning idiomatic usage. =>> =>> Sounds like you're in a good position to put together that document ;). => =>A cheat sheet that translated all common rpm-ese into deb-ian would be kinda =>cool (and vice versa). => =>Example (dpkg command examples may be on crack): => =>TASK | RPM | DEB => =>install pkg | rpm -ivh pkg.rpm | dpkg -i pkg.deb =>get pkg info | rpm -qi pkg | dpkg --status pkg Such a limited rosetta stone already exists. The problem though is not limited to maning existing .deb files. You also want to be able to create new debs. :-( ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 12, 2007 9:09 AM, kenta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> An automatic transmission doesn't know which way I'm going to turn. > > That car analogy isn't making sense to me As an example: An AT doesn't know that I'm about to turn a corner and go up a hill, so it doesn't know to down-shift in advance to give me a little extra momentum going into the turn. You get the idea. Point is, I have a better idea of what I'm about to do than a machine will. At least until they implement that direct neural interface. (And then it will probably only work with MS-Windows.) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday 12 November 2007 11:57:22 am Coleman Kane wrote: > Steven W. Orr wrote: > > On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 11:14 -, quoth Neil Joseph Schelly: > > > =>Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? [...] > > > > This is not a question of liking what you're familiar with. All of us > > know the difference between learning from man pages and having a proper > > source for learning idiomatic usage. > > Sounds like you're in a good position to put together that document ;). A cheat sheet that translated all common rpm-ese into deb-ian would be kinda cool (and vice versa). Example (dpkg command examples may be on crack): TASK | RPM | DEB install pkg | rpm -ivh pkg.rpm | dpkg -i pkg.deb get pkg info | rpm -qi pkg | dpkg --status pkg -- Jarod Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday 12 November 2007 11:14:40 am Neil Joseph Schelly wrote: > On Monday 12 November 2007 10:50, Steven W. Orr wrote: > > This disturbs me. I hear great things about Ubuntu, but AFAICT, Fedora is > > the best and most cutting edge distro AND it's RPM based. I'm sorry, but > > I have no desire to move to a deb based system. > > > > If I was to contemplate a different distro, is there anything that is RPM > > based that people can say better things about? I don't know of any major contender in the rpm-based world outside of Fedora, openSUSE and Mandriva. I've played with openSUSE 10.3 a bit, and really don't have anything nice to say about it, other than its nice to have flash working out of the box. Of course, I only poked at their Gnome desktop, which has this ghastly Gnome menu replacement thing that I believe attempts to emulate some crap in Vista. Probably possible to turn that off, but overall, the desktop still just felt slow and clunky (I saw similar reviews in the wild), and looked way too much like it was trying to be Windows, which may or may not be a coincidence, given the whole Novell/MS pact... I've heard good things about KDE in 10.3 from a buddy though. I'll have to check that out at some point. Oh, and yast still makes me gag with some of the stupid crap it does... Playing with the latest Mandriva is also still on my todo list. Prior releases have felt more like toys than an OS I'd want for a development workstation or a server though. > Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? If you have a distro you like, > then you use it. If you're looking for another one, then you're already > looking to change the respositories and the filesystem layouts and daemons > and other nuances that differentiate one distro from another. I guess if > you're in the market for a new distro already, why eliminate DEB-based > ones? In my own case, its a fairly major distinction, because I already know rpm inside and out. I know how to build an rpm quickly from scratch, from the spec file up, including some fairly complex ones. I know how to take an existing src.rpm and create an updated/patched rpm out of it. I know various ways to manipulate an rpm at install/uninstall/upgrade time. I know how to manually unpack an rpm w/o actually installing it. I know how to extract all sorts of information about what's installed on my system from the rpm database. And so on. I'm sure with some time and effort, I could figure out how to do at least most of the same with a deb-based system, but there's definitely a learning curve. Last time I tried to do some of the same things I regularly do with a kernel src.rpm, I just about lost my lunch. -- Jarod Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
Steven W. Orr wrote: > On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 11:14 -, quoth Neil Joseph Schelly: > > =>On Monday 12 November 2007 10:50, Steven W. Orr wrote: > =>> This disturbs me. I hear great things about Ubuntu, but AFAICT, Fedora is > =>> the best and most cutting edge distro AND it's RPM based. I'm sorry, but > =>> I have no desire to move to a deb based system. > =>> > =>> If I was to contemplate a different distro, is there anything that is RPM > =>> based that people can say better things about? > => > =>Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? If you have a distro you like, > then > =>you use it. If you're looking for another one, then you're already looking > =>to change the respositories and the filesystem layouts and daemons and > other > =>nuances that differentiate one distro from another. I guess if you're in > the > =>market for a new distro already, why eliminate DEB-based ones? > > The simple answer is that I highly prefer rpm over debian. The access is > far simpler. Full use of deb files implies about 13 different packages be > loaded just to do deb things. I'm in a situation right now where I have to > create .deb files and, while I'm getting my job done, I can tell you there > is no book that you can buy to teach you all you need to know about the > hundreds of places where documentation exists on how it all works > together. > > I'm living with it and I have a few things I know how to do, but compared > to RPM and the available docs for it, deb files suck big green donkey > dicks. > > This is not a question of liking what you're familiar with. All of us know > the difference between learning from man pages and having a proper source > for learning idiomatic usage. > Sounds like you're in a good position to put together that document ;). -- Coleman ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 11:14 -, quoth Neil Joseph Schelly: =>On Monday 12 November 2007 10:50, Steven W. Orr wrote: =>> This disturbs me. I hear great things about Ubuntu, but AFAICT, Fedora is =>> the best and most cutting edge distro AND it's RPM based. I'm sorry, but =>> I have no desire to move to a deb based system. =>> =>> If I was to contemplate a different distro, is there anything that is RPM =>> based that people can say better things about? => =>Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? If you have a distro you like, then =>you use it. If you're looking for another one, then you're already looking =>to change the respositories and the filesystem layouts and daemons and other =>nuances that differentiate one distro from another. I guess if you're in the =>market for a new distro already, why eliminate DEB-based ones? The simple answer is that I highly prefer rpm over debian. The access is far simpler. Full use of deb files implies about 13 different packages be loaded just to do deb things. I'm in a situation right now where I have to create .deb files and, while I'm getting my job done, I can tell you there is no book that you can buy to teach you all you need to know about the hundreds of places where documentation exists on how it all works together. I'm living with it and I have a few things I know how to do, but compared to RPM and the available docs for it, deb files suck big green donkey dicks. This is not a question of liking what you're familiar with. All of us know the difference between learning from man pages and having a proper source for learning idiomatic usage. -- Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0. happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0 Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000 individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday 12 November 2007 10:50, Steven W. Orr wrote: > This disturbs me. I hear great things about Ubuntu, but AFAICT, Fedora is > the best and most cutting edge distro AND it's RPM based. I'm sorry, but > I have no desire to move to a deb based system. > > If I was to contemplate a different distro, is there anything that is RPM > based that people can say better things about? Why is RPM or DEB a determining factor? If you have a distro you like, then you use it. If you're looking for another one, then you're already looking to change the respositories and the filesystem layouts and daemons and other nuances that differentiate one distro from another. I guess if you're in the market for a new distro already, why eliminate DEB-based ones? -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Monday, Nov 12th 2007 at 07:30 -, quoth Jon 'maddog' Hall: =>My personal favorite is this: => => =>> I will eventually add some workarounds for =>> this. But it's low priority on my list, given the closed source nature =>> of Flash. Oh, and Flash is evil anyway. ;-) => =>Even with the wink, I can hear lots of people moving away from Fedora. This disturbs me. I hear great things about Ubuntu, but AFAICT, Fedora is the best and most cutting edge distro AND it's RPM based. I'm sorry, but I have no desire to move to a deb based system. If I was to contemplate a different distro, is there anything that is RPM based that people can say better things about? -- Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0. happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0 Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000 individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Saturday 10 November 2007 23:00, Ben Scott wrote: > Okay, so I installed Fedora 8 today. > > Is this the way the architects intend things to be? Are the people > behind Fedora/KDE/GNOME/FreeDesktop.org/whatever really intent on > making Linux as complicated and inter-coupled as possible? Have they > completely abandoned the Unix Philosophy? The Communist government was supposed to wither to nothing once the People's Paradise was established. The labors unions are supposed to retreat to a watchdog status once the injustices of corporations are corrected. It is in human nature that people want to hold on to their jobs (power) even after the task is completed. I froze my Microsoft adventure at Windows 98. Many versions of the 3 programs I run on it have been produced since, most of them for later systems only. I still can't find a single feature that they added in 7 years that I really need. Keep copies of your current and old distributions! We may have 99% of whatever good operating system software will ever be produced. Jim Kuzdrall ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
My personal favorite is this: > I will eventually add some workarounds for > this. But it's low priority on my list, given the closed source nature > of Flash. Oh, and Flash is evil anyway. ;-) Even with the wink, I can hear lots of people moving away from Fedora. md -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006) (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 04:46:46PM -0500, Ben Scott wrote: > I did go looking for information. What I found suggests the > architects just don't get it, and are not interested in getting it. > > Example: When PulseAudio (which also apparently depends on D-BUS) > was made the default on Fedora, it was stated that people who didn't > like sound servers should go back to hiding under their rock. > > http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2007-August/msg01196.html Wow, talk about not getting it: "And test your application with PA! Unfortunately, due to the heavy balkanization of Linux audio it is necessary to go through this list for each app seperately, and if necessary do some manual modifications to each seperately." So, there is this problem with Linux audio, that there are too many incompatable audio APIs. We have this great solution, we'll create a new one and try to convince everyone to switch to it! Idiots. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] OpenPGP KeyID 0x57C3430B Holder of Past Knowledge CS, O- "Good God! This math is laced with physics. I said I wanted *pure* math!" B.C. Holmes ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
On Nov 11, 2007 3:23 PM, Ted Roche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I believe ConsoleKit was introduced to support multiple user desktop > switching. From what I found, ConsoleKit was introduced to replace pam_console. Reportedly, pam_console was buggy and could not handle multi-headed systems. Why, exactly, "Improve pam_console" was not an acceptable solution was never explained. Multi-headed systems being a system with multiple KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) stations. > Your Google-Foo is powerful ... I did go looking for information. What I found suggests the architects just don't get it, and are not interested in getting it. Example: When PulseAudio (which also apparently depends on D-BUS) was made the default on Fedora, it was stated that people who didn't like sound servers should go back to hiding under their rock. http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2007-August/msg01196.html > I think it's the "Fast" part of User Switching that's the issue; stuff > resident in memory tracking each session? Why does it need to be a daemon in memory? One that took up megabytes of RAM on my system, I might add. Disk files -- namely, wtmp and utmp -- have served Unix well for 30 or so years. It seems reasonable to conclude that disk files would serve equally well for this. If it's a single-user system, the impact is nil; if they're getting hit all the time the kernel will cache them anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy > Could there be stateful stuff (excuse the technical terms) > that wouldn't be appropriate to script? Script? I never mentioned scripting. Irrelevant, anyway. When logins happen (or user switches, or anything else), standard library calls get invoked. With this scheme, calls to the ConsoleKit daemon via the D-Bus daemon are part of the library calls. I submit that one could more easily, more reliability, and with less resources simply update a disk file. > "In a f-u-s scenario with two users logged in, A and B, the last one > to log in wins. Hence, when switching back to the first session, some > devices are now not accessible." Yes, pam_console had a similar limitation, although I believe it was that the first to login won. But I'm not talking about user switching; I'm talking about a single user -- me. Runing startx. Apparently ConsoleKit is adding an ACL entry when I login on the tty1, but then removing it when the X server switches to tty7. If I switch back to tty1, it puts the ACL entry back. If I switch back to tty7 again, it removes it again. The end result is, I can only play sound from tty1, not from my X session. In other words, it's broken for just me, let alone multiple users. > "Proposed fix is to use ACL's on device nodes; hence more than one user > can own the device node." It does appear to be using ACL's now. Just not in a way that makes sense. > Is this a case of "Those who fail to learn from Windows are doomed to > reinvent it?" It does remind me of MS-Windows, where to do anything, you need a running Service and a slew of registry entires some DLLs and a COM library. Ick. Maybe they *are* turning Linux into MS-Windows. If so, for the love of light, why?!? > It does look like they're trying to lift the OS X feature ... OS X feature? Unix and the X Window System have been multi-headed and multi-user for 20 years. I was doing "Fast User Switching" by running multiple X servers on different virtual consoles back in 1999. I gather they're trying to enable FUS on a single VC, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but they're doing a horrible job at it. "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." -- Henry Spencer -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
Ben Scott wrote: > In Fedora 8, a daemon has shown up called "ConsoleKit". The job of > this daemon is apparently to track login sessions. Why on God's green > Earth do we need a daemon -- an always running background process -- > for this? It could just as easily be done using library routines that > get invoked only when needed (i.e., login, logout, user switch, etc.). I believe ConsoleKit was introduced to support multiple user desktop switching. Your Google-Foo is powerful; I'm sure you'll see it, too. I think it's the "Fast" part of User Switching that's the issue; stuff resident in memory tracking each session? Could there be stateful stuff (excuse the technical terms) that wouldn't be appropriate to script? > ... More and more of these things appear with each > release... Even worse, this functionality is apparently broken. "At the moment we chown the device node for certain devices to the user of the unprivileged desktop session. In a f-u-s scenario with two users logged in, A and B, the last one to log in wins. Hence, when switching back to the first session, some devices are now not accessible." "Proposed fix is to use ACL's on device nodes; hence more than one user can own the device node." http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching (this page is marked up as Fedora 7; unclear if further work has gone on... Is this a case of "Those who fail to learn from Windows are doomed to reinvent it?" It does look like they're trying to lift the OS X feature, but from the wiki page it doesn't look all that well considered. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy
Okay, so I installed Fedora 8 today. As is my custom, I turned off the various and sundry magic daemons that Fedora's been shipping for years and years. These are daemons which do various magic things, like detect my hardware, mount my disks, and so on. I've never liked those things. They're over-complicated. They suffer from high coupling and low cohesion. They re-invent wheels that have existed for years or decades, to no apparent gain. They're poorly documented. They do not grok The Unix Philosophy. Plus, I've always been able to do a better job at knowing my hardware and mounting my disks than the machine can. This is largely because I know what I plan on doing, and the machine doesn't. Same reason I prefer a standard transmission to an automatic. An automatic transmission doesn't know which way I'm going to turn. In Fedora 8, a daemon has shown up called "ConsoleKit". The job of this daemon is apparently to track login sessions. Why on God's green Earth do we need a daemon -- an always running background process -- for this? It could just as easily be done using library routines that get invoked only when needed (i.e., login, logout, user switch, etc.). I keep expecting these design failures to improve, as people realize the error of their ways. However, at least in Fedora, the opposite has been happening: More and more of these things appear with each release. This wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that in Fedora 8, it's apparently mandatory to run these daemons for things to work properly. Shut them down, and I get constantly spewing errors and no sound. The sound appears to be a permissions issue. Apparently ConsoleKit and/or haldaemon is responsible for granting my user account permissions to the sound device nodes under /dev/. Even worse, this functionality is apparently broken. If I login on the console, /dev/mixer gets an ACL entry granting my account permission. If I run "startx", that ACL entry is removed. [ALT]+[F1] back to text console, it comes back. [ALT]+[F7] back to text console, it goes away. Um. Who thought that would be a good idea? Is this the way the architects intend things to be? Are the people behind Fedora/KDE/GNOME/FreeDesktop.org/whatever really intent on making Linux as complicated and inter-coupled as possible? Have they completely abandoned the Unix Philosophy? I'm asking here because I know there are people reading this list who are close to the source. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
