QR code generator is not a common feature of an init system, yet systemd includes one. Modern attempt at OS packaging (a.k.a. containerization) is not a weird thing in such a neighbourhood at all.
The systemd init system doesn't have a qrcode generator. This is typical anti-systemd FUD of trying to conflate the systemd init process and the other processes available as part of the systemd project.
The separate journald log server available as part of the systemd project can generate qrcodes. journald can cryptographically sign logs so that future log tampering can be detected. This requires two keys, a sealing key and a verification key. The verification key must be stored off server. When the keys are generated systemd can display a qrcode to allow easy recording of the verification key.
I mostly like systemd, but judging the project as an init system with a bunch of other functionality tacked on is completely fair. The init daemon requires the logging daemon and vice versa, so they aren't really separate.
Ah yes, this totally separate journald that you can replace with something
else, except that you cannot, you can only run it in forwarding mode beside
other logging daemon. Very modular. Totally not a part of an init system.
In all honesty I've never yet administered a system where the addition of systemd solved a problem I actually had. I would gladly go back to Upstart (or hell, even sysv) in a heartbeat.
Put another way, as a couple of anecdotes at $day_job, the boot time benefits (the one thing people always seem to bring up in defense of this ever-growing behemoth) were eaten up months ago in time troubleshooting, transitioning, and working around its corner cases.
More humorously, the words "fucking" and "goddamn" used to be followed by the name of some internal program known for being clunky. After getting up to Ubuntu 16 and Cent 7 in the whole environment, those words tend to be followed by "systemd".
Counter-anecdote - since switching to operating systems using systemd, I haven’t had a single bug or issue with the init system or writing startup scripts, because finally they use incredibly obvious files that I can write myself.
For me it’s basically magic that I can now write a simple declarative file that describes how to run an application, and from there it works with all of the expected features.
Yes. However, systemd did this part certainly right --- the service files and their dependencies are much easier to understand compared to e.g. its counterpart in upstart.
I have found that systemd solves many problems. I couldn't care less about boot times, especially on servers. The service startup with dependencies is very nice and easy compared to sysv. You write like 10 lines and it just works. You get status output of the service without having to grep through the log file. Sometimes you don't need a logfile, which makes this even better, as you don't need to use screen/tmux workarounds. You see if a service is running or has exited.
Same for timers. Debugging not running cronjobs is a pain in comparison.
Writing sysv init scripts is so fucking shit, people started to dump everything in /etc/rc.local, especially for earlier RPi versions of Debian.
I can't fathom why it's so popular for Java programs to ship a slew of poorly-tested shell scripts that read environment variables and config files, and transform these into -D arguments to the java command. Why on earth don't they just o that with Java!?
Indeed, I have referred to your web site many times over the years while unpicking various horrific daemon control shell scripts in order to run them under sane init systems... :)
We used Upstart until just a couple of years ago, and it was still losing service processes regularly (as in, you start a service, then you stop it, but the process keeps running, despite Upstart telling you it's stopped).
I don't know if systemd is better (I've never managed a server fleet with it), but Upstart certainly wasn't good enough.
It seems some people on HN love to hate sytemd. Even though they can't come up with an alternative that's better.
I hated systemd before it was cool to hate systemd. I never had a problem with sysvinit as the root casuse, but I had many problems with systemd as the root cause.
Hint: both sysvinit and BSD init are better. They are more mature, have fewer moving parts, are easier to debug without specialized tools, and are better understood. Plus the decoupled nature of init systems reap bonuses for system stability (unlike systemd).
Having a QR code parser as part of something that's tangentially related to the init system in concept but deeply embedded into systemd in practice is exactly what the post you were replying to is complainig about. It's unnecessarily complex.
Not sure what else you're doing with a QR library, except maybe building tetris (which seems like a bad idea for something purported to be an init system).
Sure it is. An init system should, first and foremost, be stable and well understood. By virtue of its size and youth, systemd is not (at least not by devs and end users).
But all those words are meaningless. "stable" and "well understood" could also be said of systemd. There is no metric to it. By that logic we could go back to using software from before 20 years, because they are "stable".
I have noticed that systemd is "stable" and "well understood" because I have no problems with it. But would that convince someone else?
To be honest, @inferiorhuman keeps providing you with well supported reasoning for his position, whilst your only contribution appears to be "that doesn't meet my personal standards", which is devoid of any meaningful content for the rest of us. I am a committed systemd argument aficionado, and would really like to see a more supported set of arguments from your side. So far, @inferiorhuman is winning this debate.
It's typical in a systemd discussion that a link dump to broken stuff appears. Weather or not these are indeed broken - that is not explained. FWIW at least there are bug reports. The conclusion that because of those reports sysvinit is better, is false. It could just be that nobody cares about sysvinit anymore, so fewer bug reports happen.
It's typical in a systemd discussion that a link dump to broken stuff appears
Please help me understand this line of reasoning. Someone has a list of reasons as to why they believe systemd is not a good fit for them, and something else works better. They get told "prove it isn't a good fit for you". They prove this with some line of argumentation. They get told "that is your opinion only, and that doesn't count". They provide links to show many other users have the same issues, and they feel these issues have not been given due consideration. They get told "typical systemd haters, they always provide a link dump with broken stuff, it doesn't mean anything"
This has pretty much become the default template for the systemd pro/con arguments, and is unwinnable. FWIW, my problem with systemd is that it broke the concept of free choice in my environment. It was harshly shoved down everyone's throat, through politics rather then the usual meritocratic methods. I appreciate that this was a commercially advantageous position for the various distro maintainers, which lead me to cancel all my (thousands) of distro support agreements.
It is the political approach that was taken that gives rise to serious suspicions for me. If the system cannot stand on its' own feet from the meritocratic perspective, and needs to resort to all kinds of political games to gain a substantive foothold, my default position is not one of trust.
The "la la la i-can't-hear-you" systemd fanboy troupe response whenever someone attempts to make a well-supported argument against systemd only fuels my distrust of the whole systemd story.
As I mentioned, I vote with my feet and wallet. I use Alpine wherever possible.
> It could just be that nobody cares about sysvinit anymore, so fewer bug reports happen.
Waving your hands and suggesting everything is going to have bugs isn't much of an argument. It's unlikely that sysvinit would suffer from any of these bugs as there's simply a much smaller vector of attack than systemd by design. You could knock me over with a feather if arbitrary network traffic could compromise your system via sysvinit. The other class of bugs are ones where sysvinit is the defined behavior and systemd is simply deviating in unexpected, unintuitive, and undocumented ways.
