[Tfug] systemd

[Jude Nelson]

My Debian machines will run systemd once they've pried sysvinit from my
cold, dead fingers.  The systemd developers have done a great job at
getting their program adopted by means of "tactical coding"--as in,
coupling together previously uncoupled programs (for questionable
benefit) so that it in order to run one, you need most/all of systemd to do
so.  I do not trust such people to have my best interests at heart.

The only "good" things about systemd that I can see are that it offers a
declarative way to describe services, and that it uses cgroups to offer a
reliable "service stop" command.  However, Debian already has a
systemd-unit-to-init-script compiler that gets me the first benefit, and I
can put processes into cgroups myself to get the second benefit if it is
needed (i.e. using the cgroups tools, or LXC).  So, why use systemd at all?

A lot of users like to tout its fast boot/shutdown times, but honestly how
often do you reboot?  I regularly go ~3 months between laptop reboots, and
my servers regularly run for about a year between reboots.  I'm not going
to miss the 40 seconds savings per shutdown/startup.

One of these days I'm going to fork the start-stop-daemon binary to make it
put a daemon into its own cgroup to start it, and destroy the cgroup (and
all of its processes) to stop it.  Bam!  Automatic and reliable "service
stop" without systemd.

Maybe while I'm at it, I'll make start-stop-daemon accept systemd unit
files by having it use the Debian systemd-unit-to-init-script compiler to
generate the initscript, and then run the initscript (and the daemon it
spawns) in its own cgroup.  Then, you can replace your initscripts with a
bunch of unit files that compile to initscripts, and replace your old
initscripts with a BSD-style initscript that just runs starts-stop-daemon a
bunch of times for each unit file.

-Jude

On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 6:30 PM, erich <erich1 at copper.net> wrote:

> Is everybody using it now?
>
> I've decided that the upgrades to my box are so drastic. That
> I'm installing on a new hard drive off line rather than monkey
> with an existing system that uses init. (I'm also getting Grub 2.
> This means making an extra partition on the new drive)
>
> Erich
>
>
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