Hacker News Reader

Comment by rnhmjoj | Hacker News Reader

I hate the binary logs of journald, the unnecessary complexity of stuff like systemd-hostnamed, dbus and the ignore-invalid-options policy but the init system it's actually very good.

I don't want to return to a pile bash scripts with `sleep n` to get the system to boot, even if it's a proven method.

View on HN

This "pile bash scripts with sleep n" was at least debuggable and could be inspected and traced in different ways. With systemd, when something doesn't work as expected (which is often when you do anything that deviates even a little from standard), tough luck.

The sad part is that much of the "standard" is not really standard, but what systemd thinks is "standard".

Or that they cling to "standard on paper" rather than "standard in use", and thus end up rolling back decades of real life usage in the process.

With systemd, perfect very much is the enemy of good. And both unix and Linux go where it is not by being perfect but by being good.

> The sad part is that much of the "standard" is not really standard, but what systemd thinks is "standard".

I didn't mean "standard" as in "POSIX 1003.1e", "SUSv3", or "RFC 3549", I meant it as in "whatever is currently most widely in use". Which actually reinforces your point.

Many other dependency/supervisor driven init systems exist (upstart, minit, daemontools, etc.). Upstart even was the Ubuntu default for a while.

One of them should be adopted and fleshed out before systemd causes even more damage.

There should be competition but no one is willing to step up to the plate. That's the real issue.

That's false. There are several daemon managers designed to run as PID 1, starting with upstart the parent mentioned and you silently dismissed. The problem lays elsewhere.

Try OpenRC, really, give it a try.

Simple, sane bash-like scripts, logging like you're used to and so easy to debug, and when you need to do your own custom stuff, simple and just works.

Gentoo showed me this tool a few years ago. So happy.

For years now I've heard loud stories about systemd +1 or -1. Same arguments over and over.

Meanwhile, dozens of my servers and desktops and laptops keep humming along, I've like just never had to fuck with it.

I should buy the OpenRC team some pizza. Thank you!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com