[Cialug] The systemd Init System

[Matthew Nuzum]

I disagree, but not strongly. I think that it should be emphasized it is a
philosophy, not a rule. It is the same philosophy that is behind the
popularity of micro-services, which makes for a good example. Some jobs are
very well suited for a micro-service or a single-purpose pipeline and some
aren't. If you're in doubt, err on the side of small, because it's a lot
easier to expand than it is to contract. (I promise that's not a dieting
reference)

Sometimes smaller isn't better and more is more.

On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 7:58 AM jim kraai <jimgkraai at gmail.com> wrote:

> some will disagree here, and for some good reasons, but hear me out ...
>
> that philosophy died hard several decades ago :-(
>
> it was a good philosophy compared to mainframe batch jobs, which i'm sure
> was part of the motivation for it in the first place
>
> big reasons:
> 1. that philosophy doesn't make it easier to support the complex workflow
> graphs that complex specialized applications do better by some ways of
> measuring 'better'
> 2. the magical relational database and all that that became
> and others, but i'm out of time
>
> i miss that philosophy, but it was already dead before i ever touched a
> unix terminal
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 11:53 PM, Scott Yates <Scott at yatesframe.com> wrote:
>
> > Thank you for your replies.
> >
> > I see the points you are making, and understand why this would be
> helpful.
> >
> > One last thought:  This seems like it breaks with the Unix philosophy of
> > small, chain-able apps that "Do one thing very well".
> >
> > Maybe this is just a case where that philosophy breaks down?
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us> wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 4:13 PM, Scott Yates <Scott at yatesframe.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Specifically, systemd seems to have the idea that all other init
> > systems
> > > > are broken
> > >
> > >
> > > Yes, in fact they are (IMNSHO).
> > >
> > >
> > > > and they have taken it on themselves to "fix" them.  The idea
> > > > of a monolithic init system makes me nervous because it throws away
> 30+
> > > > years of proven ideas.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Just because we've been limping along with sysvinit doesn't make them
> > > proven.  And actually, there's a very good chance you're not even using
> > > sysvinit anymore - Ubuntu replaced sysvinit with upstart in 2006, RHEL
> 6
> > > shipped with upstart in 2010, Mac OS X Tiger shipped with launchd in
> > 2005,
> > > Solaris has used SMF since at least 2005.  I'm sure that there are
> other
> > > examples that I'm not aware of.  systemd is building on and refining a
> > lot
> > > of what has come before.
> > >
> > >
> > > > Binary logging similarly bothers me.  Logging systems have been in
> > place
> > > > for years and have been battle tested and proven.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Utter crap.  Once you want to do more than occasionally grep through
> the
> > > log files, you'll quickly discover how broken things are.  First of
> all,
> > > most programs don't log timestamps with enough precision.  Timestamps
> > that
> > > only include seconds are almost worthless.  Millisecond precision
> > (0.001s)
> > > is just barely adequate.  Nanosecond precision (0.000001) second would
> be
> > > preferable.  Second, most programs don't log timestamps with a time
> zone.
> > > When you can reach out and touch all of your servers you wouldn't think
> > > that time zones in log files matters, but when you have systems spread
> > > across multiple time zones, all of a sudden it matters a lot.  Third,
> > most
> > > programs get log rotation wrong, or don't do it at all and leave it to
> > > external programs like logrotate that cause as many problems as they
> > > solve.  Fourth, when dealing with lots of log data, you really want
> them
> > > structured and indexed so that they can be efficiently searched.
> > >
> > > And that's just getting me started...
> > >
> > > The whole mind-set of fixing things that are not broken bothers me.
> > > >
> > >
> > > A lot of us do not share that opinion.  Early on in the project Lennart
> > > Poettering spent a lot of time explaining why the previous init systems
> > > were broken.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Jeff Ollie
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> > >
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