Your thoughts about init system

I've had the same username since before the original FreeBSD forum 17 years ago. I created it some number of years before that on the Hutch's MASM assembly language forum. It was originally the complete drhowarddrfinedrhoward (if you're a Stooges fan) but it got truncated by a forum software upgrade. Hence the current version today.
 
Thank you VERY much for your invaluable fruitation of my never ending pondering about the future of the almighty BeaSD; may I mention this thread in the next week's BMW?
 
The init system is easy.
It's easy to edit /etc/rc.subr ; /etc/rc.d/* ; /usr/local/etc/rc.d/*
I wonder however if "sh" the best language. I think you could use lua or another language which is more readable.
 
The other distro is devuan, which uses openrc.
You don't care about the init system unless you want to tune it according to your own needs.
And there is where systemd can become a pain.
 
Weirdly Linux could really benefit from just one init system. It will reduce the burden on packagers and reduce fragmentation. However that init system also needs to be competent and UNIX-like.

I actually don't mind systemd. (Windows 3.1 style .ini files are easy to use after all). However I prefer working with UNIX technologies. It is the UNIX design that has stood the test of time, not necessarily individual operating systems. Linux is popular enough that systemd won't kill it now. However if systemd was introduced when Linux was much younger, it would have been much less successful.
 
You don't care about the init system unless you want to tune it according to your own needs.
And there is where systemd can become a pain.
Or, if something misbehaves and you want to have a look to fix it :rolleyes:

But, especially about the "tune to your needs" part, I had my share of "fun" with systemd. E.g. when I needed to run multiple instances of the same service. It felt like black magic how to make this work with systemd.

With FreeBSD's mewburn rc, although it isn't directly supported, init scripts for services where this makes sense implement a very simple workaround using just symlinks…
 
The rc scripts do what they are supposed to and I guess there is hardly any pressure to replace them with anything in the default install.

systemd is an integrated init, inetd, dbusd and udevd, user login support, plus some network and container management stuff in one blackboxed piece. It's as anti-UNIX as it can only be. (Ok, it doesn't have a built-in MP3 player... yet). It was created on the wave of mimicking some commercially available operating systems based on false perception that if something sells for a lot of money then it must be better somehow.

When it was being introduced, the official explanation was that laptops would boot faster. While I can't personally see any difference (maybe systemd is a second faster compared to sysvinit), the main thing is that total reboot of a Linux-based laptop is not a typical everyday user experience. So it solved a non-existing problem in a rarely executed scenario.

Second explanation was that it could automatically restart services. Apart from the fact that init and most of its alternatives can do that, that's usually not something you want to do. For example if a database crashes with SIGSEGV, an uncotrolled restart is not very much desireable.
 
The other distro is devuan, which uses openrc.
You don't care about the init system unless you want to tune it according to your own needs.
And there is where systemd can become a pain.
I have tried Devaun (which is derived from debian)with openrc, as well as Artix (which is derived from arch) with openrc. Both are good but they all have the drawbacks of being linux making them obviously not FreeBSD. If you've used FreeBSD you most likely will not return to linux.
 
Second explanation was that it could automatically restart services. Apart from the fact that init and most of its alternatives can do that, that's usually not something you want to do. For example if a database crashes with SIGSEGV, an uncotrolled restart is not very much desireable.
Because Poettering didn´t know the difference between an init system and a supervisor. At this point, since systemd is an octopus supposed to do everything, it doesn´t really matter anymore.
 
I think anymore, systemd is already well on the way to being an octopus encompassing everything; they already pushed out the part that now systemd controls your user home directory and does it's own encryption stuff. Eventually, they'll just include their own kernel and lock in everything even more.
 
I think anymore, systemd is already well on the way to being an octopus encompassing everything; they already pushed out the part that now systemd controls your user home directory and does it's own encryption stuff. Eventually, they'll just include their own kernel and lock in everything even more.
As part of the big plan, since you have more things outside of the systemd that copes with them, such as gnome and everything also entangled with gnome. If you look outside the box, there´s more to come.
 
Ah yes, amused, the new systemd add-on daemon which will control the flow of humour and entertainment that is permitted on one's system.
They´ll probably create a systemd-nocomplaind so you can´t blame systemd for trashing your system. Also, with a nocomplaind-list.service with a list of words that you can´t use against systemd.
 
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