Systemd Absorbs "su" Command Functionality 747
jones_supa writes: With a pull request systemd now supports a su command functional and can create privileged sessions that are fully isolated from the original session. The su command is seen as bad because what it is supposed to do is ambiguous. On one hand it's supposed to open a new session and change a number of execution context parameters, and on the other it's supposed to inherit a lot concepts from the originating session. Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept. It will given you kind of a shell, and it's fine to use it for that, but it's not a full login, and shouldn't be mistaken for one." The replacement command provided by systemd is machinectl shell.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept
Declaring established concepts as broken so you can "fix" them.
Su is not a broken concept; it's a long well-established fundamental of BSD Unix/Linux. You need a shell with some commands to be run with additional privileges in the original user's context.
If you need a full login you invoke 'su -' or 'sudo bash -'
Deciding what a full login comprises is the shell's responsibility, not your init system's job.
Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, let me explain some of the problems that I've had with su.
Oh wait. I've never had problems with su. Ever. What is up with this???
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe mixing su with systemd is like mixing PCP and acid
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe mixing su with systemd is like mixing PCP and acid
Sulfuric or hydrochloric?
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know that. Aaaaaaaargh!
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly, seriously sometimes wonder if systemd is Skynet... or, a way for Skynet to 'waken'.
And if Pottering isn't just a T3 from the future or some such, working to prepared the existing internet for it to awaken.
I mean, really -- honestly, he has essentially re-written the entire userland, as one package, maintained by one. More kernel patches are next.
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Funny)
I honestly, seriously sometimes wonder if systemd is Skynet... or, a way for Skynet to 'waken'.
Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15am it crashes.
No one knows why. The binary log file was corrupted in the process and is unrecoverable. All anyone could remember is a bug listed in the systemd bug tracker talking about su which was classified as WON'T FIX as the developer thought it was a broken concept.
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
The more I hear about LP and systemd, the more it screams out that this guy just hasn't worked with Unix and Linux long enough to understand what it's used for and why it's built the way it is. His pronouncements just sound to me like an echo of my younger, stupider, self (and I just turned 30), and I can't take any of his output seriously. I really hope a critical mass of people are of the same mind with me and this guy can be made to redirect his energies somewhere where it doesn't fuck it up for the rest of us.
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hang on a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
its the other way around. we used to have small, simple programs that did not take whole systems to build and gigs of mem to run in. things were easier to understand and concepts were not overdone a hundred times, just because 'reasons'.
now, we have software that can't be debugged well, people who are current software eng's have no attention span to fix bugs or do proper design, older guys who DO remember 'why' are no longer being hired and we can't seem to stand on our giants' shoulders anymore. again, because 'reasons'.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. And the biggest problem is that he seems to be very intelligent, hard-working, talented, and ... megalomaniac.
I suppose he thinks he's on par with Linus, even though he has maybe 5% of his insight and experience.
Re:Hang on a minute... More done by fewer and fewe (Score:3)
Re: Hang on a minute... (Score:3)
Process Tracking (Score:4, Interesting)
You haven't been paying attention these last 20 years when every unix vendor has replaced SysV init with something else.
Writing init scripts is not a one time annoyance, at least not for distro maintainers. They are also not portable between distributions, as systemd unit files are. SysV init is also literally the dumbest form of init, where the init process has no information about dependencies, and cannot react sensibly to any changes in system state. Another sticking point involved the inability of the system to track processes accurately, which resulted in a number of kernel-level features over the years, of which cgroups are merely the most recent. Yes, it's fairly rare to have things go wrong, but pidfiles are unquestionably a bad hack.
Init is a misnomer. It was supposed to be the method by which your system changed states, but it was never very good at this, so people are used to thinking of it only as handling a few rare circumstances. The problem systemd solves is how to get the computer from state A to state B reliably, and guarantee that the services it manages are started properly. Startup and shutdown are special cases of this problem. It is built on kernel-level features that allow it to track processes accurately (and incidentally also track resource useage).
Systemd is the result of a number of (IMO) obvious choices. Cgroups exist, therefore it makes sense to write a service management tool to take advantage of them. As long as you're writing a service management tool, you should probably write in dependency resolution. Handling startup and shutdown is another logical choice. Also, since 95% of init script contents are common tasks, it makes sense to abstract out that stuff into a common C-based library. At this point it is relevant to note that, cgroups aside, OpenRC does this exact same thing.
Writing scripts is part of UNIX, and systemd coexists with them pretty happily. However, rewriting scripts into more flexible C libraries is also part of the UNIX tradition. What's so hot about these scripts, besides that you're more comfortable working with them?
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Poettering is so very wrong on many things, having a superficial and shallow understanding of why Unix is designed the way it is. He is just a hobbyist, not a hardened sys admin with years of experience. It's almost time to throw popular Linux distros in the garbage can and just go to BSD
Change for change's sake (Score:2, Insightful)
"Delivering" the wrong thing is not an asset, it's a liability.
And that's why Poettering is a liability to the Linux community.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of programmers who can spew out hundreds of lines of crap code in a day.
The problem is that others then have to spend years fixing it.
It's even worse when you let the code-spewers actually design the system, because you'll never be allowed to go back and redo things right.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
He bring new code, but brings nothing new. That's called re-inventing the wheel, and in Poettering's case, the old wheels worked better and didn't go flat as often, and were easier for average people to fix.
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What we're dealing with now is something that neither "average person" nor "master geek" find easy to fix.
This is the best summary I've seen of the whole systemd thing. They try to Apple-ize linux but it's half-baked and neither more user-friendly or more reliable than the stuff they replace.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had the same complaint about CUPS -- Apple's screwball replacement for simple lpd -- for years. (And it's not just the Linux version that, IMHO, sucks. I recently had to live through using CUPS in an Apple shop and getting hard copy of anything was a real time sink.) I have a hard time figuring out what problem CUPS was intended to solve. All I can come up with was that it was shiny and new whereas lpd was old (but reliable). For my trusty, rock-solid HP LaserJet, I keep an old Linux distribution running so I can set it up using LPRng. A couple of lines in a text file and -- Voila! -- I have a print queue. Time spent^Wwasted in CUPS' GUI never seemed to make anything work.
Systemd and well, just about anything Poettering touches is more obtuse than what it replaces, has commands that are difficult to remember, require more typing (making them prone to typos), and don't make much sense. Am I looking for the status of "servicename" or am I looking for the status of "servicename.target"? What's the difference? The guy's pushing me back to Slackware. Or, as someone above mentioned, BSD.
The way this should end (Score:4, Insightful)
In the long run, he's not going to be satisfied until he's created his own OS, kernel and all because he calls anything he didn't write a "broken concept," whatever that is, and does his best to shove his version down everybody's throat. And, since his version is far more complex, far more pervasive and much, much harder to use or maintain, the community suffers. I do wish he would get off the pot and start developing the One True (Pottering) kernel so that the rest of the world can go back to ignoring him.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried a bunch of them a few years ago. I found that FreeBSD was the best one, even though it doesn't come with a GUI by default, and so you have to install it afterwards. (Seems kind of ridiculous to me, but that's how they package it for some reason.) I don't know if they've changed the documentation since then, but note that you don't have to compile X11 and your window manager, as there is a system that can install pre-compiled packages that they don't bother to mention until after they tell you how
Re: (Score:3)
But the are distros based on FreeBSD such as PC-BSD that have the UI and other desktop features and apps canned and ready to go
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Just like he considers exit statuses, stderr, and syslog "broken concepts." That is why systemd supports them so poorly. He just doesn't understand why those things are critical. An su system that doesn't properly log to syslog is a serious security problem.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
su is not only for root. it has a dual purpose: switch user or super user. Sometimes you might have to run a command as another user. So if you need to login as Gary you $su gary and type in Gary's password.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
You're pretty much making an argument to tradition here. The correct thing to do would be to counter his claims:
I would like more detail from him on why and how it's broken, and how his replacement is truly different from "su -" but since it doesn't appear to be mutually exclusive with the use of "su" or "su -", other than typical reactionary hate I don't see what the problem is.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
1) On Linux, the su command uses PAM to manage logins (that's probably ok).
2) systemd wrote their own version of PAM (because containers)
3) Unlike normal su, the systemd-pam su doesn't transfer over all environment variables, which led to:
4) A bug filed by a user, that the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR variable wasn't being maintained when su was run.
5) Lennart said that's because su is confusing, and he wouldn't fix it.
6) The user asked for a feature request to be added to machinectl, that would retain that environment variable
7) Lennart said, "sure, no problem." (Which shows why systemd is gaining usage, when people want a feature, he adds it)
It's important to note that there isn't a conspiracy here to destroy su. The process would more accurately be called "design by feature accretion," which doesn't really make you feel better, but it's not malice.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is at step 5): su isn't confusing. It's a lame excuse to get your way.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I've found another way how to avoid the problem: no PAM at my Slackware machine. See? The rest of the list is, all of a sudden, pointless.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
You now have your init daemon providing an alternate attack pathway for gaining privileged access to the system, in a way that completely circumvents the well-established (and monitored by most IDSs) auditing capabilities of the platform.
I'd call that a problem, but YMMV.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently, however, Poettering was out having a few beers when the "modular OS" concept was being discussed. So he doesn't know how to create "shit on his machine". Instead, he has to integrate it so tightly into the OS that the shit must be on everyone's machine, whether they like it or not.
Which would be bad enough to begin with. Whoever gave him the right to make his shit the essential system component of the Red Hat OS without consulting anyone has a lot to answer for.
Re: (Score:3)
For the case where the entire OS becomes one big module.
"Modular" to the rest of us means that if we want binary logging, we install the binary logging package, if we want legacy logging, we install the legacy logging package, if we want some other custom logging, we can install that instead. There may be a default/preferred package, but distros can be built using alernative packages without tearing half the OS apart.
It doesn't mean we go the Windows route: 'Oh, you want to "uninstall IE"? Well, we'll let y
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Deciding what a full login comprises is the shell's responsibility, not your init system's job.
And certainly not the job of one Poettering, who still has not produced one piece of good software in his life.
Re: (Score:3)
> Deciding what a full login comprises is the shell's responsibility, not your init system's job.
systemd is not an init system. It's a service manager. Mischaracterization makes your opinions seem ignorant.
systemd is bad for trying to force utilities to be rewritten into a unified application layer, for no other reason. Error prone initiative, to create a new class of problems (where coordination preemption occurs, is just moved around). There's no misuse of a utility role, in this case.
Of course "su" *IS* a broken concept !! (Score:2, Insightful)
Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept
Of course to Lennart Poettering "su" is broken !!
Long story short --- To that egotistical son of a bitch, anything that is not made by him MUST BE 'broken'
'nuff said!
Re: (Score:3)
If Lennart Poeterring is complaining about something being broken, then maybe he should start with systemd instead of assuming he is smarter than the decades of unix people who came before?
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a FULL shell
Oh I dont know 'su bash' usually works pretty fng good...
It does if you are fine to only get root privilege, without FULL environment of root. But if you would have to make sure you have FULL root environment, first discarding anything you had in calling user and then executing root users environment (/etc/profile etc.) you better use "su - bash" or "sudo -i". Compare what you get both ways "su bash" vs "su - bash" with runnint "set" and "env" commands, please.
Failing to have FULL root environment, can have security implications (umask, wrong path, wrong path order, ...) which may or may not be critical depending what system you are operating and to whom. Also some commands may fail or misbehave just because of path differences etc.
Above is trivial information and should be clear without further explanation anyone running *nix systems for someone else as part of job ie. work professionally on the field. Incase you don't, it's still useful information you should learn about sysadmin of the platform you happen to use.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can ALWAYS "break out" of chroot.
If you get a shell in one of my chroot's used for security, then.....
read the man page (Score:5, Informative)
> In short: I think chroot is plenty good for security
Check man chroot. The authors of chroot say it's useless for security. ,and more than security professionals like myself do. Let's find out.
Perhaps you think you know more than they do
> you get a shell in one of my chroot's used for security, then..... /dev, /proc, or other special filesystems
ur uid and gid are not going to be 0. Good luck telling the kernel to try and get you out.
There aren't going to be any
Gonna be kind of tthough to have a ahell without a tty, aka /dev/*tty* /dev. Can't launch a process, including /bin/ls, without /proc, so you're going to need proc. Have a look in /proc/1. You'll see a very interesting symlink there.
So yeah, you need
> mounted noexec
Noexec is basically a suggestion, not an enforement mechanism . Just run ld /path/to/executable. ld is the loader/lilinker for elf binaries. Without ld ,you can't run bash, or ls. With ld, noexec is ignored.
My company does IT security for banks. Meaning we show the banks how they can be hacked. When I say chroot is not a security control, I'm not guessing.
Re: (Score:3)
Wasn't the point that chroot is as good, and not better, as the normal Unix permission/groups security feature? So, basically, chroot doesn't and isn't designed to add any additional security besides the normal Unix permission/groups security.
This means using a chroot is not less secure, but it is not more secure either. If you have proper permissions configured on your system, you are no safer inside a chroot than relying on system permissions to keep a user in check.
https://securityblog.redhat.co... [redhat.com]
superuser (Score:5, Funny)
Su apt-get remove systemd --purge
Re: (Score:2)
Su apt-get remove systemd --purge
I thought systemd was the new emacs???
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Emacs is extensively documented.
Re: (Score:3)
I thought systemd was the new emacs???
Systemd might be a rewrite of emacs from the ground up. They just haven't gotten to the text editor and mail client parts quite yet.
Cryptic command names (Score:5, Funny)
Great to see that systemd is finally doing something about all of those cryptic command names that plague the unix ecosystem.
Upcoming systemd re-implementations of standard utilities:
ls to be replaced by filectl directory contents [pathname]
grep to be replaced by datactl file contents search [plaintext] (note: regexp no longer supported as it's ambiguous)
gimp to be replaced by imagectl open file filename draw box [x1,y1,x2,y2] draw line [x1,y1,x2,y2]...
Re: Cryptic command names (Score:3, Funny)
Oh look, another Powershell
What's with all the awkward systemd command names? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know systemd sneers at the old Unix convention of keeping it simple, keeping it separate, but that's not the only convention they spit on. God intended Unix (Linux) commands to be cryptic things 2-4 letters long (like "su", for example). Not "systemctl", "machinectl", "journalctl", etc. Might as well just give everything a 47-character long multi-word command like the old Apple commando shell did.
Seriously, though, when you're banging through system commands all day long, it gets old and their choices aren't especially friendly to tab completion. On top of which why is "machinectl" a shell and not some sort of hardware function? They should have just named the bloody thing command.com.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm alright with commands that have longer names. It's harder to mis-type and execute the wrong thing, and it's easier to know what is going on at a glance.
Same thing when reading code. I'd much rather work with code that has a method named getUserByGuid(), for example, than gubg().
Besides, nothing prevents you from aliasing the longer commands to something shorter if you so choose.
There's a lot of things about systemd that turn me off, but commands with longer, more verbose names is not one of those things
Re:What's with all the awkward systemd command nam (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're saying is you like powershell?
Aliases are not realy a fix you can not reliably write shell script with them and stay portable.
Security (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a pretty good point I think
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No offense, but I see lots of attacks like this on systemd. Can you explain how it is "likely a new security threat" or is it simply FUD?
Re:Security (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you explain how it is "likely a new security threat" or is it simply FUD?
Bruce Schneier (in Cryptography Engineering) pointed out that to keep something secure, you need to keep it simple (because exploits hide in complexity). When you have a large, complex, system that does a lot of different things, there's a high chance that there are security flaws. If you go to DefCon, speakers will actually say that one of the things they look for when doing 'security research' is a large, complex interface.
So that's the reason. When you see a large complex system running as root, it means hackers will be root.
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
So that would maybe be the way to destroy systemd: organise a conference of security hackers, and only concentrate on systemd.
quality engineering (Score:4, Insightful)
If there are any systemd fans out there, I would love to hear them justify this from an architectural perspective.
Re:quality engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
.
You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Trapper keeper ready to absorb (Score:4, Funny)
Lennart Cartman certainly does love his systemd trapper keeper.
Re:Trapper keeper ready to absorb (Score:5, Funny)
Approaching the Singularity (Score:5, Funny)
How long until systemd absorbs emacs?
Re:Approaching the Singularity (Score:4, Funny)
Future History of Init Systems
Upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
You should replace it with the fu command.
systemd is a broken concept (Score:5, Insightful)
... Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept. ...
So every command that Poettering thinks may be broken is added to the already bloated systemd?
.
How long before there is nothing left to GNU/Linux besides the Linux kernel and systemd?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd just like to interject for moment. What you're refering to as GNU/Linux, is in fact, Systemd/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Systemd plus Linux. GNU is not a modern userland unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Linux system that needs to be replaced by a shitty nonfunctional init system, broken logging system, and half-assed vital system components comprising a fully broken OS as defined by Lennart Poettering.
Many computer users run a version of the Syste
Seems like a 'while they were at it' sort of thing (Score:2, Interesting)
So systemd has ambition of being a container and VM management infrastucture (I have no idea how this should make sense for VMs though.)
machinectl shell looks to be designed to be some way to attach to a container environment with an interactive shell, without said container needing to do anything to provide such a way in. While they were at the task of doing that not too terribly unreasonable thing, they did the same function for what they call '.host', essentially meaning they can use the same syntax for
I, for one, welcome this addition... (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, welcome this addition... every privilege escalation path you add is good for literally years of paid contract work.
Only incidentally similar to su (Score:5, Informative)
machinectl shell is only incidentally similar to su. Its primary purpose is to establish an su-like session on a different container or VM. Systemd refers to these as 'machines', hence the name machinectl.
http://www.freedesktop.org/sof... [freedesktop.org]
su cannot and does not do that sort of thing. machinectl shell is more like a variant of rsh than a replacement for su.
Is ANYONE editing this mess? (Score:5, Informative)
Did an editor even glance at this piece of crap before it was posted?
a su command functional
a) "an su." Write it like you'd say it.
b) what's a "command functional"?
c) you've got all the right words... just not necessarily in the right order
a lot concepts
I think you accidentally a word.
It will given you kind of a shell
Can it has cheezeburger too?
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to post about the same thing. I can understand the odd typo, but the header seems like it was written by someone who (at best) doesn't speak English natively.
And the monster is growing (Score:3)
As before by "fixing" more things that are not broken. It is really time to stop this abomination. Sure, there are some (few) things it does that actually have merit, but it doe them in the wrong way, and most of it is just plain bad for security, reliability and user choice. Why so much of the Linux infrastructure is handed willingly to this one bad actor is beyond me.
Strange path he is taking (Score:2)
First of all, there are two types of German engineering. Good engineering and over engineering. And there is a fine line between them. And it looks like Mr. Poettering crossed it. However, it could also be German advertising and that is either bad or worse. In general, you do not build bloated components. In old Unix days these where called programs and could be combined in various ways including pipes and files. In GNU days many of these programs were bundled together in one archive, but stayed separate. N
su (Score:5, Interesting)
"su command is seen as bad because what it is supposed to do is ambiguous. "
-- end quote --
it is NOT ambiguous!!!!!
"su" is root BUT!!! with the normal users $PATH and settings
"su - " and "su -l root "
IS THE ROOT USER
there is NOTHING ambiguous there at all
now what Ubuntu did to "sudo"
THAT!!! is a problem
Re: (Score:2)
On an ubuntu system I'm using, su and sudo su don't keep the user PATH or aliases, and the environment seems to be trimmed down. So I wonder how much things are different afterall. And anyway, I don't feel like to care, so on a personal desktop I'll do sudo su. Then who cares? The point is to do whatever you want.
Thinking about leaving any systemd linux behind (Score:5, Insightful)
What path have we chosen? (Score:4, Interesting)
.
systemd is on the way to turning a sleek, efficient Linux distribution into one loaded with awesome bloatware.
And it looks like there is no stopping Poettering's ego now that it's been unleashed.
Re:What path have we chosen? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't speak for any distribution, after quitting as a Debian developer some months back, for several reasons one of which was systemd. But speaking for myself, it was quite clear during the several years of "debate" (i.e. flamewars) over systemd that this was the inevitable outcome. The debate over replacing the "init system" was a complete red herring; systemd knows no boundaries and continues to expand its tentacles over the system as it subsumes more and more components. My problem with this is that once a distribution has adopted systemd, they have to basically just accept whatever crap is shovelled out in the subsequent systemd releases--it's all or nothing and once you're on the train you can't get off it. This was absolutely obvious years ago. Quality software engineering and a solid base system walked out of the door when systemd arrived; I certainly did.
When I commit to a system such as a Linux distribution like Debian, I'm making an investment of my time and effort to use it. I do want to be able to rely on future releases being sane and not too radical a departure from previous releases--I am after all basing my work and livelihood upon it. With systemd, I don't know what I'm going to get with future versions and being able to rely on the distribution being usable and reliable in the future is now an unknown. That's why I got off this particular train before the jessie release. After 18 years, that wasn't an easy decision to make, but I still think it was the right one. And yes, I'm one of the people who moved to FreeBSD. Not because I wanted to move from Debian after having invested so much into it personally, but because I was forced to by this stupidity. And FreeBSD is a good solid dose of sanity.
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Regarding alternatives, I looked at Linux distribution alternatives but the choices are not great. I don't want the hassle of dealing with gentoo, though I'm sure it's fine. The others are all smaller projects which are largely dependent upon others. But longer-term, with the merging to udev and systemd and the merging of systemd-specific stuff into util-linux makes the long-term viability of any non-systemd distribution questionable. Short-term it's possible to avoid. But, there's a practical limit to
Re:What path have we chosen? (Score:4, Informative)
I currently run Ubuntu 14.04, and see where part of systemd has already begun its encroachment on what *had* been a great Linux distro. My only actual full-on experience so far with systemd is trying to get Virtualbox guest additions installed on a CentOS7 vm... I've installed those additions countless times since I started using VBox, and I think I could almost do the install in my sleep.. Not so with CentOS7.. systemd bitches loudly with strange "errors" and when it tells me to use journalctl to see what the error was, there *is* no error.. But still the additions don't install... I'm soooooo NOT looking forward to the next LTS out of Ubuntu, which I'm told will be infested with this systemd crap... Guess its time to dust off the old Slackware DVD and get acquainted with Pat again... GO FUCK YOURSELF, POETTERING.....
Re:What path have we chosen? (Score:4, Informative)
The main thing I noticed with Ubuntu 15.04 at work is that rather than startup becoming faster and more deterministic as claimed, it's actually slower and randomly fails due to what looks like some race condition, requiring me to reset the machine. So the general experience is "meh", plus annoyance that it's actually degraded the reliability of booting.
I also suffered from the "we won't allow you to boot if your fstab contains an unmountable filesystem". So I reformatted an ext4 filesystem as NTFS to accomplish some work task on Windows; this really shouldn't be a reason to refuse to start up. I know the justification for doing this, and I think it's as bogus as the first time I saw it. I want my systems to boot, not hang up on a technicality because the configuration or system wasn't "perfect". i.e. a bit of realism and pragmatism rather than absolutionist perfectionism--like we used to have when people like me wrote the init scripts.
Fully isolated? (Score:5, Interesting)
sense anyway). By "fully isolated", it sounds like machinectl breaks the audit trail that su has always supported (not being 'fully isolated' by design). Many *NIX systems are configured to prohibit root logins from anything other than the system console. And the reason that su doesn't do a 'full login' either as root or another user is to maintain the audit trail of who (which system user) is actually running what.
Lennart, this UNIX/Linus stuff appears to be way over your head. Sure, it seems neat for lots of gamers who can't be bothered with security and just want all the machine cycles for rendering FPS games. Perhaps you'd be better off playing with an XBox.
What about sandwiches ? (Score:3)
So, now we have to say "machinectl shell systemd-run do make me a sandwich" ?
Looks way more complicated.
https://xkcd.com/149/ [xkcd.com]
Fountainhead anyone? (Score:3)
This systemd guy is just like Ellsworth Toohey. As long as the sheep follow he'll keep pushing things further and further into idiotland and have a good laugh in the process.
"Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognise greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept – and you stop the impetus to effort in men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You’ve destroyed architecture. Build Lois Cook and you’ve destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you’ve destroyed the theatre. Glorify Lancelot Clankey and you’ve destroyed the press. Don’t set out to raze all shrines – you’ll frighten men, Enshrine mediocrity - and the shrines are razed."
-- Ellsworth Toohey
Ever stop and ask why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This has been going on for years, and has years more to go. This is a long term strategy.
But why?
Why has Red Hat been replacing standard Linux components with Red Hat components, when the Red Hat stuff is worse?
Why isn't systemd optional? It is just an init replacement, right? Why does Red Hat care which init you use?
Why is systemd being tied to so many other components?
Why binary logging? Who asked for that?
Why throw away POSIX, and the entire UNIX philosophy? Clearly you do not have to do that just to replace init.
Why does Red Hat instantly berate anybody who does not like systemd? Why the barrage of ad hominem attacks systemd critics?
I think there is only one logical answer to all of those questions, and it's glaringly obvious.
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Actually, the 'magic' in su is in the kernel. Basically, since it's marked suid root, the kernel sets the uid on the new process to root before it even starts running. The program itself just then decides if it is willing to do anything for you.
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That's what Poettering has been doing his whole life, getting into good open source projects, squatting and then shitting all over them. The infection, stink and filth then linger for decades. He's a cancer on open source.
Re:BSD is looking better all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit rude... I think Poettering's main motivation has been to simply modernize Linux.
Where 'modernize' is a codeword for 'shit all over'.
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That's a bit rude... I think Poettering's main motivation has been to simply modernize Linux.
I can see that as being one of his goals but if you want to improve Linux why a new init system plus? I did not hear any system admins asking for this.
He would be considered a saint if he would do something useful like fix the desktop environments so the "Year of the Linux Desktop" finally gets here.
Re:BSD is looking better all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit rude... I think Poettering's main motivation has been to simply modernize Linux.
Yeah, that's true. He sees features people want, and he builds them. For example, Debian distro builders were frustrated writing init scripts, so Poettering made something that filled the need of those distro builders [slashdot.org]. That's why it got adopted, because it contained features they wanted.
The problem of course is that he doesn't understand the Unix way [catb.org], especially when it comes to good interfaces between code [slashdot.org] (IMNSHO).
The people who like systemd tend to like the features.......the people who dislike it, the architecture.
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I had trouble with init scripts. The systemd init subsystem was a better approach. The problem was, systemd also brought in a lot of stuff that wasn't directly part of the init subsystem that I didn't want, don't want, and don't see any probability of ever wanting.
Because Poettering doesn't understand "modular", I don't get just the good stuff - it's all or nothing. And because systemd isn't even modular as an overgrown bloated monstrosity, the only way to avoid it is to either run old distros or some other
Re:BSD is looking better all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
I had trouble with init scripts. The systemd init subsystem was a better approach. The problem was, systemd also brought in a lot of stuff that wasn't directly part of the init subsystem that I didn't want, don't want, and don't see any probability of ever wanting.
Yeah, that's basically the problem. Systemd is really three different things:
1) init system
2) cgroups manager (cgroups architecture is still crap, btw)
3) session manager
It probably does more stuff, but it's hard to keep track of it all
Re:BSD is looking better all the time (Score:5, Informative)
OpenRC++
openrc init scripts are fairly straight forward.
Coupled with gentoo's baselayout, and the config file layout is fairly normalized also.
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Yes and init scripts are just a bastion of race-free stateful design, and service monitoring. Except not at all those things.
Re:BSD is looking better all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
Please remember devuan (http://www.devuan.org), a Debian fork which aims to do away with systemd and all that bullcrap. It's picking up steam, and I believe things like these make it more and more worth it to help the new fork.
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The feature creep will be fast and merciless, but I'm just a systemd "hater", right?
The rumours that vi will become part of systemd are groundless, comrade. Anyone who suggests such a thing is guilty of agitation and propaganda, and will be sent to the re-education camps.
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Godwin's Law!
See how it works? So many people just spew inanities, rather than address the real issues. That's why the world is in such a mess today.
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Or does that empty homily need some supporting evidence as well so as to discriminate between that which is worthy of hate and those that aren't?
Don't hate, it's overrated.