Systemd ... a can of worms

[brokenman]

Yes Donald, you're right. There is some nasty firmware stuff that survives a total OS reinstall. I think the name badbios can be searched for more info about firmware trojans that can even jump air gapped systems.

In any case I am having fun learning the systemd ropes so if it does enter slackware I will be prepared.

[francois]

sysvinit vs systemd, a quite in depth discussion in 2012, a lot of pros and cons, opinions, facts:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... 175422544/

systemd discussion on gentoo 2014, debated not so positive. A monopoly of redhat because nobody wants to maintain syvinit:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... art-0.html

sysvinit vs systemd cheatsheet, comparing commands for the two systems:
http://linoxide.com/linux-command/syste ... heatsheet/
This last one might be someday useful for me.

[francois]

Maybe you'll be surprised but I find it exciting. To be excited by sysvinit, wow! Never thought I would get there. This is a sexual deviation that I didn't knew. 8)

[KnallKopf]

@ brokenman
This information contained herein is in the german and english wikipedia under RedHat and systemd.
But you'll find the link toward wikipedia witself.
Or did you mean evidence. Sorry most of the secrect services in the World are secret. (although sometimes it may not seem so, even the NSA.)

Wouldn't it be much easier and more effective to hit a base core system package like openssl or glibc than the init system?

Do not you think, it isn't ?
Just because there are many other options insecure Porteus, we should not care of this ?
Is this the official opinium of the administrators of this distrubition ?

My fear are about systemd gets more power than it should have, gets indispensable, the code gets difficult to understand, and the development are in wrong hands.

If Slackware not change the init system i see no reason for changing in Porteus.

[brokenman]

Or did you mean evidence. Sorry most of the secrect services in the World are secret.
This is not a valid argument. By this way of thinking I can happily claim that there is a small pink elephant in high orbit around the earth. Governments put him there to spy. Since this is a government secret I can't prove it. In order to make a claim about something like infected hardware, or systemd being NSA spawned one must first produce evidence of said claim. That is simply how things work in our world.

Just because there are many other options insecure Porteus, we should not care of this ?
We should certainly care of insecurities. We should care about all insecurities that are valid, confirmed and are in our control to effect. No more, no less.

Is this the official opinium of the administrators of this distrubition?
I can only speak for myself. Look, I don't use redhat, ubuntu or debian because I prefer to err on the side of caution. For this reason I am in the position that I can 'roll my own' distro and remain safer than some others. This does NOT make porteus immune to insecurities. Remember the bash bug and the openssl debacle? They were identified, claimed after evidence was found and fixed. Is there really anything more we can do? We are in the end at the mercy of upstream.

Just like the bash bug and openssl insecurities, I am waiting for this evidence of NSA involvement in ANY linux like operating system. Are you saying that even with systemd in the public eye as it has been, and with all these claims made of foul play, that NOBODY has taken the time to pull it apart and find evidence of corruption ... because it is either this or that there simply is none. I am not for or against systemd ... but I believe in a fair fight.

[tome]

The systemd Project Forks the Linux Kernel - http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue ... #community

[donald]

Don't panic....The story is meant to be a joke.
Ivan Gotyaovich > Got ya..

[Bogomips]

Don't panic....The story is meant to be a joke.
Ivan Gotyaovich > Got ya..

Methinks published 2 days too early!

[Tonio]

Brokenman, I have been busy with other things that I have not had a chance to visit Porteus forum, but I am still onboard and running

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:~$ uname -a
Linux porteus 3.17.4-porteus #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Nov 24 21:19:14 Local time zone must be set-- x86_64 AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
guest@porteus:~$ 

I have used other distros like Fedora since Fedora Core 2 and have seen many changes over time. I have seen what has happened since the beginning. I did not know much about Slackware, but I used Slax back then and I liked it. I still used Fedora as a desktop up until Fedora 20. I still have a Fedora 20 machine. I have seen personally some of the changes taking place. They(RedHat Fedora's parent distro) use it as a testing bed for new technologies. I have seen the pulseaudio stuff, I did not like it, but I still used Fedora. Now I see that systemd is a big mess, it is trying to take over a great deal of stuff. Much stuff does not run without it. I believe that bloat is not needed, and adding it to porteus would be a waste of time and resources. If it is needed, then sadly many users may just leave to use other operating sytems. I hope that Slackware remains true to its defining image and not succumb to systemd. To me it is like the final frontier. Luckily we have FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD, haiku and/or plan 9 some of these I have not tried, but I am willing to play and tinker now if systemd enters the picture. I have used Fedora and Fedora 20 will likely be my last one to use. I hope that it does not come to that. I know that gnome3/mate and others require it, also Gentoo has it there as well. The times of simple log files, and not pile of bloat upon an init system. Booting faster is not important to me, I like Porteus run from CD/LiveDVD or thumb drive(usb) and I hope that systemd stays away from incorporating it.

I have used chkconfig, red had sysvinit which listed many services. Now, with that systemd stuff it is more cryptic and not nice. runlevels are complicated. They(programmers) want everything to depend on it. I do not agree with that, and like I have stated, I have followed Fedora since Core 2. I do not like the direction that they are headed and have only one machine with Fedora 20. I hope that Slackware and Patrick V dont go that route, because if it happens it will likely be the end of a great ride. Good thing is that Patrick likes KISS philosophy and will likely do the most he can to stay away from that. I admire your effort and dedication, but it(systemd) is a daemon(init system) that wants to take over many things which do not make sense and are unneeded.

In my humble opinion => SystemD > /dev/null 2>&1

[francois]

Skarnet the author of s6 proposed to the gentoo people to build a simple and transparent software to supercede sysvinit based on s6 According to him systems is too cryptic and excessive for what it should basically do. He says that with s6 he does everything that sysvinit and systems does. He admits that s6 could be modified to be more accessible and invites people from the different distributions to join him to build that new system tool. He is already working on that type of cooperation with the people from Linux from scratch:

[Tonio]

@Francois

I have looked at s6 by skarnet. I like what he says in his site:


http://www.skarnet.org/software/s6/

However, ultimately Brokenman and Fanthom decide for Porteus and Patrick V for Slackware. What would be your personal choice?
BSD Style startup is what I like about Slackware, they are similar except that BSD uses different kernel and ports system now pkg(I have not kept up with this, am behind a bit); Thought about trying out gentoo, but hear that they have systemd stuff too. For me it seems that Slackware and Crux are the final frontier like old Star Trek TV programs!

[fanthom]

systemd is optional on gentoo and for example im still using openrc without problems (speed is not the factor as gentoo is placed on SSD drive).

[francois]

Skarnet the author of s6 stated:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... rt-25.html
Replacing sysvrc with OpenRC + s6 is the hard (and interesting) part; but once this is done, you won't have a reason to keep sysvinit around.
I wouldn't call sysvinit a "baby". It works, for sure, and it's maintainable, but it's far from perfect. For instance, it polls /dev/initctl every five seconds "to check that it is still there". Yuck.
Eliminating sysvinit can definitely be a follow-up project though, when the OpenRC + s6 infrastructure is running.

[Tonio]

systemd is optional on gentoo and for example im still using openrc without problems (speed is not the factor as gentoo is placed on SSD drive).

Cool Maybe I misinterpreted the pages I read where if you have gnome 3 desktop, you need systemd-* stuff in there and that it was inevitable

@Francois
Uselessd is not any good? I read that it is also an alternative. What about it? @fanthom, if one runs gnome3, then systemd stuff(or blank libs) are needed for it to run?
I read that OpenBSD works very hard to get gnome3 working on their desktop without systemd because it is for linux only. @brokenman, does mate require systemd stuff?
It is great to be back and hearing your opinions.

[francois]

@ tonio:
By the way, it is really nice to have you on the forum. Come by more often.