zlacker

>>todsac+(OP)
I would like a comparison with runit, which is a very minimal but almost full-fledged init system. I see many similarities: control directories, no declarative dependencies, a similar set of scripts, the same approach to logging. The page mentions runit in passing, and even suggests using the chpst utility from it.

One contrasting feature is parametrized services: several similar processes (like agetty) can be controlled by one service directory; I find it neat.

Another difference is the ability to initiate reboot or shutdown as an action of the same binary (nitroctl).

Also, it's a single binary; runit has several.

>>nine_k+0k
Last year I decommed our last couple of servers that ran processes configured using runit. It was a sad day. I first learned to write runit services probably about 15 years ago and it was very cool and very understandable and I kind of just thought that's how services worked on linux.

Then I left Linux for about 5 years and, by the time I got back, Systemd had taken over. I heard a few bad things about it, but eventually learned to recognise that so many of those arguments were in such bad faith that I don't even know what the real ones are any more. Currently I run a couple of services on Pi Zeros streaming camera and temperature data from the vivarium of our bearded dragon, and it was so very easy to set them up using systemd. And I could use it to run emacsd on my main OpenSuse desktop. And a google-drive Fuse solution on my work laptop. "having something standard is good, actually", I guess.

>>J_McQu+nX
The backlash against systemd was twofold. On one hand, when released and thrust upon distros via Gnome, it was quite rough around the edges, which caused both real problems and just understandable irritation. Fifteen years after, the kinks are ironed out, but it was sort of a long time. (Btrfs, released at about the same time, took even longer to stop being imprudent to use in production.)

On the other hand, systemd replaces Unix (sort of like Hurd, but differently). It grabs system init, logging, authentication, DNS, session management, cron, daemon monitoring, socket activation, running containers, etc. In an ideal Red Hat world, I suppose, a bare-metal box should contain a kernel, systemd, podman, IP tools, and maybe sshd and busybox. This is a very anti-Unix, mainframe-like approach, but for a big consulting firm, like Red Hat / IBM, it is very attractive.

>>nine_k+Ha1
You are repeating a bunch of "talking points" common among systemd-critics, but are not really backed up.

First of all, it wasn't "thrust upon" anyone, it was democratically selected multiple times in a ranked voting setup in case of Debian, and independently by Arch as well. It was simply because maintainers were fed up with the absolutely unmaintainable mess that predated systemd -- it seems random-ass bash scripts are not suitable for such a complex problem as booting up a system, and doing it properly is much better.

Logging sucked great time before, e.g. you didn't even get logs from before the Linux kernel is started - systemd moves it to a single place. And if you are for some reason irritated by binary logging, you can just freely pipe it to text logs.

Authentication is not done by systemd, are you thinking of pam modules? The network service is not systemd, just runs under the same group's name - KDE file browser is also different from their terminal. Also, it's not mandatory to use. Logind is not systemd itself, again. Scheduling services makes absolute sense for systemd's problem domain, so do monitoring and socket activation.

You need some kind of order to build stuff on, the Unix philosophy is more of a feel good convention than a real design guideline (and it doesn't apply in many cases)