[mdlug] Systemd and all of it's nonsensical BS

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Mon, 2015-02-23 at 11:27 -0500, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> Jay Nugent wrote:
> > Greetings Aaron (et al),
> > On Sun, 22 Feb 2015, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> >> SysV Init has problems but systemd seems to cause more problems than what it fixes.

Such as?  You have yet to enumerate these serious desperate problems.
Because I have systemd systems... and they are working just fine.

> >Agreed.  While teaching Unix/Linux SysAdmin at Washtenaw Community College it 
> >was EASY to teach SysVinit because it made sense.  

Or it was easy because you are extremely familiar with it.  Or was easy
because SysV is simply a dumb pile of shell scripts incapable of dealing
with a myriad of complex issues.

> >I would then introduce systemd and the stoodies would react like, WTF!!!!????

Right... you didn't convey any bias or attitude to your students?  Why
do I find that hard to believe.

And I don't believe for a hot second students were naturally enamored of
SysVinit.  Nobody, and I mean nobody, expressed love and admiration for
SysVinit until asked to learn an alternative, which they didn't want to
do.

> >They then fully understood why I refered to these programmers as 
>>"Snot-nosed, Pimply-faced kids" - who were changing things not for the

I think you may be deceived by what in my day we called "Brown Nosing".
Aka, telling the teacher what you know he/she wants to hear.  Got me
easily through many a college class.

>>better, but just because they *could* and they had the POWER.

Yes, the euphoric power trip of writing code.  No high like that one...
and init code at that!  Wow!  The rush!

> >Early in the classes we taught the basis of Unix being, "do just one thing, 
>>but do it really really really really really really really really

Pure urban legend.  I have been an UNIX admin for 25 years.  I've used
LINUX since kernel 0.99a.  That adage was never anything more than an
ideal.  Take a look at the IOCTL call - how to do EVERYTHING and NOTHING
well.  Right up there with "everything is a file"... except, no, it
isn't.

> >To the stoodies, it appeared that systemd was "hiding" something 
> >under the covers. 

Such as?  man journalctl

Oh, and you can setup the logging any way you like.

> > Which led to NSA discussions and conspiracies.

Yawn.  

BTW, it is trivial for them to diddle your text /var/log/messages -
you'll never know.  Not so easy with cryptographically signed logs.  But
clearly you know that.

> >It appeared that if systemd was 'supposed' to improve boot-up times,
>>they had clearly overleached their goal by messing with logging, etc. 

Perhaps they messed with logging because logging in traditional UNIX
*S*U*C*K*S. I don't know, just maybe.  

If you only option to search for data is "grep", then the solution
sucks.

How did you log structured, non-text, or even multi-line data without a
journal?  Oh, you couldn't.  How did you cryptographically validate the
integriy of a log?  Oh, you couldn't.  How did you secure and
authenticate logging across a network?  Ah, yes, a bunch of rigged up
hacks.  So, yes, I see the regression.... not.

>> And some stoodies even thought that maybe some out-of-work
>> programmers from Microsoft decided to try their hand at Linux, and
>> managed to convert it to run more like Microsoft code than we had
>> ever seen before.

Yawn.

> >I am ready to go back to FreeBSD for my servers. 

Then do that, enjoy.

> > Linux has drifted away from its origins and thus has lost my support.

Ok.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:awilliam at whitemice.org> GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA