Re: I'm not a huge fan of systemd
On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Miroslav Hrabal <hrabalmir1@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Jul 2014 22:03:53 +0300
> Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Change is difficult and there will be problems. On the other hand
>> systemd is used by a lot of distros already and the alternatives either
>> bitrot (sysv-init) or aren't really viable (OpenRC, etc.).
>
> Why do you think that OpenRC isn't viable alternative? AFAIK on Gentoo it
> works quite well. I'm currently playing with it on Debian and i haven't
> had any problems so far.
I use sysvinit on Debian and openrc on Gentoo and I don't have any
problems. But "I don't have problems" wasn't the criterion that was
used to choose systemd.
This is from Russ Allbery's I-choose-systemd post to the CTTE init bug:
First, other choices besides systemd and upstart.
There were three replacement init systems proposed to the Technical
Committee to replace sysvinit, plus the existing status quo. The third
option, OpenRC, is a more conservative and less revolutionary change than
either systemd or upstart. It continues to use the existing sysvinit init
process but replaces the startup script management with a more robust
shell library and additional features.
I think the OpenRC developers are great people and I wish them all the
success in the world with their project, but I just don't think it's
ambitious enough for Debian's needs. If we're going to the effort of
replacing init systems and changing our startup scripts, a bare minimum
requirement for me is that we at least address the known weaknesses of the
sysvinit mechanism, namely:
* Lack of integration with kernel-level events to properly order startup.
* No mechanism for process monitoring and restarting beyond inittab.
* Heavy reliance on shell scripting rather than declarative syntax.
* A fork and exit with PID file model for daemon startup.
My impression of OpenRC is that it is not attempting to solve these issues
in the same way that systemd and upstart are. To the extent that these
issues are on the OpenRC roadmap, it's not as far along as either systemd
or upstart is. It's difficult to evaluate since the OpenRC documentation
is rather sparse and lacks the comprehensive manual available to both
systemd and upstart, which is itself a sign of a lack of project maturity.
I don't think that switching to OpenRC offers enough clear benefit over
the status quo.
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