init scripts [was: If Not Systemd, then What?]

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Given all the talk about not being able to influence upstream, it 
occurred to me to actually take a look at which of the major 
applications I rely on actually come with native systemd service scripts.

I just went through the documentation, and in some cases, the source 
trees, for the following:

bind9
apache
sympa
mailman
mysql
mariadb
postgres
postfix
spamassassin
amavisd
clamav

Most come with sysvinit scripts, several come with their own startup 
scripts (e.g., apachectl) that get dropped into rc.local.  Not a one 
comes with a native systemd service file (even though, when you search 
through the mysql documentation it tells you that oracle linux has 
switched to systemd).

So... with systemd, one has to:
- rely on packagers to generate systemd service files, and/or,
- rely on systemd's support for sysvinit scripts, which

In the later case, one just has to read:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities/
to get very, very scared

Among the implications of this, the old standby of installing software 
from upstream (bypassing packaging), has just gotten a lot riskier.



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra