Debian Still Debating Systemd vs. Upstart Init System

[Akka]

There was a switch a few years back from baselayout1 to baselayout2. If that's when they introduced OpenRC, then it looks to me as if that was mostly repackaging, not something fundamentally new. The way I administered my systems didn't change significantly in that interval, other than that some config files changed and moved a bit. But in terms of starting and stopping services, it was still "rc-update", and the whole depends/uses/provides scheme was unchanged. There are changes, but on the baselayout/OpenRC side they're reasonably incremental and well-staged.

When Gentoo dropped gnome-3.8 and systemd on us it was sudden and without warning, at least in the usual user-places. There was no news item, nor did I see it in my regular forum topics. I was just doing my regular weekly maintenance (after having missed a week or two) and suddenly there were well over a hundred updates, piles of blocks, and some really major things in the list - including systemd. To this day there has still not been a news item about gnome-3.8 or systemd.

I'm guessing now as I dont use gentoo but I think baselayout1 was a oldschool init system with init files. Openrc use runscript as some sort of high level abstraction of the init system.
I took this example from http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147

#!/sbin/runscript
 
command=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
name="enhanced syslogd"
 
depend()
{
        provide rsyslogd syslog
        need $remote_fs $time
}

[Rallos Zek]

Ehh and what is running debian if not libc6?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_GLIBC

[doom_Oo7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_GLIBC

  % apt-cache search eglibc                                               
eglibc-source - Embedded GNU C Library: sources

It's the only package that even mentions eglibc...

[stevenc]

  % apt-cache search eglibc                                               
eglibc-source - Embedded GNU C Library: sources

It's the only package that even mentions eglibc...

That only searches for binary packages. eglibc is the name of a *source* package, and from that, the libc6 binary package (providing libc.so.6 and ld-linux) and others are built.

http://packages.debian.org/src:eglibc

I think Debian switched from regular GNU libc to eglibc for squeeze. GNU/kFreeBSD uses that one too. uclibc and dietlibc are available in Debian for specialised stuff.

[moonwalker]

  % apt-cache search eglibc                                               
eglibc-source - Embedded GNU C Library: sources

It's the only package that even mentions eglibc...

On my Debian Sid lappy, pay attention to "Description" and "Homepage":

**********@******:~$ sudo aptitude show libc6
Package: libc6
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Multi-Arch: same
Version: 2.17-97
Priority: required
Section: libs
Maintainer: GNU Libc Maintainers <[email protected]>
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 10.5 M
Depends: libgcc1
Suggests: glibc-doc, debconf | debconf-2.0, locales
Conflicts: prelink (<= 0.0.20090311-1), prelink (<= 0.0.20090311-1), tzdata (< 2007k-1), tzdata (< 2007k-1), tzdata-etch, tzdata-etch
Breaks: hurd (< 1:0.5.git20130928-2), hurd (< 1:0.5.git20130928-2), locales (< 2.17), locales (< 2.17), locales-all (< 2.17),
        locales-all (< 2.17), lsb-core (<= 3.2-27), lsb-core (<= 3.2-27), nscd (< 2.17), nscd (< 2.17), libc6 (!= 2.17-97)
Replaces: libc6-amd64, libc6-amd64, libc6 (< 2.17-97)
Provides: glibc-2.17-1
Description: Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
 Contains the standard libraries that are used by nearly all programs on the system. This package includes shared versions of the
 standard C library and the standard math library, as well as many others.
Homepage: http://www.eglibc.org

So yeah, Debian does use eglibc rather than glibc.

[rohcQaH]

There was a switch a few years back from baselayout1 to baselayout2. If that's when they introduced OpenRC

Yes, it was then. OpenRC replaced gentoo's own homebrew scripted init system. Not sure if it had a name except "baselayout1".
Both use sysvinit.

OpenRC was developed as a direct replacement, and upgrading to it was mostly painless. Mostly.


That said, I hardly consider it mature and stable. Features like parallel startup oscillate between "experimental", "deprecated", "removed" and back to "experimental", and 5 years into developement, they can't even get that right - which hints at deep architectural flaws. Updates silently changed the the semantics of dependency resolution or hotplugging, causing some of my services to stop working the way I want them to.


I think OpenRC was a suitable replacement for Gentoo's previous system, but it's no contender.

When Gentoo dropped gnome-3.8 and systemd on us it was sudden and without warning

I'm not sure where systemd was "dropped on us". Unless you choose a profile that ends with /systemd, or manually enable the systemd use flag, you'll keep using openrc.


I've migrated my desktop to systemd. A lot of packages are still missing systemd service files, so you need to do quite some manual configuration. If you've been using static networking in /etc/conf.d/net, that will stop working, and you need to migrate to net-misc/netctl. I wish someone had told me about that before I rebooted ~~


So yeah, on gentoo systemd is s a choice, the integration is still beta-ish, but it boots way faster than openrc ever did.

[doom_Oo7]

I don't know if anybody noticed, but the state of the sysvinit package changed in debian. Before, it was a vital package, requiring the user to type the horrible sentence "yes I know what I'm doing" if you wanted to install systemd-sysv, but now it is at the same level than systemd-sysv and upstart, which means that you can easily install any of the three.

So it is easier for everybody to test the init systems by themselves and see if something breaks.

Also: thanks for the correction on eglibc.

[intellivision]

Yes, it was then. OpenRC replaced gentoo's own homebrew scripted init system. Not sure if it had a name except "baselayout1".
Both use sysvinit.

OpenRC was developed as a direct replacement, and upgrading to it was mostly painless. Mostly.


That said, I hardly consider it mature and stable. Features like parallel startup oscillate between "experimental", "deprecated", "removed" and back to "experimental", and 5 years into developement, they can't even get that right - which hints at deep architectural flaws. Updates silently changed the the semantics of dependency resolution or hotplugging, causing some of my services to stop working the way I want them to.


I think OpenRC was a suitable replacement for Gentoo's previous system, but it's no contender.


I'm not sure where systemd was "dropped on us". Unless you choose a profile that ends with /systemd, or manually enable the systemd use flag, you'll keep using openrc.


I've migrated my desktop to systemd. A lot of packages are still missing systemd service files, so you need to do quite some manual configuration. If you've been using static networking in /etc/conf.d/net, that will stop working, and you need to migrate to net-misc/netctl. I wish someone had told me about that before I rebooted ~~


So yeah, on gentoo systemd is s a choice, the integration is still beta-ish, but it boots way faster than openrc ever did.

OpenRC actually runs faster for me with a little tweaking. After trying to install systemd the first time and ending up with an unbootable system, I won't be touching that again with a 10 foot pole.

[lcomputer]

Upstart is an event-based replacement for the /sbin/init daemon which handles ... them during shutdown and supervising them while the system is running.