Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:13 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970)
In reply to: Devuan Jessie beta released by ovitters
Parent article: Devuan Jessie beta released

You can ignore the argument for N reasons valid to you, but thes facts hold:
1- It is not possible to use uclibc or musl-libc with systemd.
2- There is a vast number of people out there who need or even prefer to use these, or slightly modified versions of them.
3- I'm one of them and this was one of the good reasons for me to join forces with Nextime and start Devuan.
4- Both of us, current lead developers of Devuan, sources maintained in Debian on ARM and MIPS platforms for projects where security and reliability are critical factors.
5- Most of us learned (sometimes the hard way) that minimalism and simplicity is a factor for the reliability of a project.

As you are involved in GNOME, I can well understand we don't share point 5, yet I recommend talking to people at FermiLab about these matters. As I previously stated I'm happy you reached out and would be even happier to understand you can separate the interwebz noise from actual opening to dialogue. What I'm not sure of as of now is whether this dialogue would be of any interest for us.

to post comments

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:28 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (5 responses)

You can ignore the argument for N reasons valid to you, but thes facts hold:
1- It is not possible to use uclibc or musl-libc with systemd.
2- There is a vast number of people out there who need or even prefer to use these, or slightly modified versions of them.

I'm not an embedded-system developer, but a quick Google search turned up patch sets that according to their developers made it possible to run systemd with either, so it doesn't appear to be an intractable problem.

In general it seems to me that patching the libraries in question, or writing an additional library that would contain whatever these are missing that systemd needs, or even changing systemd to better accommodate these libraries would be a better approach overall than forking an entire distribution, but of course you're free to decide what you want to spend your time on.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:45 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970) [Link] (4 responses)

Emil's patches for musl-libc are admittedly not complete nor production ready, while I doubt there is any grade of even minimal understanding with upstream to make such a patchset maintainable.

Now I'm sorry to put up more mirrors to climb, but well if our references are just web searches now, please do not ignore this big elephant in the room: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/0051216/bu...

Now I think it would be best to use this discussion space, gracefully provided by the openness and politeness of LWN editors, to have some mutual understanding and wrap up this thread as gentlemen. Years have passed and we can look at things with much better understanding now. To keep diminishing and denigrating Devuan by ignoring or manipulating the reasons for it to be born will not help anyone. Let me give you a friendly reminder that I'm really not making up my arguments, but they represent the position of a vast amount of professionals who are rejecting systemd for their own reasons and have been overly mistreated because of airing them in public.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 10:02 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

Now I think it would be best to use this discussion space, gracefully provided by the openness and politeness of LWN editors, to have some mutual understanding and wrap up this thread as gentlemen.

Fair enough. I'll stop putting forward technical arguments in favour of systemd the instant you stop claiming that systemd is worse than the traditional setup for production use.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 10:16 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970) [Link] (2 responses)

There is no universal "production use".

Systemd is not just worse, is absolutely not viable for most production uses I contemplate.
I think I explained enough already and provided enough references about what I contemplate as production use and why I draw this conclusion.

Systemd is catering to completely different needs that are often and obnoxiously ignored and denigrated by its advocates. The reasons for such a vehement denigration to take place are obscure to me. Before systemd I have never met anyone in our communities that would be so incline to ignore and denigrate other people's needs even when not affected. Anyway, I'm not referring to you at least until now, but I spot reasons to be deluded if we continue our conversation. Plus we are left mostly alone in this discussion and I suspect some readers may get bored past this point.

Therefore with your permission and the unsatisfied need for a rational conclusion, I must depart now.
Ciao

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 14:20 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> There is no universal "production use".

Maybe. Just like when you say testing or staging, people have a general understanding of these terms. You can speak purely from a niche case that is production for you but it is not necessarily going to be relevant for a general discussion about whether something is suitable for production usage.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 5, 2016 16:05 UTC (Thu) by glaubitz (subscriber, #96452) [Link]

> I think I explained enough already and provided enough references about what I contemplate as production use and why I draw this conclusion.

Except that you didn't.

When asked, what the huge security implications were that systemd had, you just left the discussion like a little child that was huffy [1].

How is anyone here supposed to take you serious?

Adrian

> [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/685654/

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 12:57 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (2 responses)

It is not possible to use uclibc or musl-libc with systemd.

This is useful to know because uclibc appears to be used with OpenWrt, which also appears to have its own technologies corresponding to various systemd-related components, and because there is interest in Debian being a sensible alternative to OpenWrt on embedded devices. This tends to lead me in the direction of exploring the choices of OpenWrt and seeing how their choices (and those of Debian) might affect Debian in the embedded space.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 3, 2016 16:19 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (1 responses)

So far Debian only support glibc anyway (even the Freebsd kernel variant).

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 5, 2016 16:07 UTC (Thu) by glaubitz (subscriber, #96452) [Link]

> So far Debian only support glibc anyway (even the Freebsd kernel variant).

We have dietlibc in Debian and the rebootstrap people are working with musl, too [1]. They have direct support from upstream.

Adrian

> [1] https://jenkins.debian.net/view/rebootstrap/

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 17:16 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> 1- It is not possible to use uclibc or musl-libc with systemd.
Actually, it is possible with musl. I'm doing this RIGHT NOW and the required patchset is pretty tiny (around 200 lines). I haven't tried uclibc, though.

> 4- Both of us, current lead developers of Devuan, sources maintained in Debian on ARM and MIPS platforms for projects where security and reliability are critical factors.
LOL.

Critical factors

Posted May 3, 2016 9:06 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Security and reliability being "critical factors" doesn't by any means imply that they're being treated seriously or that all reasonable steps are being taken to assure these "critical factors".

If the CFO of a big corporation says they're resigning because they "No longer have confidence that the company's reported financial position matches reality" the markets tank, key stockholders demand answers, the board will be obliged to make a statement (even if it only reinforces the doubt created by the CFO). But if their key security person, who may not even report directly into the board, but only to some VP or executive somewhere in the pyramid, reports that they're resigning because they've lost all confidence in the security precautions it passes almost without comment, indeed it may not even be reported in the financial press.

Security _Theatre_ is important to big corporations. Smart security guard uniforms, branded login warnings, frequent messages reminding all employees that security comes first (to be followed by messages saying the customer comes first, quality comes first, and safety comes first ...) these things are important, but actual security is at best an afterthought. If you thought individual humans were affected by the Dancing Pigs problem, you'll be amazed by how much it impacts a big corporation.