[OT] systemd (was Re: www.gnucash.org back online)

Wed Feb 8 01:45:51 EST 2017

Well, can we be off topic and just warn GnuCash users on Windows and
Mac (most of them?) from the beginning that they can skip reading this
thread?  It might apply more directly to GnuCash users on Ubuntu,
Debian, Linux, BSD, etc.

It is worth noting that the various BSD's (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
Dragonfly BSD) run gnucash quite well, but usually with an older
release than current.  However, gnucash requires many dependencies
along with X11, which some varieties of BSD consider a bloated
nuisance; OpenBSD, for example, has what it calls a "default X
environment", but the assumption is that the OpenBSD install will be a
server/router/firewall, so why bother?  I have used gnucash on FreeBSD
with xfce, and that works fine.  DragonFly BSD is an excellent little
distro, and does indeed have gnucash.  It also has Hammer FS, which is
a real accomplishment for a limited developer base.

Where systemd may affect gnucash (in user space) directly is the
increasing integration between gnome and systemd.  I use ubuntu daily
as a "swiss army knife" type of OS to go between Windows, Mac and
Solaris, and both systemd and gnome seems way more complicated than
they have to be.  I'm not an expert, but if you find yourself
resorting to rc.local on a daily or weekly basis, that seems too
often.  Gnome apparently is moving toward a "tighter handshake" with
systemd.  Or, perhaps, systemd will eventually replace gnome.  Again,
I'm not an expert, but either development seems bad to me.  If you
can't login to a console, and then type "startx", run gnucash, and
then exit the X Windows session gracefully, then I see that as a
problem.

But I can't see that affecting most gnucash users, who I'm guessing
are on Windows and Mac.  Gnucash users on Ubuntu might be affected;
gnucash is listed in the gnome "sub section", which I take it means
that a gnome installation provides the dependencies that gnucash needs
on Ubuntu.  So others will have to figure out how to proceed if gnome
and systemd become "too close", or if one replaces the other.  I don't
know enough to say.

Where the BSD's shine, however, are as servers, routers, firewalls,
and a lot of other applications (Border Gateway Protocol routers) that
need to be fairly robust with a good level of security.  The pf
firewall is outstanding (hence its name in PFSense), I have had BSD
routers run for months without a problem, and intrusions are almost
nil (but that's always dependent on the sysadmin, no matter how good
the OS).

But the convenience of Ubuntu or Debian in a Docker environment would
outweigh the effort of switching a container over to FreeBSD.
FreeBSD, perversely, also runs docker, which is odd because FreeBSD
has had "Jails" for years.  Gentoo might be a viable alternative, but
also more work than necessary.  SMF (in Solaris and SmartOS) does some
things very well, but I never got past the xml code in the manifest
files.

I would not avoid Debian or Ubuntu because of systemd or gnome, but I
would want to have an alternative if necessary.  Gentoo is a
candidate; you can use runit, OpenRC, and dumb-init for linux
containers.  Systemd is also an option on Gentoo, if you want it.

In user space, that means that one of the best reasons for using
gnucash is that it runs on a variety of OS platforms.  If one of them
becomes unworkable, switch to another, and still use gnucash.  When I
become annoyed by their political idiocy, or get tired of giving
MicroSoft or Apple too much money, I use BSD or linux.

Gordon

On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 3:16 PM, Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Getting very very off topic here.  I don't think anyone is going to change
> OSes as a result of systemd.
>
> I agree, systemd is a nightmare.  I've been working on migrating a bunch
> of old servers to newer models, and I've been fighting with systemd in
> several places.  There's one machine I have that doesn't have a RTC, but
> needs to have "current time" before anything works..  So it needs to come
> up on the network, get the current time, and *then( start some services.
> But no finagling around in systemd would get that working, so I had to
> create an rc.local script that tested the network first before running
> ntpdate and then restarting the services that needed the correct time.
>
> Having said all that, in general I can get systemd into shape without too
> much effort.  There are corner cases that drive me nuts, and I HATE how it
> gets its grubby little hands into absolutely everything, but I wouldn't
> scrap my knowledge solely because of my disdain for systemd.
>
> -derek
>
> On Mon, February 6, 2017 2:49 pm, Securenym.net wrote:
>> systemd is an ongoing discussion in the -nix communities.  I use linux on
>> embedded systems, but we are predominantly a FreeBSD shop.  FreeBSD is
>> based, for the most part on BSD Unix, as is Apple’s Darwin (OS X).  The
>> original intent of systemd was to replace initd and create a complex
>> integrated one size fits all “software framework.”    The goals were to
>> provide a software development platform, a services manager and an
>> interface between kernel and applications.
>>
>> Some of us feel that systemd is Redhat’s way of steering the linux
>> environment into their corner.   The biggest problems with systemd is that
>> it does what it does and if you don’t like it, or it doesn’t implement a
>> task interface you want to do, too bad.  It brings some of the order to
>> the linux distro inconsistencies, and just makes things easier for linux
>> world, but it does break things that don’t need to break.  This is the
>> problem with the systemd philosophy of trust us, we’ll do it all for you
>> in very tightly integrated modules.
>>
>> So because of systemd’s philosophy of asynchronous inits and no real way
>> to permit good dependency control, short of disabling its core philosophy.
>>  That causes a world of problems and because it is a tightly integrated,
>> large and complex software component, it’s pretty hard to look under the
>> hood and see what’s going wrong, and it looks like systemd devs are trying
>> to absorb linux itself into systemd.
>>
>> While we have been a FreeBSD shop since 1996 (2.1-Release), we have played
>> around with Linux and do use it on embedded systems, where it really does
>> work well.  But for production work, FreeBSD is king.   Might be worth
>> considering.
>>
>> Walt
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Feb 6, 2017, at 12:26 PM, Craig Van Tassle <craig at codestorm.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> SystemD likes to change how systems start up and their dependencies on
>>> the fly. Even updating systemd on my servers have caused a lot of issues
>>> and it's hard to find them with standard tools.
>>>
>>> On 2017-02-06 13:22, tjoen wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 2017-02-06 at 12:10 -0500, Craig Van Tassle wrote:
>>>>> Another mark against systemd.....
>>>>> On 2017-02-06 12:00, Derek Atkins wrote:
>>>>> > Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> writes:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > > FYI,
>>>>> > >
>>>>> > > Looks like www.gnucash.org is back online now.
>>>>> > > I don't know what the issue was, but it appears Linas fixed it.
>>>>> > > Sorry for any inconvenience.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > For the record, apparently during a system update Ubuntu changed
>>>>> > permissions on the container system which blocked access to the
>>>>> > website.  That and systemd broke it.
>>>> I don't see systemd dependencies in httpd
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> gnucash-user mailing list
>>>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>>> -----
>>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>>>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnucash-user mailing list
>>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>> -----
>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnucash-user mailing list
>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>> -----
>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
>
> --
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.