Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

ninian · 2012-08-03 08:34:48

Must admit to being pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy it was to implement systemd on various desktop and laptop systems. Booting and shutdown is certainly a bit faster, but it's the overall approach and strategy of systemd which has enabled me to simplify my setups, making for easier maintenance. Given the youth of the project, it has done well so far and I'll forgive some of the rough edges for now (the GUI systemadm being one).

ANOKNUSA · 2012-08-03 14:39:26

PReP wrote:

this, along with a feel of loss of "power user"-control or quick insight have been my main concerns here,
since everything i have been using my computer for already works to be honest.

1) I see no loss of "power user"-control, as you put it; it does all the same stuff SysVinit did, and apparently more.
2) "Lack of quick insight" is about as subjective as it gets.
3) Finally, boot time is not the main advantage of systemd. The tech bloggers may portray it that way, and upstream may encourage this emphasis (sadly, since not all or even most of us are that stupid), but it's hardly the main point.

At this point in the discussion, it seems to me that the hold-up here is change itself: some people just don't deal well with it. It happened with KDE 4, it happened with GNOME 3, it will probably happen with KDE 5 and will certainly happen come time for all of us to switch to Wayland--there are always die-hard hold-outs who just won't accept anything new, regardless of what the advantages arguably might be.

89c51 · 2012-08-03 17:34:38

ANOKNUSA wrote:

At this point in the discussion, it seems to me that the hold-up here is change itself: some people just don't deal well with it. It happened with KDE 4, it happened with GNOME 3, it will probably happen with KDE 5 and will certainly happen come time for all of us to switch to Wayland--there are always die-hard hold-outs who just won't accept anything new, regardless of what the advantages arguably might be.

Even thought i agree that change is something many people have problems with there are cases where instead of changing for the better and gradually change happens suddenly and for the worst. The prime example of this is Gnome. The UX/UI people are morons at least. They fucked it up so much is not even funny.

As for wayland as far as i understand it the change will be transparent to most of the users.

As for systemd, if you exclude the anti-Lennart Poettering crowd, i get the feeling that most users are OK and pleased with it.

Roken · 2012-08-03 19:38:56

systemd has the advantage, of course, that it does produce a noticable and measurable boost in speed of startup and shutdown, which is what many of the fence sitters will think about first.

The fact that, once you get used to it, it's more logical and easier to maintain is of secondary concern to most "users" (as opposed to "tinkerers")

alphaniner · 2012-08-03 20:34:56

ninian wrote:

Must admit to being pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy it was to implement systemd

+1 to this. Getting the basics running was stupefyingly easy, and the details required only a bit more attention.

Granted, this is primarily thanks to the folks who wrote the Archwiki pages I used.

ninian · 2012-08-03 20:40:12

alphaniner wrote:

this is primarily thanks to the folks who wrote the Archwiki pages I used.

Absolutely agree, the Wiki does a fine job of getting you rolling with systemd.
My thanks also go to those contributors who saved me a lot of head-scratching.

Jristz · 2012-08-04 00:21:37

systemd boot in 16 secs from grub to X and iniscripts in 10 ... but this isnot the reazon for that I make the switch to systemd XD

tha journald is good and I try to see if I can remove more thinks and use systemd remplacenments (like the journald instead of syslog)
and the fact that systemd and all my stuff use less ram that sysvinit (but more CPU)

really at this point for mee is the same think sysvinit than systemd...I fallow how arch make the integration

ratcheer · 2012-08-04 00:49:25

I am completely converted to native systemd. My boot time is exactly the same as before, 12 seconds. However, shutdown is noticeably faster.

I like systemd and prefer it.

Tim

Jristz · 2012-08-04 02:47:47

ratcheer wrote:

I am completely converted to native systemd. My boot time is exactly the same as before, 12 seconds. However, shutdown is noticeably faster.
I like systemd and prefer it.
Tim

try add the systemd-readahead and reboot twice, in teory this can improbe time....in THEORY
but you not lost any

89c51 · 2012-08-04 11:15:05

BTW Has anyone found a guide of how to use the new "chroot" (systemd-nspawn) that systemd provides to repair a broken installation?? ie plug an Arch (or other) usb stick and do it. I read http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/changing-roots.html but i am a noob and didn't understand much from it.

Last edited by 89c51 (2012-08-04 11:16:54)

mhertz · 2012-08-04 11:44:01

I hope the devs will change over fully to systemd, and deprecate initscripts/sysvinit...

At first I was alittle pissed off by the current direction arch is going through(from reading arch-dev-public), but after reading up on systemd and seeing other distros also adapting it or planning to, then I changed my mind...

Initscripts were previously superiour to standalone-sysvinit, as it was simpler without loosing out of anything, but now with systemd the situation has clearly changed, as it's a much more intelligent system + the widespread(or soon to be) adaption from the community, then it's imho a no-brainer to change.

I've just finished changing over to systemd myself and changed my automatic-installer-script to also install systemd and remove initscripts/sysvinit...

Last edited by mhertz (2012-08-04 11:46:37)

Procyon · 2012-08-06 14:56:13

I don't want to boot into systemd yet, so sorry for asking something that is easily verified.
I see this in the wiki:

wiki systemd wrote:

Q: What other units does a unit depend on?
A: For example, if you want to figure out which services a target like multi-user.target pulls in, use something like this:
$ systemctl show -p "Wants" multi-user.target
Wants=rc-local.service avahi-daemon.service rpcbind.service NetworkManager.service acpid.service dbus.service atd.service crond.service auditd.service ntpd.service udisks.service bluetooth.service cups.service wpa_supplicant.service getty.target modem-manager.service portreserve.service abrtd.service yum-updatesd.service upowerd.service test-first.service pcscd.service rsyslog.service haldaemon.service remote-fs.target plymouth-quit.service systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service sendmail.service lvm2-monitor.service cpuspeed.service udev-post.service mdmonitor.service iscsid.service livesys.service livesys-late.service irqbalance.service iscsi.service netfs.service

Does that mean all these services (if I have them) will be started?
And if so, how would I avoid this?

ANOKNUSA · 2012-08-06 15:23:17

Sticking with that example from the wiki, it seems that string lists the services which depend upon a particular "runlevel" (called a "target" under systemd). multi-user.target is the dependency, and that list of services "wants" mutli-user.target enabled to in order to run. The runlevel dependencies are retroactive/recursive, with multi-user.target being analogous to runlevel 3 and graphical.target analogous to runlevel 5; hence, if you want to run a graphical DM you'll need graphical.target ("runlevel 5") enabled, but graphical.target will satisfy the dependencies of those services that "want" multi-user.target.

Hopefully that was clear enough. Basically, just choose the target/runlevel you typically use with sysvinit, run "systemctl enable *.service" for all the daemons in rc.conf (or, if using initscrpits-systemd, run "systemctl -t service" for a list of services that are presently loaded on your system, and enable them) and you should be ready for the switch.

Quick edit: So, no, I'm pretty sure not all those services will be loaded. I should have been more clear about that, at least. Judging by a couple of the services in that list, I'm guessing that example was written by a Fedora user.

Last edited by ANOKNUSA (2012-08-06 15:24:49)

Procyon · 2012-08-06 15:52:23

Oh so it's because he put all those files in his multi-user.target.wants directory and not because files in the main system directory have a WantedBy=multi-user.target line?

65kid · 2012-08-06 15:57:22

Procyon wrote:

Oh so it's because he put all those files in his multi-user.target.wants directory and not because files in the main system directory have a WantedBy=multi-user.target line?

It's because all the unit files have WantedBy=multi-user.target and he explicitly enabled them which created the symlinks in multi-user.target.wants/.

edit: oops, sorry. As ANOKNUSA said, "systemctl show -p Wants" is recursive, so not all of those services have to be explicitly enabled, they may not even be part of multi-user.target but of another target which is pulled in by multi-user.target.

edit2: oh god, I should really get my facts straight, it is NOT recursive, it's just that some of those units are enabled by default (as can be seen in /usr/lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants).

Last edited by 65kid (2012-08-06 16:07:11)

ataraxia · 2012-08-06 16:04:15

You can see for yourself what would be started if you booted under systemd without doing so. Install it, and then do "systemd --test". It will spit out a bunch of output showing exactly which units will start with the current config, and then exit without actually doing anything.

zebulon · 2012-08-08 09:52:44

Jristz wrote:

try add the systemd-readahead and reboot twice, in teory this can improbe time....in THEORY
but you not lost any

Where do you find systemd-readahead?

EDIT: it is in the systemd package itself.

Do you enable all system-readahead-*.service ?

Last edited by zebulon (2012-08-08 10:00:08)

nierro · 2012-08-08 10:08:05

Wiki is your friend here : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd#Readahead

zebulon · 2012-08-08 10:17:01

nierro wrote:

Wiki is your friend here : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd#Readahead

My bad. And I am one of the ditor of this page!

vostok4 · 2012-08-09 23:20:27

For me the only thing I miss is the "rc.d" command in systemd. I hate typing the full commands out to stop/start/restart services (especially having to write foo.service.... !@#)

Although I feel like that should be easy to re-implement. I liked it's pretty output. Other than that, systemd is quite cool, I didn't even know it had its own journald, need to learn more!

bohoomil · 2012-08-09 23:24:28

vostok4 wrote:

For me the only thing I miss is the "rc.d" command in systemd. I hate typing the full commands out to stop/start/restart services (especially having to write foo.service.... !@#)

Take a look at:

1) https://bitbucket.org/jasonwryan/eeepc/ … ripts/sysd
2) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … _Shortcuts

TheBodziO · 2012-08-09 23:25:21

Hmmm… systemd: init+cron+syslog+acpid… let's hope they won't add a CD labels “creator” or media player ;P – if you catch my drift :}

progandy · 2012-08-09 23:26:37

vostok4 wrote:

For me the only thing I miss is the "rc.d" command in systemd. I hate typing the full commands out to stop/start/restart services (especially having to write foo.service.... !@#)
Although I feel like that should be easy to re-implement. I liked it's pretty output. Other than that, systemd is quite cool, I didn't even know it had its own journald, need to learn more!

You need only a simple shell function:

 function susc() {
    sudo systemctl $1 "$2.service"
}

tomegun · 2012-08-10 00:15:29

vostok4 wrote:

I hate typing the full commands out to stop/start/restart services (especially having to write foo.service.... !@#)

Once 188 is out, this should no longer be necessary [0].

[0]: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/sys … 08c40dd909

vostok4 · 2012-08-10 01:18:47

Heh you all win, thanks for the tips, I like the sysd wrapper.

Arch Linux

#51 2012-08-03 08:34:48

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#52 2012-08-03 14:39:26

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#53 2012-08-03 17:34:38

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#54 2012-08-03 19:38:56

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#55 2012-08-03 20:34:56

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#56 2012-08-03 20:40:12

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#57 2012-08-04 00:21:37

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#58 2012-08-04 00:49:25

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#59 2012-08-04 02:47:47

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#60 2012-08-04 11:15:05

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#61 2012-08-04 11:44:01

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#62 2012-08-06 14:56:13

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#63 2012-08-06 15:23:17

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#64 2012-08-06 15:52:23

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#65 2012-08-06 15:57:22

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#66 2012-08-06 16:04:15

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#67 2012-08-08 09:52:44

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#68 2012-08-08 10:08:05

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#69 2012-08-08 10:17:01

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#70 2012-08-09 23:20:27

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#71 2012-08-09 23:24:28

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#72 2012-08-09 23:25:21

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#73 2012-08-09 23:26:37

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#74 2012-08-10 00:15:29

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

#75 2012-08-10 01:18:47

Re: Getting a grip on systemd, just in case.

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