OpenRC & eudev on Arch

artoo · 2012-11-09 20:55:23

Hello forum,

I came across the discussion on OpenRC as an alternative to systemd.

Hence I installed OpenRC from AUR and fixed a couple of bugs and now have an almost perfectly running Arch with OpenRC on my test vbox which runs on Gentoo host.

Now the question.

How would I get in touch with the creator(s) of the OpenRC package build(s) to possibly submit fixes/patches?

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=52311

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=63510

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=63509

The install of OpenRC from AUR misses the loop back interface and net infrastructure, hence it will give you as of now a pretty useless system without network at all, and I would suggest to add udev and udev-mount init scripts to default install.

Besides that, is there any interest in the Arch community to have an alternative init system since initscripts won't be maintained?

I know it still leaves consolekit issue which is dead upstream, but available in AUR.
Generally, a repo with consolekit related packages and eg OpenRC would be nice.

Anyway, I need to squash the dbus crash in KDE now after adding display manager support.

Apologies for placing thread in the wrong category eventually.

Last edited by artoo (2013-10-14 23:08:35)

karol · 2012-11-09 21:18:41

artoo wrote:

Besides that, is there any interest in the Arch community to have an alternative init system since initscripts won't be maintained?

Yes, there were at least a few long discussions, both on the forums and on the ML.
There is a udev fork, people asked about maintaining consolekit etc.

As you say, alternative init systems like runit, cinit, openrc aren't trivial to implement in Arch, so people generally leave Arch for another distro if they're unhappy with systemd.

artoo wrote:

How would I get in touch with the creator(s) of the OpenRC package build(s) to possibly submit fixes/patches?

Post a comment on the AUR page of the packages in question. You need to register an account on the AUR (it's separate from the forum account) and log in.

Last edited by karol (2012-11-09 21:20:40)

ewaller · 2012-11-09 21:20:09

May as well move this topic now. Moved to topics going nowhere.

artoo · 2012-11-10 02:14:02

karol wrote:

artoo wrote:
Besides that, is there any interest in the Arch community to have an alternative init system since initscripts won't be maintained?
Yes, there were at least a few long discussions, both on the forums and on the ML.
There is a udev fork, people asked about maintaining consolekit etc.
As you say, alternative init systems like runit, cinit, openrc aren't trivial to implement in Arch, so people generally leave Arch for another distro if they're unhappy with systemd.
I found openrc not too difficult to make it work.
I can't comment on runit, but OpenRC is pretty reliable on Gentoo.
artoo wrote:
How would I get in touch with the creator(s) of the OpenRC package build(s) to possibly submit fixes/patches?
Post a comment on the AUR page of the packages in question. You need to register an account on the AUR (it's separate from the forum account) and log in.

Thanks, will try that, or else submit a pkgbuild myself.

ewaller wrote:

May as well move this topic now. Moved to topics going nowhere.

However, after the moderation moved the thread to the dustbin area, I will reconsider my proposal to get a cross community effort going for alternative to systemd octopus , and stick to creating gentoo ebuilds and stuff instead. I find the udev-standalone fork already promising.

If Arch won't manage to supply an alternative to systemd, it will die a slow death, becomes corrupted by greedy commercial people and with it the great and fast pacman will die. The reason I found interest in Arch as a binary distro of my choice was pacman.

Bye.

Last edited by artoo (2012-11-10 02:40:08)

WorMzy · 2012-11-10 02:24:53

TGN isn't the dustbin.

artoo · 2012-11-10 02:31:18

WorMzy wrote:

TGN isn't the dustbin.

True, but I find it questionable to move a well meant thread in a "topics going nowhere".
I tried to ask if the Arch community would be interested in a little community project to implement OpenRC.

Now, the thread is only visible to logged in users.

I have also read the post of some gentoo dev to kindly provide any assistance.
So the category the thread has been moved is rather discouraging to get involved in the Arch community.

Such thing would not happen on the gentoo forum, I have to say.

Last edited by artoo (2012-11-10 02:42:16)

WorMzy · 2012-11-10 02:51:10

*shrugs* Go and post on the Gentoo forums then.

With regards to your question about contacting AUR package maintainers, you need to log in to the AUR, then you can post comments and see additional information about the maintainer (e.g. email address).

Good luck with what you're trying to achieve.

artoo · 2012-11-10 03:13:10

WorMzy wrote:

*shrugs* Go and post on the Gentoo forums then.
With regards to your question about contacting AUR package maintainers, you need to log in to the AUR, then you can post comments and see additional information about the maintainer (e.g. email address).
Good luck with what you're trying to achieve.

Yes, the beauty of choice. I am already over there, and just made a quick and first and last visit to Arch forums.

As I wrote in initial post, openrc runs fine on the arch test box, but the AUR build is buggy and incomplete.
I was more thinking in terms of providing a broader alternative solution to the systemd mess and attempted monopoly on one of the core components of a linux system.
One person cannot do all that, hence it takes a big community efforts of people willing to maintain the freedom of choice in linux instead of accepting a lindows.

Last edited by artoo (2012-11-10 03:14:24)

Scimmia · 2012-11-10 05:09:33

artoo wrote:

As I wrote in initial post, openrc runs fine on the arch test box, but the AUR build is buggy and incomplete.
I was more thinking in terms of providing a broader alternative solution to the systemd mess and attempted monopoly on one of the core components of a linux system.
One person cannot do all that, hence it takes a big community efforts of people willing to maintain the freedom of choice in linux instead of accepting a lindows.

And this statement is exactly why this thread was moved. We have had the systemd discussion over and over again. If you don't want systemd, don't use Arch. Simple. The forum mods certainly aren't going to give you the platform to preach your beliefs on the matter and try to develop an alternative when it really has nothing to do with ArchLinux. What you're talking about is creating a derivative distro, which is fine, but don't expect to develop it here.

Last edited by Scimmia (2012-11-10 05:11:31)

x33a · 2012-11-10 06:13:47

Scimmia wrote:

artoo wrote:
As I wrote in initial post, openrc runs fine on the arch test box, but the AUR build is buggy and incomplete.
I was more thinking in terms of providing a broader alternative solution to the systemd mess and attempted monopoly on one of the core components of a linux system.
One person cannot do all that, hence it takes a big community efforts of people willing to maintain the freedom of choice in linux instead of accepting a lindows.
And this statement is exactly why this thread was moved. We have had the systemd discussion over and over again. If you don't want systemd, don't use Arch. Simple. The forum mods certainly aren't going to give you the platform to preach your beliefs on the matter and try to develop an alternative when it really has nothing to do with ArchLinux. What you're talking about is creating a derivative distro, which is fine, but don't expect to develop it here.

Or maybe the moderator's action made him rant, he didn't say any such thing in the first post.

This thread is better suited for AUR issues. But yes, please keep it technical.

@ artoo, ask the package maintainer on AUR for help, if you believe you can do better than him, then you can even request him to orphan the package and you can take over the maintainership.

jasonwryan · 2012-11-10 06:28:12

I'll move this to AUR issue on the condition that it remains focussed on OpenRC - any more of the anti-systemd paranoia or slurs and this gets closed and stays closed.

ewaller · 2012-11-10 06:37:16

I'll support Jason in that move. I had not mentioned it here, but I did send the OP an email to explain my actions and some of the angst associated with this topic. I had been waiting to hear back from him so we could figure out how to do just what Jason proposes.

artoo · 2012-11-10 09:32:42

ewaller wrote:

I'll support Jason in that move. I had not mentioned it here, but I did send the OP an email to explain my actions and some of the angst associated with this topic. I had been waiting to hear back from him so we could figure out how to do just what Jason proposes.

I have read your PM and thank you for the explanation.

My intention was not to start a discussion on systemd, and yes, the moving of the thread annoyed me to state what I stated on systemd.
I considered it the same mechanism used in political circus, "consent society" and suppressing alternative views.

Anyway, your PM cleared that up, and I accept what you wrote.

To get back on topic, yes, OpenRC from a technical pov is the intention of the thread and how to provide an alternative init system for people who don't want systemd for whatever reason on Arch linux.
However, it is difficult to start a thread without some explanations invoving the core issue, systemd, consolekit, udev for desktops.

So the bottom line, if people want an alternative init system on Arch, it is urgently time to act and get together, systemd is the "NWO" in the linux world.

The systemd cheerleaders may ignore this thread, they've got what they want, now it is time to give them competition in form of packages, almost too late.

Edit: I made comments on the OpenRC pkgbuilds referring to this thread to hopefully get in touch with the pkgbuild creator.

I thought after installing from AUR that the build creator may lack experience with OpenRC since the network infrastructure was missing, but I might be wrong there.

Scimmia wrote:

And this statement is exactly why this thread was moved. We have had the systemd discussion over and over again. If you don't want systemd, don't use Arch. Simple.

All I comment is that you obviously don't have a clue about open source principles and philosophy, and your answer fits best into a monolithic beast of the windows world view.

I already use Gentoo as main OS, but I have experience with linux and programming for 20 years now and with almost all distros except for Red Hat.

Linux is about choice dude.

Last edited by artoo (2012-11-10 10:12:01)

Earnestly · 2012-11-10 10:37:03

artoo wrote:

Linux is about choice dude.

No, Linux is not about choice.
I believe this post above is appropriate to the current situation in multiple ways; regarding common misnomers and unrealistic expectations (and it's unfortunately side effects) that devs should maintain two different projects which attempt to solve the same problem.

Ontopic: I'm all for having community maintained alternatives for those who wish to use it but I wouldn't expect the devs to further commit their own time and resources to projects they don't wish to maintain. If you would like to see OpenRC (or Runit/Ignite/Minit/etc) working on Arch, I'm afraid you'll have to commit your own time to maintain and deal with potential problems people have with it.

Good luck getting your bugfixes committed.

Last edited by Earnestly (2012-11-10 10:38:43)

artoo · 2012-11-10 12:35:27

Kaustic wrote:

artoo wrote:
Linux is about choice dude.
No, Linux is not about choice.
I believe this post above is appropriate to the current situation in multiple ways; regarding common misnomers and unrealistic expectations (and it's unfortunately side effects) that devs should maintain two different projects which attempt to solve the same problem.
Ontopic: I'm all for having community maintained alternatives for those who wish to use it but I wouldn't expect the devs to further commit their own time and resources to projects they don't wish to maintain. If you would like to see OpenRC (or Runit/Ignite/Minit/etc) working on Arch, I'm afraid you'll have to commit your own time to maintain and deal with potential problems people have with it.
Good luck getting your bugfixes committed.

Yes, linux is about choice. Try gentoo and you will notice what I mean. It enables the user to build their system as they see it fits. Nothing is enforced, and the USE flags grant the freedom of choice.
As an example, I am able on both Arch and Gentoo to install a package manager of my choice. I can also chose to install a standalone udev on gentoo instead of the systemd merged udev. And so on.
Now Arch claims to be highly customizable, true, but this seems to get pushed in the background a bit lately.

It is not surprising Red hat think differently, since they are the ones pushing a lot of nonsense in the open source projects, making even small software depend on tons gnome stuff and libraries.

As a side note, why is it, that people seem to have lost the ability to read and comprehend what they read?
I have never said I want Arch devs to maintain anything alternative.
But, as the thread already has taken a course I did not want, I am wondering if I really want to provide something to Arch community. as of now, only negativity, but no constructive approaches. Sad.

I clearly stated I intend to get a community project going, which involves users to maintain packages, ideally in a repo instead of AUR.
I am aware Arch made a decision(in my view a bad one), and I don't expect the Arch devs to help with it, though they are free to do it.

The point is again, as somebody already pointed out, Arch will lose users in my view, likely the advanced users, which lets Arch take the sad Ubuntu or RH path.

I state it again as clear as possible.
The thread is meant to have a platform to get in touch with the creator of the OpenRC pkgbuild and possible interested users who would like to see a working out of the box alternative to systemd with a future perspective.

OpenRC is nicely maintained and developed by the gentoo people, and currently, it does not look like gentoo will make the systemd move. So this grants sort of insurance, that OpenRC won't live a short live.

Here is an example, what could be achieved and done without official help.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-934678.html

Last edited by artoo (2012-11-10 13:00:39)

x33a · 2012-11-10 13:03:51

@ artoo,

I am interested in openrc and I am sure many other arch users are. Though, I can only help you test the packages since I am no coder. Many people would be willing to stick with arch if an alternative init is an option, since arch is much much than initscripts alone.

edit: Also, the person working on Arch GNU/KFreeBSD is using openrc for the init

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 4#p1188994

You can take a few cues from him if you want.

And an Archlinux TU is also working on openrc:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 2#p1186442

So, just so you know there is enough interest in alternative init systems. And these are just the initial times. With some dedicated effort and collaboration maybe openrc support (at least) should hopefully mature in archlinux.

Last edited by x33a (2012-11-10 13:11:40)

artoo · 2012-11-10 13:12:29

x33a wrote:

@ artoo,
I am interested in openrc and I am sure many other arch users are. Though, I can only help you test the packages since I am no coder. Many people would be willing to stick with arch if an alternative init is an option, since arch is much much than initscripts alone.

Thanks for the feedback.
I agree.

I try to get the ball rolling now by firstly summarizing my test box setup, hence the packages involved from AUR.
The problem is deeper than just replacing the init system, since newer packages will be compiled with systemd/logind support. This means, future official Arch packages would have to be recompiled too.
Current example, Arch with old initscript won't work well in Desktop mode due to the lack of polkit/consolekit support in the new packages. It means, authorizations won't work.

This gets me back to the consolekit package builds in AUR.

So, my test box running KDE and openrc makes use of:

1. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kdeb … onsolekit/
2. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=64099
3. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=64173
4. the packages mentioned in initial post, so the OpenRC package builds.

That being said, the packages will increase over time to be maintained.

I can later post a screenshot of Arch running OpenRC.

Hence the idea to possibly provide a repo with all these packages. Optionally, the udev-standalone is on the to do list once I have tested it on Gentoo. But this is future talk momentarily.

Edit:

http://postimage.org/image/4xsey5x69/full/
photo sharing websites

Moderator edit: The picture was still too big. Reduced to url.

Last edited by bernarcher (2012-11-10 16:17:45)

apg · 2012-11-10 13:57:40

I have been using OpenRC for a couple months now and it works just fine. I can't speak to any Gnome/KDE issues because I don't use a DE, but as far as getting your system up and running, it gets the job done.

As to your actual issues with OpenRC, all I see is 1) network support and 2) udev not being enabled by default. The pkgbuilds were missing a dependency on net-tools, I'll fix that. I will not be enabling udev by default; aside from moving files to avoid a conflict with initscripts, my packages are intended to be as close to vanilla upstream as possible.

artoo · 2012-11-10 14:09:24

apg wrote:

I have been using OpenRC for a couple months now and it works just fine. I can't speak to any Gnome/KDE issues because I don't use a DE, but as far as getting your system up and running, it gets the job done.
As to your actual issues with OpenRC, all I see is 1) network support and 2) udev not being enabled by default. The pkgbuilds were missing a dependency on net-tools, I'll fix that. I will not be enabling udev by default; aside from moving files to avoid a conflict with initscripts, my packages are intended to be as close to vanilla upstream as possible.

Thanks for posting.

As for the network, what about networkmanager free systems?

OpenRC on Gentoo provides net.lo to get network going without NM, this is missing on Arch install, I added it.

Concerning udev, the idea was to provide the average user an out of the box working init system.
If the user doesn't know much about OpenRC initially, I imagine it to be pretty frustrating to get modules loaded, and udev is installed by default on Arch.

As for your pkgbuild, I also fixed some bugs(wrong paths) you might have overlooked, and added some minor path related fixes for dbus, ifconfig and such scripts in the missing net folder within libexec/rc/.

Last edited by artoo (2012-11-10 14:11:56)

apg · 2012-11-10 14:27:22

net-tools has nothing to do with networkmanager... My system is networkmanager free and the network comes up just fine.

As for udev, openrc is intended to work just fine without udev (although I have not personally tested this) and I have linked on the package page to the Gentoo wiki that shows how to enable udev.

I'm not sure what you mean by paths in my pkgbuild... there are none related to dbus or ifconfig. If you're referring to the scripts, everything looks fine to me, but if you see problems feel free to post them or, if they're in one of the service files in the openrc-arch-services package, file an issue and a fix for it on the github page: https://github.com/andrewgregory/openrc-arch-services

patroclo7 · 2012-11-10 16:30:26

Quite frankly: I'm impressed. I have tried openrc on arch with apg AUR packages, and everything is simple, clean and super-fast.
I am going to look in gentoo repos for the initscripts of my services and test this stuff further.

patroclo7 · 2012-11-10 17:46:40

Ok, in less than an hour I have created basic and slightly hardcoded openrc scripts for my services (fcron, cupsd, sshd, net-auto-wireless, ntpd, inadyn), obviously taking inspiration from the corresponding gentoo scripts. Everything works, is fast, and looks nice at boot time (I am not running a DE and never needed consolekit in the past). I am sold.

Prickle · 2012-11-11 17:54:18

Sorry for this newbie question: how to install openrc? I mean if I just install package openrc with all dependencies from AUR and reboot will it work? I don't have any non-standard daemons and I still didn't switch to systemd and I don't want too...

patroclo7 · 2012-11-11 18:37:26

Install the three packages linked in the first post, follow the Gentoo wiki suggestions, read the man pages, add init=/sbin/init-openrc to the kernel boot line, reboot.
If you are not running a DE everything should work quite smoothly.

ngoonee · 2012-11-12 01:48:52

Prickle wrote:

Sorry for this newbie question: how to install openrc? I mean if I just install package openrc with all dependencies from AUR and reboot will it work? I don't have any non-standard daemons and I still didn't switch to systemd and I don't want too...

If you do that, make sure whenever you request help in the future you mention that you're NOT running systemd. As is standard practice with any AUR package, really. But more important in this case because the init system is quite fundamental to some types of issues.

Arch Linux

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OpenRC & eudev on Arch

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