systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

ngoonee · 2011-05-19 02:46:28

hauzer wrote:

I see.

Thanks for the link, very informative

sonay · 2011-05-19 07:54:24

Hi, newbie here. I'd like to give systemd a try. I followed the wiki and set up the native systemd implementation and I have a problem, that is, my netbook does not shutdown. Somebody here mentioned about replacing syslog-ng with rsyslog but I don't know how to do that with "systemctl enable" command.

My deamons in rc.conf are hwclock, syslog-ng, dbus, wicd and crond. If anyone gives me a hand with "systemctl enable *.service" hints, I'll be glad. Also it'll be great, if anyone can help me use e4rat with systemd, i.e., what's the exact kernel line replacement for "init=sbin/e4rat-preload"?

litemotiv · 2011-05-19 08:08:51

sonay wrote:

Somebody here mentioned about replacing syslog-ng with rsyslog but I don't know how to do that with "systemctl enable" command.

That should be a matter of installing rsyslog, removing syslog-ng and issuing systemctl enable rsyslog.service.

ngoonee wrote:

Also, on the matter of boot times, its great you have 10-12 seconds, but this laptop used to take 1 minutes 50 seconds on Gnome (now 1 minute 15 seconds on Awesome), so that DOES make quite a bit of difference when that's improved.

And then consider 50,000 people doing that each day, that saves hours and hours of time.

Last edited by litemotiv (2011-05-19 08:12:15)

sonay · 2011-05-19 08:25:30

litemotiv wrote:

sonay wrote:
Somebody here mentioned about replacing syslog-ng with rsyslog but I don't know how to do that with "systemctl enable" command.
That should be a matter of installing rsyslog, removing syslog-ng and issuing systemctl enable rsyslog.service.

ngoonee wrote:
Also, on the matter of boot times, its great you have 10-12 seconds, but this laptop used to take 1 minutes 50 seconds on Gnome (now 1 minute 15 seconds on Awesome), so that DOES make quite a bit of difference when that's improved.
And then consider 50,000 people doing that each day, that saves hours and hours of time.

Thank you, litemotiv, shutdown problem is done now, yet I am a little bit confused about rc.conf and enabling services. Now that I have enabled some deamons with systemctl, does systemd still check for rc.conf's DAEMONS array? If not, do you happen to know if there are a .service files for the deamons I mentioned before?

sonay · 2011-05-19 08:29:00

Well, looks like wicd has but crond does not and I guess dbus doesn't need one...

litemotiv · 2011-05-19 09:14:20

From the systemd wiki:

arch-daemons.target
Parses the DAEMONS array in rc.conf and starts the services. If a native systemd unit exists (by the same name) for a given daemon, this is used, otherwise the script in /etc/rc.d/ is used to control the unit.

for crond, see the dcron.service, fcron.service and cronie.service files in /lib/systemd/system

hauzer · 2011-05-19 12:51:23

I've just set up systemd. Wow! The speed improvement is awesome. I didn't measure it, but it seems like it chopped off some 50%. I'll sniff out a bit more to try and setup a native (as possible) systemd environment. This stuff is the future, so I better get familiar sooner than later.

hauzer · 2011-05-19 14:51:05

Man.. So much problems with this thing. It won't mount my network shares, it instead deletes the mountpoints. My maximum monitor mode is now 1024x768x60 and I can't reboot/shutdown from LXDE. The speed improvement is undeniable, but is it worth all the hassle? In my opinion, this isn't ready for every day use just yet. Here are some bootcharts:
init - 39 secs
systemd - 34 secs
systemd 'quiet' - 27 secs

Last edited by hauzer (2011-05-19 14:51:38)

erick.red · 2011-05-19 15:15:54

Is there any plans of Archlinux developers to migrate the main init system to use systemd ?

falconindy · 2011-05-19 15:17:14

/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk

litemotiv · 2011-05-19 15:39:00

erick.red · 2011-05-19 15:44:30

litemotiv wrote:

You can keep laughing, I haven't got an answer yet, since I don't understand he means with '/headdesk'

falconindy · 2011-05-19 15:54:30

Since it seems that you can't be assed to look around on your own, I've skimmed the surface of this tiresome reoccuring inquiry for you:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=934669
http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 17949.html
http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 17971.html

Don't apologize.

mundane · 2011-05-19 15:59:20

I don't understand how so many people can be so incapable of searching.

Also, searching for the term "headdesk" on google would have revealed the meaning instantly, but of course that would be too much to ask.

Thank you falconindy for not having killed yourself already in sheer frustration

Last edited by mundane (2011-05-19 15:59:40)

bobwad · 2011-05-19 17:51:04

@erick.red

Falconindy is quite right. You really should not apologise.

What the links show is that this subject was discussed (mostly back in January) and that no useful conclusion was reached. Why that should render you liable to sarcasm and bad manners is beyond me. After all, if you did search, and if you found these links, then you would still be entitled to ask.

As for "headdesk", this is a piece of urban slang which may not have met before. It was a joke that just didn't work. Wrong slang, wrong audience.

So, has anyone the faintest idea of a real answer to the question? After 48 years in the computing community, I have no hesitation in asking this simple question.

And, @erick.red, don't be discouraged, stick with Arch. It is normally better than this.

falconindy · 2011-05-19 18:02:02

The lack of response should be telling enough. We have no current plans to switch.

XZS · 2011-05-19 21:17:09

As systemd is in the repositories, every user may decide to switch on his own. I did a few weeks ago. Though it did not speed up boot as much (I already tweaked the initscripts heavily before) I am very happy with the service-based architecture. It seems much more usable than the old sysv-daemon model. But I still have a bunch of open questions, and would appreciate every idea to solve them.

Because of the many bind-mounts and automounts, the outputs of mount and df are rather cluttered and redundant. Is there something I can do about this?

Why does systemd still depend on initscripts? I moved on to using the systemd-native configuration files, so what keeps me from removing the old sysv-init?

Can I use systemd for user-services? For example I want wicd-gtk auromatically to be launched and killed when wicd.service is started or stopped. Could this be what the "--user" switch is for?

Some units, like binfmt or debugfs, fail because my custom configured kernel lacks the functionality needed. How can I deactivate them?

Systemd seems to fail setting my locale. In my /etc/locale.conf there is the single line
LANG=de_DE.utf8
but when I check it on the console, the environment variable LANG is unset.

Thanks for your help.

falconindy · 2011-05-19 21:55:29

XZS wrote:

Because of the many bind-mounts and automounts, the outputs of mount and df are rather cluttered and redundant. Is there something I can do about this?

Some utilities will let you filter output (and some wont). findmnt (util-linux 2.18) is excellent at filtering, e.g. 'findmnt -t nocgroup'. With upstream pushing us towards /etc/mtab becoming a symlink, the extra noise in the output of mount is pretty much unavoidable. I think that may be part of why findmnt was created. You also have lsblk, which is another relatively new (util-linux 2.19) tool for looking at actual block devices.

XZS wrote:

Why does systemd still depend on initscripts? I moved on to using the systemd-native configuration files, so what keeps me from removing the old sysv-init?

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, you can manipulate the package to not depend on sysvinit. It's currently a dependency as a mechanism to ease the transition. Maybe one day this will change. Feel free to mangle the package as you see fit. This is what ABS is for.

XZS wrote:

Can I use systemd for user-services? For example I want wicd-gtk auromatically to be launched and killed when wicd.service is started or stopped. Could this be what the "--user" switch is for?

systemd is not (yet) a proper session manager. So no, this isn't currently possible.

XZS wrote:

Some units, like binfmt or debugfs, fail because my custom configured kernel lacks the functionality needed. How can I deactivate them?

You can mask the service. Create a symlink to /dev/null for the mount unit you want obliterated, e.g. sys-kernel-debug.mount. This should make sure that this unit is never even attempted to be started.

XZS wrote:

Systemd seems to fail setting my locale. In my /etc/locale.conf there is the single line
LANG=de_DE.utf8
but when I check it on the console, the environment variable LANG is unset.

I'd say you failed to set your locale in /etc/locale.conf. See 'man locale.conf'.

WorMzy · 2011-05-19 22:55:35

Watch out for /etc/profile.d/locale.sh, that tripped me up with my latest Arch install. No idea where that file came from, but it insisted on overwriting my locale settings with en_US.UTF-8.

JokerBoy · 2011-05-19 23:04:01

/etc/rc.sysinit:echo "export LANG=$LOCALE" >>/etc/profile.d/locale.sh

WorMzy · 2011-05-19 23:31:34

Alright, thanks for that. But where is that getting called from?

wormzy@sakura[pts/0]:/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants$ ls /etc/systemd/system/{shutdown.target.wants,getty.target.wants,multi-user.target.wants,sysinit.target.wants,local-fs.target.wants} 
/etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants:
getty@tty1.service  getty@tty2.service

/etc/systemd/system/local-fs.target.wants:

/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants:
alsa.service         mpd.service       rsyslog.service
mpdscribble.service  remote-fs.target  wicd.service

/etc/systemd/system/shutdown.target.wants:
arch-persistent-settings.service

/etc/systemd/system/sysinit.target.wants:
hwclock-load.service

Is it arch-persistent-settings.service? I'll see if removing that service has any impact.

EDIT: Nope, no change. Fortunately editing locale.sh's contents with the real locale fixes things.

Last edited by WorMzy (2011-05-19 23:37:07)

falconindy · 2011-05-19 23:38:49

Look in /etc/profile. It's unrelated to your init system.

WorMzy · 2011-05-20 00:54:59

Thanks.

I'm clearly too drunk to make sense of much right now, but it seems to me that the variables declared in /etc/locale.conf are only used during boot up and for the virtual consoles, is that right? I guess it makes sense to have the locale set on a per-user basis, although I'm still not too sure why locale defaults to POSIX if /etc/profile.d/locale.sh is missing; you'd think it'd drop back to whatever was used during boot up.

Oh well, it was always a non-problem for me in any case. Hopefully XZS got his problem sorted.

falconindy · 2011-05-20 00:56:04

I source /etc/console.conf in my ~/.bash_profile and export LANG LC_COLLATE

edit: also, systemd 27 is on its way to the repos.

Last edited by falconindy (2011-05-20 00:56:37)

sand_man · 2011-05-20 06:27:50

falconindy wrote:

Separate /var is fine. It will never support separate /usr.

Does anyone have /usr on a separate partition? I don't think I ever have.
I do in FreeBSD but that's different.

Arch Linux

#626 2011-05-19 02:46:28

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#627 2011-05-19 07:54:24

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#628 2011-05-19 08:08:51

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

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#630 2011-05-19 08:29:00

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#631 2011-05-19 09:14:20

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#632 2011-05-19 12:51:23

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#633 2011-05-19 14:51:05

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#634 2011-05-19 15:15:54

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#635 2011-05-19 15:17:14

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#636 2011-05-19 15:39:00

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#637 2011-05-19 15:44:30

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#638 2011-05-19 15:54:30

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#639 2011-05-19 15:59:20

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#640 2011-05-19 17:51:04

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#641 2011-05-19 18:02:02

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#642 2011-05-19 21:17:09

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#643 2011-05-19 21:55:29

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#644 2011-05-19 22:55:35

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#645 2011-05-19 23:04:01

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#646 2011-05-19 23:31:34

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#647 2011-05-19 23:38:49

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#648 2011-05-20 00:54:59

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#649 2011-05-20 00:56:04

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

#650 2011-05-20 06:27:50

Re: systemd: Yet Another Init Replacement

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