On Sun, January 24, 2016 10:45 am, Peter Duffy wrote:> On Sat, 2016-01-23 at 20:27 -0600, Frank Cox wrote: >> On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:05:02 -0500 >> Mark LaPierre wrote: >> >> > The main reason I'm still using, nearly obsolete, CentOS 6 is because >> I >> > don't want to have to deal with Gnome 3. >> >> Install Mate on Centos 7 and you never have to touch Gnome 3. I did, >> and my desktops don't look or work any different today than they did >> under Centos 6. >> > > Trouble is that when you go from 6 to 7, you also have the delights of > systemd and grub 2 to contend with. > > I'm also still using CentOS 6, and currently have no desire to > "upgrade". I'm still in shock after trying to upgrade to Red Hat 7 at > work, and after the upgrade (apart from being faced with the gnome3 > craziness) finding that many of the admin commands either didn't work, > or only worked partially via a wrapper. (And the added insult that when > I shut down the box, it gave a message something like: "shutdown status > asserted" and then hung, so that it had to be power-cycled. Then when it > came back up, it went through all the fs checks as though it had shut > down ungracefully.) I allowed some of the senior developers to try the > box themselves for a while, and based on their findings, it was decided > to switch to Ubuntu (which (at least then) didn't use systemd,) together > with Mate and XFCE. > > Similarly with others who have commented, I simply cannot understand why > the maintainers of crucial components in linux have this thing about > making vast changes which impact (usually adversely) on users and > admins, without (apparently) any general discussion or review of the > proposed changes. What happened to RFCs? Maybe it's a power thing - we > can do it, so we're gonna do it, and if ya don't like it, tough! > > It would be very interesting to know how many other users are still on > CentOS/Red Hat 6 as a result of reluctance to enjoy all the - erm - > improvements in 7.Good idea. You can set up voting site at some free place (surveymonkey comes to my mind). And then disseminate it, say through this list.> Maybe it's time to fork CentOS 6This is something that will never happen. By the definition of CentOS project (which I'm not affiliated with, but I do appreciate greatly what they do!) it is "binary replica" of RedHat Enterprise. Any step away from this will scare me much more than wrong (IMHO) steps of RedHat itself. I do prefer what I use to be "enterprise-ish", that is more or less predictable.> and make it look and > behave like 7 without systemd (or even better, with some way of > selecting the init methodology at install-time and afterwards), and with > gnome2 (or a clear choice between 2 and 3). Call it DeCentOS.Well, there is Linux distribution which is systemd-free. And that distribution I predict will live for decently long time. It is "Devuan" - a fork of Debian, stripped off systemd and friends... well, I should have said: composed without systemd and friends. Devuan was forked off ebian because of systemd. Once Ubuntu was mentioned, which is a replica of Debian (the last _is_ systemd...), then Devuan should be pretty close to yours Ubuntu experience. You, however, may also be tired of often reboots (which all Linuxes in my observation suffer from: every on average 45 days there is either kernel or glibc security update requiring reboot... no, I do know that ksplice and similar exist, but there are few things I will not do on servers). If that is the case you may look around and find some UNIX system to use for some of your boxes (Open Solaris, BSD derivatives like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD come first to my mind). Search, try, and something will fill the bill. Number Crunchers, clusters, even workstations I set up for my users are still staying Linux, CentOS to be precise, even though servers are migrated away. I hope, this helps. Valeri ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Sun, 2016-01-24 at 12:01 -0600, Valeri Galtsev wrote:> Well, there is Linux distribution which is systemd-free. And that > distribution I predict will live for decently long time. It is "Devuan" - > a fork of Debian, stripped off systemd and friends... well, I should have > said: composed without systemd and friends. Devuan was forked off ebian > because of systemd. Once Ubuntu was mentioned, which is a replica of > Debian (the last _is_ systemd...), then Devuan should be pretty close to > yours Ubuntu experience. You, however, may also be tired of often reboots > (which all Linuxes in my observation suffer from: every on average 45 days > there is either kernel or glibc security update requiring reboot... no, I > do know that ksplice and similar exist, but there are few things I will > not do on servers). If that is the case you may look around and find some > UNIX system to use for some of your boxes (Open Solaris, BSD derivatives > like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD come first to my mind). Search, try, > and something will fill the bill. Number Crunchers, clusters, even > workstations I set up for my users are still staying Linux, CentOS to be > precise, even though servers are migrated away.My problem is that Debian and all its derivatives use apt/dpkg for packaging, updating and installing, while Red Hat and derivatives use rpm/yum. I have much experience with the latter, and have frequently set up local installation repositories; I'm a lot less familiar with the apt/dpkg world (although I got a crash course in it when I had to set up an apt local installation repository early last year, and it wasn't pleasant!) As far as I know, there isn't an rpm-based distro which is systemd-free. The thing which always gets me about systemd is not the thing itself, but the way it was rolled out. When I first installed Red Hat 7, if a window had appeared telling me about systemd and asking me if I wanted to use it, or stick with the old init framework, I'd have opted for the latter (as I was interested primarily in continuity from the previous version.) But I'd have noted the existence of systemd, and would have tried it out on a sacrificial box - I might even have got to like it! But having it rammed down my throat just put me off it for life (bit like a kid being force-fed Brussels sprouts.)
On 01/24/2016 03:40 PM, Peter Duffy wrote:> > The thing which always gets me about systemd is not the thing itself, > but the way it was rolled out. When I first installed Red Hat 7, if a > window had appeared telling me about systemd and asking me if I wanted > to use it, or stick with the old init framework, I'd have opted for the > latter (as I was interested primarily in continuity from the previous > version.) But I'd have noted the existence of systemd, and would have > tried it out on a sacrificial box - I might even have got to like it! > But having it rammed down my throat just put me off it for life (bit > like a kid being force-fed Brussels sprouts.) >I don't mind systemd - but I'm not fully convinced it was a necessary change. I still have a lot to learn about it and sometimes that's a problem, I don't learn things as well as I did 15 years ago.
On Jan 24, 2016, at 6:40 PM, Peter Duffy <peter at pwduffy.org.uk> wrote:> The thing which always gets me about systemd is not the thing itself, > but the way it was rolled out. When I first installed Red Hat 7, if a > window had appeared telling me about systemd and asking me if I wanted > to use it, or stick with the old init framework, I'd have opted for the > latter (as I was interested primarily in continuity from the previous > version.) But I'd have noted the existence of systemd, and would have > tried it out on a sacrificial box - I might even have got to like it! > But having it rammed down my throat just put me off it for life (bit > like a kid being force-fed Brussels sprouts.)It wasn?t a huge surprise. systemd was in Fedora since f15, and RHEL7 was branched from f18 (iirc). systemd was in the RHEL7.0 beta. The release announcement was filled with information about systemd.[1] Frankly, I was more surprised about XFS and 64-bit-only than systemd. I believe that RHEL7 (and CentOS7) both have systemd integrated into them enough that it isn?t as simple as ?choose init system? on install. Whether you like it or not, systemd has its fingers in a lot of stuff, like login services, resource management, stuff like tmpfile creation and management. I?m not exactly thrilled with some features (like the way systemd ?user was implemented, the inflexibility of cgroup configuration per-unit, remote journal forwarding) but overall, since I was prepared, I think its a step in the right direction. If there was one thing I?d love, is for there to be a systemd long term support release. I feel like the systemd in el7.0 was way too early, and it wasn?t until 7.2 that I feel like things are starting to stabilize. Also, thankfully, systemd ?user was *completely torn out* in 7.2. :) As for Gnome3, I simply don?t use it. lightdm + cinnamon or MATE for me. 1. https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.0_Release_Notes/pref-Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7.0_Release_Notes-Introduction.html ? Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>
Once upon a time, Peter Duffy <peter at pwduffy.org.uk> said:> The thing which always gets me about systemd is not the thing itself, > but the way it was rolled out. When I first installed Red Hat 7, if a > window had appeared telling me about systemd and asking me if I wanted > to use it, or stick with the old init framework, I'd have opted for the > latter (as I was interested primarily in continuity from the previous > version.)That's not really practical for something as core as the init system. Trying to support two init systems in parallel, especially for as long as Red Hat supports a RHEL release, would require a massive amount of work. A distribution is about making choices and implementing them in the best way possible; for "leaf" packages like an editor or a web browser, it is easy to have multiple options (where they don't conflict), but core stuff like the kernel and init system don't leave lots of room for choice. I remember people complaining about SysV-style init too, "what's with all these scripts" and "why can't I just add a line to /etc/rc". systemd is a different way of thinking, but it isn't exactly original (Sun and Mac have similar launchers); practical experience has shown that this can be a better way of managing services. daemontools has been around forever, haphazardly implemented for some things; now that behavior is where it makes the most since (PID 1 is guaranteed to get the signal). systemd makes implementing one-off services much easier, makes local modifications of service startup better (include another service and add the line you need), etc. One note: when I talk about systemd, I mean systemd-the-init-service that runs as PID 1. I'm not a big fan of systemd-the-project, that seems to have unlimited scope creep and reimplements every wheel in sight (years of work on NetworkManager, decades of work on NTP? we can do better!). Nobody is forcing you to run systemd; you can continue to run CentOS 6 and earlier for years. But if you are a system administrator, your job is about learning and adapting, not trying to keep a static setup for life. systemd is different (just like SELinux was years ago), but I suggest you learn it. It can make your admin life easier. Is it perfect? No, nothing ever is; I do think it is a big improvement though. -- Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>