linuxmemes

21465 readers

1219 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html

2. Be civil

Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.

Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.

Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.

Bigotry will not be tolerated.

These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.

3. Post Linux-related content

Including Unix and BSD.

Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.

No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.

4. No recent reposts

Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.

Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

485

Systemd controversy be like (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 9 months ago by loaExMachina to c/[email protected]

151 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Concerning logs:

You can still log to text if you want by configuration (e.g. forward stuff to syslog) and you can use any tools you like to read those files you want. So if you like text logs you can get them. You can even invoke journalctl to output logs on an ad hoc / scheduled basis in a variety of text formats and delimited fields.
Binary allows structured logging (i.e. each log message is comprised of fields in a record), indexing and searching options that makes searches & queries faster. Just like in a database. e.g. if you want to search by date range, or a particular user then it's easy and fast.
Binary also allows the log to be signed & immutable to prevent tampering, allow auditing, intrusion detection etc.. e.g. if someone broke into a system they could not delete records without it being obvious.
You can also use splunk with systemd.

So people object to systemd writing binary logs and yet they can get text, or throw it into splunk or do whatever they like. The purpose of the binary is make security, auditing and forensics better than it is for text.

As for scripts, the point I'm making is systemd didn't supplant sysvinit, it supplanted upstart. Upstart recognized that writing massive scripts to start/stop/restart a process was stupid and chose an event driven model for running stuff in a more declarative way. Basically upstart used a job system that was triggered by an event, e.g. the runlevel changes, so execute a job that might be to kick off a process. Systemd chose a dependency based model for starting stuff. It seems like dists preferred the latter and moved over to it. Solaris has smf which serves a similar purpose as systemd.

So systemd is declarative - you describe a unit in a .service file - the process to start, the user id to run it with, what other units it depends on etc. and allow the system to figure out how to launch it and take care of other issues. It means stuff happens in the right order and in parallel if it can be. It's fairly simple to write a unit file as opposed to a script. But if you needed to invoke a script you could do that too - write a unit file that invokes the script. You could even take a pre-existing init script and write a .service file that kicks it off.