[chiglug] systemd

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 16:00:54 +0000
Rob Dux <robwdux at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to know where systemd shines i.e. what is the best
> application for systemd and my current belief is desktop. 

Only to the extent that the Freedesktop project has dependencied their
stuff to the extent that it's hard to get working without systemd, and
of course Gnome doesn't work without systemd unless the distro
massively changes the Gnome code.

My Daily Driver Desktop, which I use 80% as a desktop and 20% as a
server, would gain no benefit from systemd, and instead inits with
Runit.

Offhand I can think of two use cases for systemd:

1) You need a lightning fast boot
2) You have a team of Unix-inexperienced technologists who would find
it easier to learn systemctl than to learn Unix.

> I interact
> with it in fedora and when I have to shell into servers that use it.
> 
> We're adopting Docker at my employer for which I gave a talk last lug
> and there is a requirement for an init system in some applications for
> containers which I selected s6 for various reasons. 

Nice! Please let me know how s6 works for you. The only stuff I've done
with s6 has been purely experimental. Have you tried s6-rc yet? I
haven't.

> As far as Docker
> hosts, Alpine Linux seems most ideal and it ships with OpenRC. 

> In
> every case for our production needs, minimalism is the key.

OpenRC never struck me as minimal. It needs another PID1 (usually
sysvinit) to start up, and it can't respawn dead daemons, so to do so
you need either sysvinit on the PID1 end, or
daemontools/daemontools-encore on the other end.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
November 2015 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques