[Mageia-dev] bug, omission or feature

Sun Jun 3 22:56:10 CEST 2012

'Twas brillig, and Johnny A. Solbu at 03/06/12 18:49 did gyre and gimble:
+> On Sunday 03 June 2012 19:09, Felix Miata wrote:
+>> On 2012/06/03 17:46 (GMT+0100) Colin Guthrie composed:
+>> 
+>>>>> /etc/inittab is no longer used or read.
+>>> For real men (and women), we just change the 
+>>> /etc/systemd/system/default.target symlink to point at whatever 
+>>> target we want to use by default.
+>> 
+>> So instead of changing one character in a file that has been 
+>> standard for decades, one must figure out the name of the desired 
+>> target file, then type a lot so as to get the required symlink.
+> 
+> I agree with Felix, this is not a good change. I'm sure there is a 
+> perfectly valid ans sound reason for changig it, but there's a 
+> difference in changing it for the better and changing it for the 
+> worse. This is a bad change.
+
+Well, if you think about inittab it's pretty crazy... it's a single file
+that contains no dependency information but allows you to create a
+watchable service (i.e. one that can be automatically restarted). Then
+there are sysvinit scripts which allow you to write a non-watchable
+service (unless you fork off your own watching service).
+
+That's two ways to do some pretty similar things. Why? Why do I have to
+learn which way is best and why it's appropriate to start some services
+via initscripts and some from inittab? Truth be told this is just a
+classic example of how features grow an mould over time. Thinking
+logically it's fundamentally broken to have packages install themselves
+and modify your initab file so that they are started automatically.
+That's one of the reasons the initscripts themselves came about, but
+inittab still supports this, even if we don't actively use it so much
+these days.
+
+systemd at very least provides a single, unified method of how units
+are started (with the exception that it still supports sysvinit scripts
+for compatibility although this has now been modularised such that a
+"generator" will actually generate native units in /run tree for
+sysvinit scripts and thus they are converted dynamically every boot).
+All units can contain complex dependency information and vastly improved
+logging and documentation. If you work with it for a while and follow
+what it does, I genuinely hope that you'd agree.
+
+
+With newer systemd's you could likely write a generator that would take
+the information from inittab and convert it to native units. This is
+pretty difficult due to the lack of dependency information, but it
+should work for the most part. You could certainly write a generator
+that parsed the default target easily enough, tho' I'd prefer to just
+leave it behind personally.
+
+
+> Besides, the best thing about the inittab is that it is 
+> self-explanatory even to novices. A symlink is Not obvious.
+
+I completely disagree - I'd say both are equally confusing to novices. I
+mean what the hell is /etc/inittab? It has no meaning unless I know what
+it means - just like the symlink.
+
+
+>> Thank God everything that used to make good sense hasn't been 
+>> replaced by something more complicated.
+> 
+> Don't give them any ideas. ;-)=
+> 
+>> I've taken to including a digit on every Grub kernel line quite 
+>> some time ago.
+> 
+> I've done the same for more than 10 years.
+> 
+> Editing a text file to change a number, eg. from "5" to "3", is much 
+> easier to remember than changing a symlink to 
+> "/lib/systemd/system/runlevel3.target", especially when explaning 
+> this to a not so advanced user over the phone, who doesn't have a 
+> working X at the moment. (Yes, I actually do have such support 
+> calls.) The support departments are just going to love this. ;-)=
+
+If you have to support a user to change their default runlevel then
+"explaining" to them how to use vi is your problem anyway! Now you don't
+need to school them in how to use a shell editor, you just need to tell
+them one command that support tab completion!. I'd personally say this
+is easier. There are also patches to turn this into an easy command:
+http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.systemd.devel/4911
+
+Not sure if it's upstream yet, but the principle IMO makes sense.
+
+
+Col
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+