[arch-general] Re: My end-user $0.02 on /etc/rc.conf splitting.

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 25/07/12, Heiko Baums wrote:

> In Linux I have/had some simple text files with which I can/could
> configure the whole system, while I had a terrible, cryptic registry on
> Windoze.

I can find anything in systemd which could make think of the registry on
Windows.

>          In Linux I just can/could add a daemon to rc.conf to have it
> run. From what I read so far about systemd in all those discussions, in
> systemd I have to run a special command to have a daemon started at
> boot time (which I additionally have to remember), I have to write such
> an ini file instead of just writing or editing a simple and small
> config file or shell script

You are mixing up two things:
- adding/removing services on boot;
- configuring the services.

The first - adding/removing services - changes with systemd. Yes, it is
done using a dedicated command (which comes naturally with
autocompletion, here with zsh at least). This is for services provided
by the distribution.

If a service is not provided:
- with SysVinit you have to write the whole script usually relying on
  whatever library the distribution provides (which tend to be
  error-prone);
- with systemd, you just write a configuration file.

For the second, whether you use systemd or SysVinit, configuring a
service is typically done by editing the configuration file dedicated to
this service.  In systemd, the file is declared like this

  EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/nfs

which is by itself much easier to hack (rather than reading in a shell
script to find where and how such a file is used).

>                              then systemd creates some symlinks of
> files into another directory whose name is also totally cryptic, at
> least way to long. This is a total mess, if this is really true, and
> it's absolutely a step towards a second Windoze.

This is systemd internals. It's not expected from the user to play with
symlinks.


> But if there's such a long discussion and if there are so many
> complains about a software or a change, then you can assume that
> there's something going pretty wrong.

No, I won't assume something that the software is going wrong. I assume
the change raise fear, whether it is well-founded or not.

>                                                      I never ever have
> read such long discussions and so many complains about a software like
> about the software of Lennart Poettering (PulseAudio and systemd).

OTOH for the systemd case, we are changing of paradigm for the boot
process. I'm not aware of such a change in the boot process for years.
All recent event-based init systems have raise fear.


-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht