[Discuss] SysVinit vs. systemd

[smallm at panix.com (Mike Small)]

Bill Bogstad <bogstad at pobox.com> writes:
> I tend to think that way as well, but I have been noticing what I
> think is a trend
> away from debugging problems and towards just doing reinstalls/restarts.   I
...
> Unfortunately, I think the skills to do this are no longer being developed among
> new people.   Hopefully, I'll be wrong and it won't matter when all
> the old timers are gone.

I don't know. I do know of a memory leak and a deadlock problem that
have existed for years in a program at work that I won't get allotted
time to fix until a customer decides they are critical problems. My
feeling is that as long as they're comfortable zapping things
automatically and carrying on, they're not going to push to get these
type of things fixed (or even report them in other cases I bet), and
without a cranky customer my managers won't target the bugs. Maybe most
of what people do individually makes sense in their context, but
globally this way of operating must help lead to further declines in
software quality. Not that their processing should grind to a halt til I
fix a bug, but the lack of pain they feel may indirectly lead to no
fixes ever, so it's a catch 22.

If this were free software I might do it in my spare time, so maybe
GNU/Linux/BSD based systems will not suffer quite as badly from this
mindset. Some eyeball will eventually go after the problems causing the
restarts one would hope.

Hmmm, it seems that at least two features of systemd have as motivation,
partially at least, handling badly written daemons (starting up as
daemon something that doesn't do it right, and restarts). So will more
systemd usage bring to life more badly written daemons: systemd as nanny
state breeding a weak, coddled populace of daemons? (These aren't my
politics I just like the pun.)

-- 
Mike Small
smallm at panix.com