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How many people have actually tried systemd ?
by Chris Samuel 16 Oct '14

16 Oct '14

Hi all, I'm curious after the recent storm about systemd to find out how many people have actually tried to use it? I installed a test machine with CentOS 7 (which has systemd by default) to see if it causes any issues with the Slurm HPC job queuing system we use on our supercomputers. The reason is that both want to use cgroups and (in our case) Slurm's need is greater than systemd's. To my great surprise both my cats are still alive, there have been no unexplained solar eclipses and the world has not ended. Oh, and Slurm continues to work as before. All the best, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

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Re: Linux compatible portable mp3 player
by Peter Ross 16 Oct '14

16 Oct '14

From: "Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck(a)gmail.com> > zlinw(a)mcmedia.com.au writes: > >> I am looking for recommendations for a portable mp3 player that will >> work with Linux. Basicly I hope it appears as a USB drive so one can >> simply copy the music to and from the player. > > I am using a "Sony Walkman" brand MP3 player, it was $50 in JB under the > "dictaphone" section, because apparently Apple is all anyone wants. I use a Sony PCM M10 as shown here: http://www.videoguys.com.au/Shop/p/14257/sony-pcm-m10p-4gb-professional-ser… It is a bit more "upmarket", I use/used it to digitize a large collection of tapes and records (easy to handle and good sound recording). Afterwards I have the stuff on SD cards. Sometimes I attach it in the car using the audio plug. The audio output quality is okay but not brilliant. You can attach it to the computer using a USB cable (and it becomes a USB drive) or just use a SD card reader. It is sorting the files by modification date. So to get them in alphabetical order you need a little program (which is "touching" the files in alphabetical order). Somebody gave me a tip on this list but I do not have the program name at hand and my web search fail me:-( Regards Peter

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new Hetzner deal
by Russell Coker 16 Oct '14

16 Oct '14

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/st34 This is a really good deal for hosting. Ping times aren't good enough for a Minecraft server with Australian users but are good enough for ssh. It's much more powerful than most people need for a personal server, but you can get extra IPs and run Xen or KVM. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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the POODLE attack
by Aníbal Monsalve Salazar 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

https://www.openssl.org/~bodo/ssl-poodle.pdf http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/10/google-ssl3 online test: https://www.poodletest.com/ Daniel Silverstone suggests: recommended actions = disable SSLv3 in browser, and disable SSLv3 in apache, same for dovecot if your Exim4 is compiled against gnutls, you want something like: tls_require_ciphers = NORMAL:-VERS-SSL3.0 to test that: gnutls-cli -s --priority NONE:+VERS-SSL3.0 --port 25 my.server EHLO me STARTTLS ^D should fail if you don't put the --priority blah, then you should get: - Version: TLS1.2

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Re: How many people have actually tried systemd ?
by Peter Ross 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

"Brian May" <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au> wrote. > Sometimes a daemon will hang badly, and the init.d script won't kill it, > and killing one process leaves the other processes running. So you have to > go in by hand and kill -9 every process. Under FreeBSD I have a service in a jail and run /etc/rc.d/jail stop <jailname> It kills all processes in the jail using "jail -r". While I find "cgcreate" and "cgexec" I cannot find the "destroyer" but I am sure there is one. "http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/733595-all-about-t…" "Systemd and cgroup developers are working together to turn systemd into a global cgroup manager that creates higher-level control knobs and prevents direct access to the kernel." FreeBSD is using rctl for resource control (not for jails only), and devfs.rules for access to devices (if needed). The standard rules for a jail have a handful of devices only "unhidden" (dev/stdin,stdout,zero, null etc.) It all goes down into a few well-defined areas of the kernel and the same controls exist inside and outside a jail. A handful of sysctls are added to define security of a jail further. >From above: "What’s the Issue?" The problem is that cgroups were often built independently of the developers most familiar with the kernel subsystems they interact with. “This is partly because cgroup tends to add complexity and overhead to the existing subsystems and building and bolting something on the side is often the path of the least resistance,” said Tejun Heo, Linux kernel cgroup subsystem maintainer. “Combined with the fact that cgroup has been exploring new areas without firm established examples to follow, this led to some questionable design choices and relatively high level of inconsistency.” --- No, you are not allowed to look at FreeBSD's jail design;-) --- Cgroup is made of two parts: the cgroup core creates a hierarchical classification of processes running on the system, while a set of 13 controllers link the core with the kernel subsystems. The memory controller, for example, limits the amount of memory a group of processes can allocate from the system, the block controller can limit the bandwidth to the disk input/output, and so on. Kernel developers are now working to fix these issues by implementing a single unified hierarchy in the cgroup core and improving consistency among the controllers. But because of the patchwork nature of the subsystem and the need to ensure backward compatibility, they won’t be able to completely stop this abuse. That’s where systemd, and any other control agents that may emerge, comes in. --- Shudder.. How safe can this design be? Instead of getting the design right first time (instead "bolting something on the side is often the path of the least resistance") you create a second part to tame a beast you unleashed before. All in all I do not trust a system like this. Regards Peter

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Re: How many people have actually tried systemd ?
by Roger 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

> I'm curious after the recent storm about systemd to find out how > many people > have actually tried to use it? > > > > It doesn't magically solve the problem of X crashing once every 1 to 4 > weeks, it doesn't make me a cup of coffee in the morning[1], it isn't > bigger on the inside then the outside, and my time machine is still on > the blink. Nor does it stop strangers having loud arguments outside > my office window. > I think my latest ubuntu14.04 uses it, I haven't noticed any difference, life progresses from day to day in endless cycles of sunshine and rain. The terminal command for coffee is [go-coffee-now.sh] then you go get it yourself. My new bus does get better mileage thanks to systemd. Roger

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Re: How many people have actually tried systemd ?
by Peter Ross 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

From: "Toby Corkindale" <toby(a)dryft.net> > I have been quite bemused by all the commotion on this mailing list, > because systemd has been completely fine. OpenSSL works perfectly fine too. It "secures" our Internet traffic for years perfectly.. You can just find one hole in it after another. Regards Peter ----- "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" - Antoine de Saint Exupéry

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Is http://boycottsystemd.org/ right? [Was: Is systemd a benefit or a liability? [Was: btrfs :(]]
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 17:12:08 jeremy(a)visser.name said, >ITYM fourth kernel. >X.org borders on an entire operating system. Not any more really, the low level functions of all modern drivers are now in the Linux Kernel (Note 1), so the xserver increasingly stays in user mode. Even the closed src AMD/ATI driver (Note 2) is currently being rewriten to pass all the lowlevel functions to the kernel. Note 1: This was started quite some time back, the Xserver GPU drivers being divided into 2 parts, a low level driver in the kernel specfic to a Graphics card and a largely common high level driver within Mesa DRI. This was done as it was found the high level functions for most cards even from different manufacturers was virtually identical and dividing the drivers into low and hgh level saved much programming effort. Note 2: AMD is doing this to allow a greater effort to be put in to the open source driver. Basicly from a month or so ago, all low level driver work for both the open and closed src drivers use the same code base. The ultimate goal being that when AMD releases a new GPU the open source driver will be availible from day one. Lindsay

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Re: Is systemd a benefit or a liability? [Was: btrfs :(]
by Peter Ross 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

Hi Russell, thanks for your answer. From: "Russell Coker" <russell(a)coker.com.au> > Your mistake is to think that we need to convince you. Hmmh. Apologies but this does not sound exactly right. An unconvinced public makes every project irrelevant. http://boycottsystemd.org makes some points which seem to be relevant. Just to say: "Well, we know better and do not care" is not exactly great communication. If you have time, maybe write a few of your thoughts related to the criticism. (No, you do not have to. I am simply curious and value your opinion. Really.) Have a look at Gnome 3 and FreeBSD. There is still no official support because "Linuxalisation" and especially "Systemdlization" make it difficult to maintain a Gnome 3 port "beyond systemd". If you want a logind to run Gnome 3 - just knock yourself out! But to require a change of the init process to get Gnome 3 running is a bit "overreaching" I would think. FreeBSD (as an example of another Open Source "Unix") may have (besides of technical qualities and different licensing) a role to play to keep as a reference check. If your "default desktop" does not work with another Unix - is it really that good? The IETF is describing their approach (http://www.ietf.org/tao.html) here: "To become an Internet Standard, an RFC must have multiple interoperable implementations and the unused features in the Proposed Standard must be removed" It served us well. Just look at the well-described world of TCP/IP standards and their implementation under Unix/Linux, and compare it with Microsoft networking and the efforts of the Samba team to implement a second open source implementation, and especially a modular Samba 4. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were most successful as The Beatles. Someone said something along the lines: John got Paul to rock and not just to write sweet melodies, and Paul could stop John if he went over the top. People are rarely good in many areas. As an example, a potentially corrupt binary logging file is not great design - maybe they just should have left this part to someone else. To make it an integrated part of an init process sounds silly. I would prefer a focused project which has a well-described functionality it is aiming to implement, and works nicely with other parts. This kind of modular approach created a successful Unix/Linux ecosystem so far. Regards Peter

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Re: How many people have actually tried systemd ?
by Peter Ross 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

Hi Jeremy, > From a sysadmin perspective killing off pesky child processes is SO last > century. You may well argue that every instance where child processes > linger when the parent dies is a bug in the application. Well, good luck > fixing every one. I am actually surprised by this one. How often does it happen? I think I have not used the kill command on my servers for the last year at all. But you do not need systemd. You are talking about cgroups here. I come back to that in a minute. > It's a classic case of technical purists telling the users what they > should want, rather than actually giving users what they want. No, users want Windows;-) Or everything with an Apple on it. One point of open source is reliable stuff which is worked on by a community instead of some big egos which say quite often "Don't bother. It works for me and you adapt your stuff." Bigger projects with big egos end up with few enlightened developers and the rest "pissed off" and does not create good reliable software. If the handful of enlightened people are the only ones seeing it and understand it you have code which is not audited by many. Afterwards you have the security disasters which you had in the news recently. As more complex it is, as more and more features go into a system, the chance of this to happen increases. > I find a good analogy for the way cgroups improves management is thinking > about the ways in which virtualisation also improves management. Yes. That's why I am using FreeBSD jails for years now;-) Amazing: FreeBSD can do this with init and jails get started and stopped via init script.. The only utility finally creating the jail is the jail(8) command (reading pararameters or a jail config). What else do you need? I can see some advantages of systemd (or other similar approaches). The frustration comes from the feeling having to use some kind of half-backed stuff written by difficult people and in a project which is quite fuzzy in its goals. But maybe I am on the wrong side anyway. Security coming from simple and working concepts is so yesterday. Somehow it reminds me of an old song which in translation means: Everything gets better. But nothing really good. Regards Peter

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