Linux: concerns over systemd adoption and Debian's decision to switch

Wed Oct 22 11:04:27 UTC 2014

On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 06:17:09PM +0100, Israel G. Lugo wrote:
> The binary logs for example worry me, especially corruption issues:

As they should.  Binary logs occasionally make sense in environments
where the amount of information to be logged is huge and the rate at
which it accumulates is very high -- but those situations are few and far
between, and certainly not in play in the normal operation of a 'nix
system.  For everything else, text -- which is and has been the lingua
franca of 'nix systems since they've existed -- is perfectly adequate,
and strongly preferable.

I've seen similar tactical mistakes when developers insist that
information *must* be stored in a relational database -- even though
plain old ordinary text files are perfectly adequate for the task,
are easier to debug, are easier to fix, and easier to maintain.
There is an unfortunate tendency among many developers to attempt
to wring the very last bit of performance out of systems and not
to take into consideration that the scarcest and most expensive
resource is the system administrator.  Saving a few microseconds
or a handful of bytes here and there is a horribly bad idea if it
chews up an extra hour or week of SA time.

---rsk