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

Wed Oct 22 17:41:53 UTC 2014

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 11:43 AM, C. Jon Larsen <jlarsen at richweb.com> wrote:
>
>> Hardly.  The discussion so far has been weighted very heavily on the
>> side of Dana Carvey's "Grumpy Old Man"-style whining. "That's the way
>> it was and we liked it!".
>>
>> The people that like systemd (like myself) have wisely learned that
>> the people that hate systemd, hate it mostly because it's different
>> from what came before and don't want to change.  There's no way to
>> argue rationally with that.
>
> Incorrect assumption. systemd is a massive security hole waiting to happen

The same can be said for any software.  Shellshock anyone?  How many
security issues remain in bash?  One of the reasons systemd was first
written was to get rid of the the tangle of shell scripts that are
used to start up a system using sysvinit.

> and it does not follow the unix philosophy of done 1 thing and do it
> well/correct. Its basically ignoring 40 years of best practices. Thats why
> folks that have been there, done that, dont want any part of it. Not because
> its new, but because its a flawed concept.

I was going to write a longer response here, but this:

http://lwn.net/Articles/576078/

sums up my thoughts on the "unix philosophy".  It's not the
be-all-end-all that you make it out to be.  Again, this sounds a lot
like "Grumpy Old Man" complaining.

> You are free to use it, but it would be a poor choice for system that has
> hopes of being secure.

I would disagree, especially since systemd makes it practical to use
many of the capabilities of the Linux kernel that can improve
security, like filesystem namespaces, cgroups, etc.

-- 
Jeff Ollie