Re: [gentoo-user] Debian just voted in systemd for default init system in jessie

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 18/02/2014 13:54, Mark David Dumlao wrote:
>> Shouldn't sysadmins use the init-scripts for that?
>> > If done correctly, permissions should not be an issue.
>> >
>> > Restarting services without keeping file ownership into account will
>> > always cause issues. Regardless of the init-system used.
>> >
> That's just the thing though. As a sysadmin, how do you debug a service
> that isn't starting to begin with? Let's say your new to the service. You're
> not even sure if you got the config right the first time around. Or maybe
> you're adjusting a setting somewhere, and you're confused why it
> isn't taking effect.
> 
> All the /upstream documentation/, all the /man pages/, all the /usr/share/doc
> stuff will tell you to start it _raw_. The init script obscures the
> starting options,
> environment variables, and sometimes even the running user from you. What are
> you gonna do, play a human shell script parser? Nobody's perfect, do it
> enough times and you're going to casually gloss over the line where
> --safe-mode is appended to the string depending on the phase of
> the moon...

I do all of that, I've been around long enough to have learned. Like
yourself.

ps and tailing a daemon's log file is my standard approach to really
verify that a daemon is running. The other side of the coin is I usually
start with the distro's init scripts and assume for argument sake they
work. When the facts prove that wrong, I dig deeper.

The list of daemons I use that are not well behaved wrt init scripts are
rather short in reality

> If you're lucky, you've never had to start an unfamiliar service, or debug
> someone else's unfamiliar config under time pressure...
> 

Nope, not so lucky. Not even close.

We're getting OT, but by far the worst behaved daemons out there are
non-OSS paid-for things for a corproate market. Like Ossec. Oracle
databases. Sybase. Anything and everythign that purports to do backups.
I shan't mention Oracle's various offerings for business use for fear my
brain shall explode.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com