Re: [gentoo-user] Re: systemd? [ Was: The End Is Near ... ]

["Canek Peláez Valdés" <caneko@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 5:23 AM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>
> On Mar 18, 2012 3:52 PM, "Canek Peláez Valdés" <caneko@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If the config file doesn't exists, the service will not start, and you
>> can check the reason why with
>>
>> systemctl status sshd.service
>>
>> And of course you can set another mini sevice unit file to create the
>> hostkeys. But I repeat: I think those tasks belong into the package
>> manager, no the init script.
>>
>
> Between installation by package manager and actual execution by the init
> system, things might happen on the required file(s). Gentoo's initscript
> guards against this possibility *plus* providing helpful error messages in
> /var/rc.log
>
> Or, said configuration files might be corrupted; the OpenRC initscript -- if
> written defensively -- will be able to detect that and (perhaps) fallback to
> something sane. systemd can't do that, short of putting all required
> intelligence into a script which it executes on boot.

That is a completely valid point, but I don't think that task belongs
into the init system. The init system starts and stops services, and
monitors them; checking for configuration files and creating hostkeys
is part of the installation process. If something got corrupted
between installation time and now, I would prefer my init system not
to start a service; just please tell me that something is wrong.

However, it's of course debatible. I agree with systemd's behavior;
it's cleaner, more elegant, and it follows the Unix tradition: do one
thing, and doing it right.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México