From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [IPv6:2600:3c01:e000:146::1]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 91AB025D87 for ; Mon, 24 Jun 2024 16:22:36 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 341E342858; Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:22:31 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-pg1-x536.google.com (mail-pg1-x536.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4864:20::536]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5033842828 for ; Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:22:25 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-pg1-x536.google.com with SMTP id 41be03b00d2f7-71884eda768so1615663a12.1 for ; Mon, 24 Jun 2024 07:22:25 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20230601; t=1719238944; x=1719843744; darn=tuhs.org; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date :message-id:reply-to; bh=1TirmWX9MB6AO4ZaN+NMQ9TmX8d8kQ0Z9rA50H+JhTs=; b=ZBC9xaMfS5aOlTuJP23pFsYbyJDTH0Wq/PkZQFQPQavfNr6J3S9Hlk2pWyo5CzmQ5h p9yVqix8EAOXumUSKfakeO2bGZ53UICtOap0VeDQ9eOQC8BkRy323SSyqkQXpVNwRY/8 Nj3sEp87JNyimMwUNnhDcdkGoXHc8o6luhOox8TA6YyqAt/xigMfVmMl72SSdsmj0rbi 58WJRin4u45DLcerAAUbJ5yzzno9GUW/6AYSzoKFtJYBlQRo4ZgNuHv+G1EWHqj473bw eZts5yDLrLIpvBr7t+p2upOa6xNkJF4hfe1ycpLkcq50/XLCCL5PGH7MhbY2MLOg40Ot VflA== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20230601; t=1719238944; x=1719843744; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc :subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=1TirmWX9MB6AO4ZaN+NMQ9TmX8d8kQ0Z9rA50H+JhTs=; b=hEHREV7OQDbsAD4yoJ+WMMfNUyR8EP6TSl3OodLCTUnnYoh2FbfZmbMRnSiBvA1rjJ Z259f5Dy0rgfzkc3RG0NCjkvpSrt/2S49dhzlOH3DY+J4HNnGgoKpFsc1xZhnijqS7x+ PMAIIyXb42DLWEvVpMfQXm/Z+M0/yNARNdFxABiAdtMlO7XK001cQcoOUYbfmK8+iQB/ kajBl8E8/3oWiKC4pJheLSEbiRKYsgAXkxOaTga0g0LXblG9mDrbdlN6n7XDx7wiTW2o I7cb64xRQ7fKboKxD5mCr/KBe/tQtS9s6MKqM7CagtWkgJBNedwKPsh5NGNIXLGkAQaM U9Ng== X-Forwarded-Encrypted: i=1; AJvYcCWhAfTCyCaxwzLG2mGvN57qcgVxFPqGhSy93SkGI6UTgWOgu2qA0oPfZCmr/HB5CN5xIH500AH7ZqWfjnxd X-Gm-Message-State: AOJu0YySY9M6AmB0ScFE5CL00hHi2JRpA8AXyPYeqskIdUf6XzRDjT9P Ltun0/LBC390JpHObiQLtt7ghLefbMBmG/RRV2/ktU3qRHYXp4SotuOvnQtw+SthBoWTi2unDrW CdqmhpTUFL7NedMWI3pJuaEaQhuw= X-Google-Smtp-Source: AGHT+IGBBZ9zNWBJOJ6T9/bv1fA0ZK96P0GBGA3z2wdTLEOF02GbwC8JtW8rF5uZkxWodzHiqVRbmwaokqzJOJqOTQQ= X-Received: by 2002:a17:90b:238e:b0:2c7:af59:dc11 with SMTP id 98e67ed59e1d1-2c861488fd0mr3381612a91.48.1719238944536; Mon, 24 Jun 2024 07:22:24 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <73819d1a-395a-4b74-a20c-0123fbed56bd@technologists.com> <22508b22-db5f-491e-bc02-2d4ab4d33cd9@home.arpa> <87o77s77lj.fsf@gmail.com> <20240623190002.GB7185@mit.edu> <20240624135049.GA280025@mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <20240624135049.GA280025@mit.edu> From: Dan Cross Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2024 10:21:27 -0400 Message-ID: To: "Theodore Ts'o" Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID-Hash: VJ44AF6QSF4NVKNSLBEFHM6HS543RCH5 X-Message-ID-Hash: VJ44AF6QSF4NVKNSLBEFHM6HS543RCH5 X-MailFrom: crossd@gmail.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: Alexander Schreiber , Alexis , The Unix Heritage Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] =?utf-8?q?Re=3A_Version_256_of_systemd_boasts_=2742=25_less_Unix_philosophy=27_=E2=80=A2_The_Register?= List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 9:51=E2=80=AFAM Theodore Ts'o wrote= : >[snip] > > The bottom line is that while people seem to be ranting and raving > about systemd --- and there are a lot of things that are terrible > about systemd, don't get me wrong --- I find it interesting that > legacy Unix systems get viewed with kind of a rosy-eyed set of glasses > in the past, when in fact, the "good old days" weren't necessary all > that good --- and there *are* reasons why some engineers have > considered plain text ala the 1970's Unix philosophy to not > necessarily be the final word in systems design. I must concur here. To bring this back to history, I think it's useful to consider the context in which, "use text, as it's a universal interchange format" arose. We _are_ talking about the 1970s here, where there was a lot more variation between computers than nowadays; back in that era, you still had a lot of word-oriented machines with non-power-of-2 word sizes, one's complement machines, and the world had not yet coalesced around the 8-bit byte (much of networking is _still_ defined in terms of "octets" because of this). In that era, yeah, it was just easier to move text between programs: transporting a program from a 16-bit machine to a 32-bit machine didn't mean changing parsing routines, for example. Contrast this to today, where things are much more homogenized, even between different ISAs. Most ISAs are little endian, and for general purpose machines 8 bit bytes, power-of-two integer widths, and 2's complement are pretty much universal (I'm aware that there are some embedded and special purpose processors --- like some types of DSPs --- for which this is not true. But I'm not trying to run Unix on those). Furthermore, we have robust serialization formats that allow us to move binary data between dissimilar machines in a well-defined manner; things like XDR -- dating back almost 40 years now -- paved the way for Protobuf and all the rest of them. In this environment, the argument for "text first!" isn't as strong as it was in the 70s. Something that I think also gets lost here is that we also have well-defined, text-based serialization formats for structured data. Things like sexprs, JSON, have all been employed to good effect here. You can have your textual cake and eat your structured data, too! I think what irks people more is that the traditional, line-oriented tools we all know and love are no longer prioritized. But to me that's an invitation to ask "why?" The default assumption seems to be that the people who don't are just ignorant, or worse, stupid. But could it be that they have actual, real-world problems that are not well served by those tools? So it is with systemd. I don't like it, and the recent, "deletes your homedir lol you're holding it wrong lmao" thing solidifies that opinion, but in some ways it's actually _more_ Unix-y than some of the alternatives. Take smf, where nothing screams "UNIX!!!" at me more than XML-based config files consumed by giant libraries. Systemd, at least, is broken into a bunch of little programs that each do one thing (sorta...) well, and it uses somewhat-readable text-based configuration files and symlinks. Indeed, we look at what we consider "real Unix" with some very rosy glasses. Perhaps that's why we overlook un-Unix-like functionality like Solaris's "profile" facilities, where the kernel does an upcall to a userspace daemon to determine what privileges a program should have? Or how about the IP management daemon, in.ndpd, or the rest of the libipadm.so stuff? Unix hasn't been Unix for a very long time now. - Dan C.