[HEADS-UP] systemd for F14 - the next steps

[James Antill]

On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 16:59 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:

> I.e. generally we have the rule that "native configuration breaks legacy
> configuration".

 You already said this, and I responded.

>  However, to make the inittab stuff useful we'd have to
> turn that around, and say that "legacy breaks native". Why? Because the
> /etc/systemd/system/default.target symlink is created by the rpm in all
> cases and would hence make the inittab ignored anyway.

 So ... don't do that.
 It's like saying you have /etc/fstab support, but systemd currently
ships with "native unit files for swaps and mount points" so it doesn't
work.

> If I added inittab parsing support even when keeping "native breaks
> legacy" around, then inittab would matter only if the default.target
> symlink doesn't exist. We could certainly inform the user to delete that
> symlink, via some blurb in inittab, however, if he goes and deletes it,
> wouldn't it be much easier to just fix properly and to the right boot
> target, and have a future-proof system?
> 
> i.e. isn't this:
> 
>     # vi /etc/inittab        
>         ... user reads the blurb and changes a line, exits
>     # rm /etc/systemd/system/default.target
> 
> really that much better in your eyes, than this:

 After the rm you can change the runlevel the same way on any version of
RHEL, Fedora, Debian, gentoo, whatever. Hence the term "backwards
compatible".

>     # vi /etc/inittab
>         ... user reads the blurb, quits right-away
>     # ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target

 You also seem to be under the impression that symlinks are somehow
better than config. files ... you are wrong, IMNSHO. The most obvious
reasons you are wrong include:

1. You can't have comments with a symlink.

2. You put the data under version control with a symlink.

3. You can type "man inittab", but not
"man /etc/systemd/system/default.target" (assuming you can find it).

...but I can live with that (hey, I don't configure gettys much
anyway ... so the configuration being insane doesn't impact ME).
 The disregard for minimal backwards compat. does annoy me though. Given
it seems unlikely you'll fix any of it, so I think I shall go re-read:

http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/fedora-culture-clashes/

...and ignore this thread.