blog/data/2010-05-13-systemd.txt

   1 Title: systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
   2 Tags: english, debian, nuug, bootsystem
   3 Date: 2010-05-13 22:20
   4
   5 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
   6 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
   7 has been
   8 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
   9
  10 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
  11 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
  12 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
  13 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
  14 based boot system.  Tollef is
  15 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
  16 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
  17 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
  18 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
  19 at the moment do not.</p>
  20
  21 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
  22 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
  23 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
  24 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
  25 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
  26 way forward.</p>
  27
  28 <p>In the mean time, based on the
  29 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
  30 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
  31 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
  32 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
  33 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
  34 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
  35 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
  36 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>