Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre

Re: Binary logs? Ugh.

Yupp, journal corruptions result in rotation, and when reading we try to make the best of it. they are nothing we really need to fix hence.

So in a way you're right to say "The way to read a corrupted log is to just run journalctl", because that's the way to read a log, corrupted or not. But in the case of a corrupted log there's data in there that journalctl won't read and that you can't recover. It's much, much easier to recover data from a corrupt text log.

Re: Binary logs? Ugh.

Binary logs are a necessity on systems where integrity of the logs (This is proof that they haven't been tampered with) is a must.

That's a lie, pure and simple. While there are plenty of ways to protect text logs from being tampered with, all you need to do to "tamper" with the binary logs is to crash journald. There is no way to recover a log corrupted by a crash, and there will not be in the foreseeable future, as the systemd devs do not think of it as a bug:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116

So much for the added security! That's an added security vuln, plain and simple (and an added pain in the ass when you want to know why the system crashed, for example to prevent it from happening again).

Re: "Devuan"

I think you misread the sentence. It's supposed to be written in Italian (Spanish would work, too), so it's pronounced like dev-one would be pronounced in English, devoine in French, dewoan in German etc.

Not that it matters much, as long as it's good.

Re: What is systemd

I doubt that even 10% of the people here has used systemd for more than a 5 minute casual test.

That may be the case. However some have, including myself. I switched back not for theological reasons but because it made a lot of things work unreliably (and some reliably not work). Only when I looked into what systemd really was and how it worked (which was after banning it) did I understand where my problems stemmed from.

but it certainly improves fast and once you get to know it it is pretty decent.

For some definition of "pretty decent", perhaps. However, on a production system you can't replace "rock solid" with "pretty decent". Together with the "improves fast" part, it is an argument to NOT make it the default and wait until it becomes really good instead.

That's only from a pragmatic, "need-to-work" point of view.

From an ideological point of view I do think that systemd is the spawn of some particuliarly dumb and nasty devil. But that's just my opinion, and so obviously entirely discussable.

Re: What is systemd

They wrote the code because they think their versions are faster.

And you would know that, how? Furthermore, even if that was true (yeah right), why borge the new improved version in the huge do-it-all Frankenstein monster? Why not just release them as standalone tools?

The answer is in Poettering's assertion that systemd is set to be an OS, not an init system.

If some future version of systemd does stop one of the standard services running then you report that as a bug.

A report that will duly be filed together with the few hundred terabugs sitting in systemd devs' garbage bin. Even Torvalds has trouble getting the systemd team to fix the most horrid of their shit.

And the problem is not that it would stop alternate utils from working; it's that by forcefully integrating them it may just cause them to disappear, as duplication of utils is not a good use of ressource.

So, how is the [database connection] problem solved in sysvinit?

That's a problem caused by systemd, sysvinit doesn't need to fix it because it doesn't create it to begin with. If you launch the services in order, no problem. You question is either a bad faith question or a proof of your ignorance of all things computer-y.

About switching to BSD

It's made even easier by the existence of aBSD-based Debian port, which I have dully installed, for 2 reasons: it is (obviously) systemd-free, so running it (with popularity-contest) puts some weight behind the systemd-sceptics; and it helps me getting familiar with BSD, in case everything goes very bad and I need to make the switch.

Re: Debian R.I.P. Best alternative?

what is the consensus on the best alternative?

For now it's Devuan. Why are you trying to jump to the "next best thing" when the first best thing is still in the incubation phase? If everyone skip it "because it may not get traction", Devuan will never get the traction it needs. On top of that, switching to Devuan will just be a dist-upgrade-like process, why would anyone actively research a more painful way to avoid systemd?

Re: What is systemd

A funny gif is not a particularly convincing argument.

A funny gif listing the non-init stuff gobbled up by systemd, on the other hand, may just be.

Re: What is systemd

Exactly. Where's the spec? What are the project goals? In fact, what are the project limits?

Well if you believe one interview of it's conceptor, systemd is a set of bricks from which you can build an OS. Which pretty much means "no scope, no limits"; that's in line with the carnivorous behavour of the project right now, incorporating all kinds of non-init utilities and slowly becoming a monolithic and opaque standalone OS.

Re: This is gold

What about people like me who run linux on home desktops and netbooks which are started and stopped all of the time?

Well, I tried it on a such a machine and it broke all manners of hardware support, so I guess the answer to your question is "they should avoid it as well".

Re: What is systemd

1. systemd is an optional part of Debian, (it's the default for the linux kernel versions, but they work without it). Debian/kBSD and Debian/Hurd have no problem not using systemd.

For now, and only because sysvinit is still the default init in stable. As soon as systemd becomes the default init (next release), things will start getting interesting depending on the policy on init system, i. e. do maintainers have to support several inits, can a package NOT support the default init, etc...

No matter what the policy is, it means a huge increase in porting difficulty, which means that packages just won't be ported to hurd or KFeeBSD; that's pretty much the end of the projects.

2. The systemd developpers have "inserted their tentacles" into nothing.

I beg your pardon? They're steamrolling essential parts of the system (and even parts of userland) into their monster of a system. See http://www.muylinux.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/funny-systemd.gif for a humorous representation of how they "inserted their tentacles into nothing".

Re: Init freedom

Hey, steady there. "Init freedom" means "freedom to use whatever init mechanism you want", not "freedom to use sysvinit" (otherwise they would have said "sysvinit freedom", surely).

The problem with systemd is that it introduce a system where GUI applications force the init system, and a huge bloated one that includes everything but the kitchen sink (yet; kitchensinkd release expected in early 2015).

For servers it is simply not an option.

Now add to that the stellar reliability (erm) and exemplary openness of systemd (binary logs... of course, why not!) and I'm entirely behind the greybeards on this one. I tried systemd on a laptop of mine; a desktop-type machine, typical systemd playground. Took me several hours of wading through the system to understand why the trackpad would sometimes work and sometimes not; why the WiFi circuitry would sometimes work and sometimes not; and why external drives would sometimes mount themselves upon insertion (sometimes as root, with the corresponding read/write restrictions), sometimes not, and would sometimes be unmoutable only by root (again, sometimes not) and then of course re-mountable only by root with the corresponding read/write restrictions.

Uninstalled as much of systemd as I could, back to sysvinit and everything works as expected again.

I think the "let's see how it works" phase is done and the answer is "not suitably".

Re: Eeeek!

Eh! You don't get a nice red badge? Have you been ripped off or, as a fine connoisseur of the real values in metal stocks, did you ask for copper on purpose? Or is it all to do with the apparently-missing "L"?

Yes, that's bound to happen a lot especially with sites like yelp and other "crowdsourced" business evaluation platforms. Also, if you rely on a blog for revenue or advertisement -or just plain old vanity- you may not want to say anything negative on anyone lest your cherished A-rank goes down the drain*.

And of course in genuine slander cases, getting around the link removal is only a matter of changing FDQN at most. Perhaps even only the name of the webpage. Given the flurry of free blogging platforms around, get ready for a game of the whack-a-mole that never ended

There's something that I don't understand in this affair: to ask for a link to be removed you need to perform a search on Google and get the link as a result, right? So at this point, why not just send a nastygram to the target of the link to have the offending material removed at the source? Google should really be responsible only for their own cache (which is already lots).

Well of course the source may be located in place where they don't care about your nastygram. What we really need is a state-operated all-encompassing filter, only then we'll be safe from the big, nasty interwebs.

* I know, right. But apparently for some it's more important than their very life. Or this of their neighbours at least.

Does this imply that anyone making their wares available over the Internet must produce Ts&Cs in Khmer, on the off chance that someone in Cambodia decides to make a purchase?

Netflix may have had half a (bad faith) defence right there. Unfortunately for them they do have region restrictions...

Canal+ is perhaps watching

But the ISPs are probably watching much more closely. They offer pay-per-view services that conflict directly with Netflix while Canal+ has been created around porn and footie, and still have a solid core of subscribers who don't care much about other stuff, so they are not really head-to-head with Netflix.

The language thing is easy to fix so it's not likely to be a big problem; however the contract change point would probably require Netflix to change quite a few thing in it's operating procedures (and it may give "bad" ideas to other customers) so they'll probably argue that they operate from Lux and thus don't need to obey French law. Expect much drama!

Re: Time to start taxing these lard buckets

If you are overweight, a scaled % gets added to your income tax until you stop shovelling food down your gullet, get off your fat ass and do some exercise.

I'm sure it sounds like a good idea to some, but real-world evidence (mostly based on correlation, not direct causation, but that's all I have) suggests that in rich countries the less money you have, the fatter you get. Because instead of stuffing your gob with aspararus, aragula, ananas, abalone and aardvark*, you use McDonalds and Pizza Hut as your stomach balast.

So a fat tax will not actually work. Mandatory exercise camps, on the other hand...

*OK, not really

Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

One word "tree" (or "vegetation" take your pick).

As much as we'd love it to be true, in the real world land vegetation is pretty much carbon-neutral (appart from marshes). The most effective carbon trap is ocean-based, as the dead organisms fall to anoxic depths where they sit for a very long time (until we dig them up and burn them as coal and oil, that is).

Re: They aren't a problem; they're a solution!

HA but most of their mass is water, so they're back to being a problem*.

* as everyone knows we'll run out of fresh water within 10 years, starting in the early nineties...

Why would it change anything about the origin?

I came to this section to post something similar:

suggest a suitably scientific answer to the question of the origin of life on Earth.

Seriously? If we're going to say that life originated with the self-assembly of organic compounds, why would we need them to come from deep space? (appart from the "we're all aliens" angle, that is)

Either way I'm fine with the idea; it's just the implied claim that there was no scientific grounding of the theory before we found organic compounds on a comet that peeves me.

Re: Harshing their mellow!

Tor should have a FAQ about how many ways its anonymity can be countered

it has. With mitigation procedures, too.

lag, buffing and aggregation only partially help

It's a well-known fact that with control over a sufficient portion of the pipes you can defeat any existing anonymizing system (TOR, Freenet etc). It's usually stated on the projects' webpages and/or READMEs etc. Last time I checked, TOR told you so at each startup.

Artificial lag, fake traffic -as you suggest- and aggregation make it harder, and they are used in most anonymizing schemes (all the ones I know, actually), including TOR. But they are not sufficient.

Re: Parasites

Round here an estimated 2 BEEELLIONS euros per year in Research tax breaks go to big finance groups on these grounds. There are even consulting outfit that openly specialize in getting these for banks and insurance companies. Research labs, on the other hand, are not funded and have to work with unpaid labour ((half the staff -that's including office workers and all- are students on specifically tailored contracts that allow not to give them a cent who are then sent direct to unemployment) and most of the Unis are on the brink (with some already officially bankrupt).

Yay.

Re: Cue the mass demands for refunds.

* Kickstarter does not offer refunds. A Project Creator is not required to grant a Backer’s request for a refund unless the Project Creator is unable or unwilling to fulfill the reward.

* Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill.

Interesting, as quite a lot of people stumped up for a reward that includes a copy of the game. Wonder if the lack of offline mode would qualify as inability and unwillingness to fulfill the reward...

_{what did you expect, it's an English project; as a rule of life I don't trust these. Perfide Albion and all that ;-)}

Anyway, I didn't back the project: my machines have enough trouble running Oolite already and I suspect the reboot will be substancially heavier.

Re: Pity!

Whilst the movie industry almost constantly releases rehashes of old movies, the games industry [...] often completely miss the essence of what the game great in the first place.

So, the game industry is EXACTLY like the movie industry then? ( *cough* Jar Jar Binks *cough* *cough* )

I would be so happy to get some reboots, with identical gameplay, just updated graphics and resolutions.

What? No! That would only turn snappy old 8-bits lovelies into sluggish monsters. OK, _some_ games could benefit from better graphics, but those with really great gameplay wouldn't, really. There's nothing wrong with modifying the gameplay somewhat, to make it better. The Monkey Island series was IMHO a very good example of slight improvement on graphics and massive improvement in gameplay. Not to mention Day of the Tentacle (in comparison with Maniac Mansion, that you can play on the computer in-game).

OTOH I have to admit that a graphically improved Dungeon Keeper would be nice. But not Leisure Suit Larry. Just thinking about it, I need mindbleach.

Re: Standard mistake to make

Well and good, but I'm still waiting for the part where someone explains why the game universe needs to change if you're happy to play offline in single-player mode. What could possibly be the downside of allowing that?

Think about it: you can't really allow re-use of the "local" Commander in online mode, and that adds some complexity.

But in fact what probably happened is that they're late, and while the online version can launch unfinished without anyone noticing (provided they have fixed the missing bits by the time the first player reaches them), it would show in an offline version.