On 10/24/2014 03:35 AM, Tei wrote:
I pled the Linux people to stay inside the unix philosophy to use text files.
You do realize that the systemd config files are still text, right? As to the binary journal, well, by default RHEL 7 (and rebuilds) do at least mirror the journal output to syslog, so /var/log/messages and friends are still there, in plain text. I just verified this on my CentOS 7 evaluation server; yep, /var/log/messages and friends still there and still being used. As to systemd being a big binary, well, the typical initscript is being run by a binary also, even if it is somewhat smaller, and as shellshock shows that still has an attack surface. The systemd config files are much easier to understand than the typical initscript (and since the 'functions' most distributions provide are directly sourced, you need to include that code as well) is, by a very large margin. I'm not thrilled by this change, but after stepping back and looking over all the various systems I've dealt with over the last 25+ years it's honestly not as big of a change as some of the things I've seen (and my experiences include VMS and a number of Unix variants, including Xenix, Irix, SunOS/Solaris, and Domain/OS. And don't get me started on the various CLI's for various switch and router vendors, or I'll throw some Proteon gear your way.....). And while I should be able to enjoy a better desktop experience (I have used Linux as my primary desktop for 17 years), I can also see the server-side uses for the systemd approach, most of which have to do with highly dynamic cloud-style systems (and I'm thinking private cloud, not public). I can see how being load-responsive and rapidly spinning up compute resources as needed and for only as long as needed could help reduce my cost of power; spread out to millions of servers (like Google or Facebook) and the energy savings could be very significant. Much like how package delivery companies plan routes to use only right-hand turns to save megabucks per year on fuel costs.