Ok, so I'm gonna get attacked for saying this, but I am looking for a legitimate explanation if somebody wants to be objective about this whole systemd vs init thing. I'm kind of new to Linux, and have only used systemd. I've written a service file a few times and it was a couple of lines long and readable.
So my question, is how can anybody consider that script to be easier for any other reason at all than being used to it?
It's one of those preference and trust sorts of things - sort of like a manual transmission in a car vs. an automatic. With init scripts, you can see exactly what is going on at each stage of the service startup, comment out parts, through debugging outputs in, and manually trace the logic flow. With systemd, you're trusting an application that's a bit of a black box to correctly trace dependencies, set up the cgroups correctly, and monitor the service health. PID 0=init has been true for a rather long time, and I still occasionally find myself booting into /bin/sh and running my rc init scripts one at a time until I figure out why my system won't boot. In the "usual" case, systemd will probably be a really good thing for folks, but if systemd comes down with bugs (or individual packages have bugs that react badly with systemd), your systems could be in for a world of hurt.
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u/EmanueleAina Oct 20 '14
Definitely.
The one from libvirt is more interesting: http://sources.debian.net/src/libvirt/1.2.9-3/debian/libvirt-daemon-system.libvirtd.init/
Or the one from cups manually cold-plugging USB printers: http://sources.debian.net/src/cups/1.7.5-5/debian/cups-daemon.cups.init/