systemd (re)entered testing today! Should Mint adopt it?

[revinary]

Hi everyone,

as the topic says today the systemd init system re-entered testing.
Apparently it has been there before but was removed again (http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/systemd.html for more info).

Anyway, tried it just now and was VERY excited!
My laptop boots significantly faster compared to sysvinit.

Are there any plans to introduce systemd as the default init system on Mint?
From what I understand most major distros are at least planing to do so.
Still, it's going to take a while until Debian makes a move so maybe Mint can make the switch independently.

Since systemd and sysvinit can coexist next to each other just fine there would always be a fallback mechanism available.

Any thoughts/questions/ideas?

Cheers,

rev

[xenopeek]

Currently a mix of Upstart and SysV init is being used. I'd be happy to have just one that replaces fully the SysV init. I don't know how systemd and Upstart compare, but from the systemd site "systemd provides aggressive parallelization capabilities". I like the sound of that Fedora 15 already uses systemd.

[revinary]

From what I understand this is the case for regular Mint (ie non LMDE) which uses Ubuntu's upstart
which in turn still relies on some sysvinit functionality.
Ubuntu probably won't give up upstart since they poured a lot of time and work into it
and if it works out for them that's fine.

But what about LMDE?
I think it's safe to say that Debian isn't going to drop sysvinit for upstart
(there is a package but it basically just wraps upstart around the existing sysvinit scripts).

LMDE is said to be lighter, more responsive then Mint 11 but has "a few rough edges".

Systemd perfecly fits this motto, I think:

It's fast but MAY intorduce SOME issues for SOME users.


rev

[Brian49]

Anyway, tried it just now

How exactly did you do that, please? Does it get configured automatically when installing the package? Many thanks.

[revinary]

Hi Brian,

to try out systemd:

• apt-get update
• apt-get install systemd systemd-gui libpam-systemd
• reboot
• when grub shows up select your kernel, press 'e' and add "init=/bin/systemd" to the kernel parameters and hit F10 to boot

To make systemd the default init system open /etc/default/grub, find GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and add "init=/bin/systemd".
After that run update-grub as root.

I'm using e4rat which gets loaded as init process and then passes control to the actual init process so the process was slightly different.
Anyway, the above should work just fine.

Also, systemd requires cgroup support and a few other kernel options enabled.
Read http://wiki.debian.org/systemd for details.

For me it worked out-of-the-box, no configuration whatsoever.
A few error messages poped up during boot, mostly harmless. Rever to above link for details.

rev

[xenopeek]

From what I understand this is the case for regular Mint (ie non LMDE) which uses Ubuntu's upstart
which in turn still relies on some sysvinit functionality.

Ah. I thought Debian would switch to Upstart for version 6, but after a quick read up I stand corrected. The intention was there in 2009, but due to various issues with Upstart, SysV is still the default. Upstart package is available for installation, but not a lot of SysV init scripts have been migrated to Upstart yet. The same issue might apply to systemd, as Debian has 850 packages with SysV init scripts that would need migration...

[Brian49]

revinary - thanks for the advice. However, on rebooting I couldn't get to my desktop, only to a console login. I thought the systemd-gui package might be of some help, but contrary to what I expected it doesn't in fact provide a GUI for configuring systemd.

[revinary]

revinary - thanks for the advice. However, on rebooting I couldn't get to my desktop, only to a console login. I thought the systemd-gui package might be of some help, but contrary to what I expected it doesn't in fact provide a GUI for configuring systemd.

That's odd...
Are you running regular Mint or Debian Edition?
As Brian mentioned, it seems systemd still relies on sysvinit scripts for services which have no native systemd support.
So if you're running regular Mint with upstart these scripts may not exist which prevents systemd from starting your display manager (just a guess).

systemd-gui provides a GUI configuration tool for systemd.
I can't check right now (running parted magic ) but I think the command was 'systemadm' or something. Have to check later.

rev

[Brian49]

I'm running Mint Debian, tracking Unstable.

I've now found systemadm, thanks, but it won't run - several critical errors.

I had hoped it would be straightforward to try out systemd, but evidently that isn't the case on my system, so I'm going to leave it for now. Thanks again for your help.

[jeffreyC]

In my Debian testing (not LMDE just Debian) i have several folders labeled systemd in /etc and /lib and I have not installed systemd yet.
It looks like that is the way Debian is going.

And systemd is in testing again, time to try it out ?

[revinary]

In my Debian testing (not LMDE just Debian) i have several folders labeled systemd in /etc and /lib and I have not installed systemd yet.
It looks like that is the way Debian is going.

The reason for that is that several packages already natively support systemd.
The files/folders you're seeing come from these packages (hal, udev, dbus, network-manager among others).

I'm not sure if porting is done upstream or as part of the packaging process, though.

rev

[Roken]

I had the same problem, console boot only and a complete failure to start x/gdm3 when I tried. Back to the old way for now, for me.

[revinary]

I had the same problem, console boot only and a complete failure to start x/gdm3 when I tried. Back to the old way for now, for me.

It looks like it doesn't work out-fo-the-box for everyone. I just asumed so since it worked flawlessly with my installation.

Two things come to my mind:

1. double-check your kernel configuration: systemd requires some options enabled which may not be enabled in the vanilla mint config
(have a look at the link posted earlier)

2. pass 'systemd.default=graphical.target' to your kernel command line (or just run 'telinit 5' after logging in as root)

If it still doesn't work you may at least get some useful console feedback.

rev

[jaycee]

Hi Brian,

to try out systemd:

• apt-get update
• apt-get install systemd systemd-gui libpam-systemd
• reboot
• when grub shows up select your kernel, press 'e' and add "init=/bin/systemd" to the kernel parameters and hit F10 to boot

To make systemd the default init system open /etc/default/grub, find GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and add "init=/bin/systemd".
After that run update-grub as root.

I'm using e4rat which gets loaded as init process and then passes control to the actual init process so the process was slightly different.
Anyway, the above should work just fine.

Also, systemd requires cgroup support and a few other kernel options enabled.
Read http://wiki.debian.org/systemd for details.

For me it worked out-of-the-box, no configuration whatsoever.
A few error messages poped up during boot, mostly harmless. Rever to above link for details.

rev

Thanks for your instructions rev - systemd works like a charm on this laptop! So long as it's not removed from testing again...
Considering that systemd in Debian is maturing (version 29 is in testing, which is the same version Fedora 15 used, and not far from the latest release of version 33), I'm hoping that it might become the default init system of the LMDE respins that come after 2011.08. It's likely though that Clem and Co. will be sorting out nuances in the Gnome 3 transition (which will hopefully occur shortly after the release of Gnome 3.2) and won't have time to test systemd effectively before the next set of respins... either way, it Works For Me(TM).

[secipolla]

First I made the recommended backup copy:

Code: Select all

# cp -av /sbin/init /sbin/init.sysvinit

Then I've installed it here in sid with:

Code: Select all

# apt-get install systemd-sysv systemd-gui

Code: Select all

# echo "systemd-sysv hold"|dpkg --set-selections

Code: Select all

# ln -sf /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtab

reboot.
Works fine with the Debian kernel.

[karashata]

Upon seeing this thread I decided to give systemd a try. I'm somewhat impressed to note that it worked right after installation without me making any modifications to the system, and somewhat improved an already fairly quick boot time (I think I saved about 6 or 7 seconds off of what used to be about 15 to 20 seconds with sysvinit).

[itoffshore]

It seems if you have a separate partition for /boot & / running systemd will not work without systemd-sysv also being installed. Along with e4rat I now boot around 35% faster. ZRAM is also a nice tweak putting compressed swap into RAM.

[Roken]

Well, since I installed Debian I decided to give systemd another go, and whilst it did it's job well this time (on the first boot), it appears that there are still problems:

i. You lose persistant mount points in /media and have to recreate them before mounting. In my case this was not a big issue because the only persistant mount points I have are two truecrypt mount points and one for .iso images. It's easy enough to reconfigure to mount them in sub-directories of /home, so not a deal breaker.
ii. After the first boot everything checked out, but on the second and subsequent boots my bluetooth adapter was disabled and wouldn't re-enable (no errors, it just sat there silently doing nothing).

And at the end of the day, it only bought me 5 - 10 seconds off total boot time anyway. Maybe after more work has done it will be viable, but for now if you decide to try be prepared for some issues.

As an aside, on Debian installing systemd-svsv uninstalls sysvinit, but uninstalling systemd-svsv doesn't force a reinstall of sysvinit, which if not corrected would leave a none-booting system. Just something to be aware of if you are playing - remember to reinstall sysvinit before trying to reboot if you remove systemd. Also note that if you do remove systemd then shutdown won't work. You will need to do a hard reset to close the system before rebooting. (It's fine afterwards - a once only thing).

[widget]

Well, since I installed Debian I decided to give systemd another go, and whilst it did it's job well this time (on the first boot), it appears that there are still problems:

i. You lose persistant mount points in /media and have to recreate them before mounting. In my case this was not a big issue because the only persistant mount points I have are two truecrypt mount points and one for .iso images. It's easy enough to reconfigure to mount them in sub-directories of /home, so not a deal breaker.
ii. After the first boot everything checked out, but on the second and subsequent boots my bluetooth adapter was disabled and wouldn't re-enable (no errors, it just sat there silently doing nothing).

And at the end of the day, it only bought me 5 - 10 seconds off total boot time anyway. Maybe after more work has done it will be viable, but for now if you decide to try be prepared for some issues.

As an aside, on Debian installing systemd-svsv uninstalls sysvinit, but uninstalling systemd-svsv doesn't force a reinstall of sysvinit, which if not corrected would leave a none-booting system. Just something to be aware of if you are playing - remember to reinstall sysvinit before trying to reboot if you remove systemd. Also note that if you do remove systemd then shutdown won't work. You will need to do a hard reset to close the system before rebooting. (It's fine afterwards - a once only thing).

Was this on Sid or testing? They have slightly different packages the last time I looked. Could have changed in the last 6-7 days.

I have an install of Wheezy that has served its purpose and do intend to inflict systemd on it. Just curious as to what you were on.

This is an install that I don't care if it works or not, It is on my test drive. The reason I put it there was to test different DEs to replace Gnome. Xfce has been chosen. That bugger is still there because I haven't decided what to do with that space.

[Roken]

This is wheezy testing. As I mentioned, it seems to be OK for the most part, but some hardware may choke on it. Personally, I'll hold of a little while.