Great Blue Heron

  • 3 Posts
  • 20 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • This is one of the things that frustrate me about Debian based systems. I know most distributions ship with lots of different tools to do the same job and you pick the one you like. But with something as fundamental as system timers it just feels wrong to me - when I want to change the timing of something I first need to figure out is the cron job real, or just a stub referring to the systemd timer, or visa versa.

    So for a while I had removed cron from all my systems and fully committed to timers. Now I’ve decided I don’t like systemd and gone fully the other way.

    I know it’s not that bad, but that’s the way my brain works - and I can remember getting really screwed up with some early Ubuntu systems.







  • What are you using to ship the logs to VL?

    That’s the reason I’m here asking about logging. I’m in the process of changing and wondering if I should switch it all up. I was using systemd-journal-remote, but I’m switching from Debian to Alpine so - no more systemd.

    you should start excluding them before they reach VL

    Now that confuses me. As I said in my original post - I had some preconceptions about centralised logging before I set it up, and having a single place to manage filters was certainly something I was hoping to get from it. Also any filtering would only be for reporting. I’d like to keep a full set of log data for potential problem analysis etc.






  • This is perfectly logical and I agree. Except that this controversy has prompted me to go learn about Lennart Poettering. I’ve been using systemd forever and I like it - I like journald and remote journald, I like networkd, I even deleted cron off my systems and use systemd timers exclusively. I knew there was some controversy about Lennart, but I didn’t really care. Now that I’ve read a bit about his background and, maybe more importantly, his new company - I don’t have a good feeling for the future of systemd.


  • I’m thinking the same. I understand the people saying it’s no big deal, it’s just an optional field. But the existing optional fields (GECOS) have been there since the beginning of time. The original Unix user database (/etc/passwd) was created in a different time. Things have changed in the last 50 years and we now know that a simple field in an OS level database is not really an appropriate place to store PII. I don’t know what the solution is, as these laws are coming and there will be some people that need to comply, but I don’t think the current change to systemd is the right approach.

    On the plus side - this controversy has prompted me to look into other options for my home servers and I’m loving the minimalism and simplicity of Alpine. (This isn’t a knee jerk reaction - I’ve been frustrated by the bloated feel of mainstream distributions for a while - more the straw that may break the camel’s back)


  • I’ve never followed the people or the politics - I just started using systemd when it appeared in whatever disto I was using at the time and liked it. I’m trying to catch up now because I have reservations about using projects that incorporate AI (and I’m learning this may be impossible to avoid) and I most certainly won’t use anything that implements age verification. (The irony of typing this on a device that has age verification via my credit card hurts)

    I accept that Microsoft had significant influence over systemd when Poettering worked there, but I don’t understand how they do now.

    I also understand that Poettering likes Windows, and wants to make Linux more like Windows. That’s not the same as Microsoft controlling systemd.

    Are you saying that Amutable is just a front for Microsoft?