[Arm-netbook] Logging and journaling

Post by Julie Marchant
I just want to make sure of something: are the EOMA68-A20 computer cards
going to be shipped with logging and journaling disabled (so that the
storage isn't constantly being written to)? I'm asking because this is
pretty much a necessity for an OS running on NAND or an SD card if you
don't want to have to constantly buy new SD cards because the previous
one reached its write limit.

NAND wear is probably more linked to age than number of writes. NAND has
more faults than harddisk. The trick is ECC and headroom and mapping for
faulted sectors.

The biggest issue is boot fixed read addresses.

Post by Julie Marchant
Ditto for swap, but given the small amount of NAND on the A20 card, I'm
sure not having swap is a given anyway. ;)
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-08 15:10:38 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
NAND wear is probably more linked to age than number of writes.

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m***@gmail.com

2017-02-08 19:54:48 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
NAND wear is probably more linked to age than number of writes.

No, NAND is flash memory, it has a definite limit on the number of times
it can be written to (in each sector, that is). It doesn't matter how
old flash memory is, if you reach its write limit, it's useless.

All flash memory is like this, including most SSDs. The only variation
is what the limit is and what the firmware does to compensate. So one
might take more writes than another, but regardless, every write
*necessarily* brings it closer to the end of its life.

.

That's debatable:
https://www.google.nl/amp/embedded#amp=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.zdnet.com%252Fgoogle-amp%252Farticle%252Fssd-reliability-in-the-real-world-googles-experience%252F&ampidx=0

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Adam Van Ymeren

2017-02-08 20:02:09 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
NAND wear is probably more linked to age than number of writes.

Link doesn't work for me (Thanks Google!) but this one does.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-reliability-in-the-real-world-googles-experience/

Assuming this is what you meant to link to.

Post by Julie Marchant
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 00:15:54 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
https://www.google.nl/amp/embedded#amp=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.zdnet.com%252Fgoogle-amp%252Farticle%252Fssd-reliability-in-the-real-world-googles-experience%252F&ampidx=0
<https://www.google.nl/amp/embedded#amp=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.zdnet.com%252Fgoogle-amp%252Farticle%252Fssd-reliability-in-the-real-world-googles-experience%252F&ampidx=0>
Link doesn't work for me (Thanks Google!) but this one does.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-reliability-in-the-real-world-googles-experience/
Assuming this is what you meant to link to.

Thank you.

Post by m***@gmail.com
None of the drives in the study came anywhere near their write limits, even the 3,000 writes specified for the MLC drives

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 04:20:32 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
None of the drives in the study came anywhere near their write limits,
even the 3,000 writes specified for the MLC drives

I wrote this while I was at work on my break, so now that I have more
time, let me elaborate.

Supposedly, in all cases tested, none of the SSDs were written to
anywhere near enough times to cause substantial wear. It is mentioned in
this article summarizing it that even 3,000 writes were not reached.
Most flash media can sustain at least tens of thousands of writes, so if
not even 3,000 writes were reached, it makes sense that none of the SSDs
tested failed.

However, it doesn't follow that this kind of wear is insignificant for
all flash memory. In particular:

* SSDs tend to be larger than SD cards, so they're not going to wear out
as fast unless the entirety of the space is being used and constantly
changed.
* The firmware of SSDs may be different from the firmware of SD cards.
For that matter, the firmware of SSDs may be different from the firmware
of other SSDs. Don't underestimate the power of wear leveling.

It still holds true that every change to any flash memory brings it
closer to the end of its life. It's just that other factors can do this,
too, and in some cases (e.g. SSDs) it may mean that the write cycle
limit is less important in practice.

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-09 10:22:43 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
None of the drives in the study came anywhere near their write limits,
even the 3,000 writes specified for the MLC drives

I wrote this while I was at work on my break, so now that I have more
time, let me elaborate.
Supposedly, in all cases tested, none of the SSDs were written to
anywhere near enough times to cause substantial wear. It is mentioned in
this article summarizing it that even 3,000 writes were not reached.
Most flash media can sustain at least tens of thousands of writes, so if
not even 3,000 writes were reached, it makes sense that none of the SSDs
tested failed.
However, it doesn't follow that this kind of wear is insignificant for
* SSDs tend to be larger than SD cards, so they're not going to wear out
as fast unless the entirety of the space is being used and constantly
changed.
* The firmware of SSDs may be different from the firmware of SD cards.
For that matter, the firmware of SSDs may be different from the firmware
of other SSDs. Don't underestimate the power of wear leveling.
It still holds true that every change to any flash memory brings it
closer to the end of its life. It's just that other factors can do this,
too, and in some cases (e.g. SSDs) it may mean that the write cycle
limit is less important in practice.

A test we did for our systems is to constantly (re)write and sync a large
random file for many cycles (enough to simulate several years of normal
operation), and generally encountered hardly any faults.

Feel free to test this yourself.
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 11:57:48 UTC

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
A test we did for our systems is to constantly (re)write and sync a large
random file for many cycles (enough to simulate several years of normal
operation), and generally encountered hardly any faults.
Feel free to test this yourself.

Do your systems run on microSD cards? Because that is after all what
matters here. Like I said, while it's *fundamentally* the same for both,
SSDs are more likely to have more storage space and more sophisticated
firmware compared to microSD cards because they're typically used for
completely different purposes.

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-09 12:03:24 UTC

Do your systems run on microSD cards?

Yes (8GB or 32GB).
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 12:34:53 UTC

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
Yes (8GB or 32GB).

That's good to hear.

I've had an SD card that became unusable (as in it was literally
impossible to write to successfully, even impossible just to format)
after Pandian (a version of Debian for the OpenPandora) was on it for
some time. You seem to be knowledgeable about this subject; do you have
any idea what could cause all attempts at writing to an SD card to be
unsuccessful, as if it was a ROM? I've always assumed that it had been
written to too much.

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2017-02-10 07:10:05 UTC

Post by Adam Van Ymeren

Post by m***@gmail.com
NAND wear is probably more linked to age than number of writes.

Link doesn't work for me (Thanks Google!) but this one does.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-reliability-in-the-real-
world-googles-experience/
Assuming this is what you meant to link to.

Yes thank you

Post by Adam Van Ymeren

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-08 14:48:13 UTC

Just one data point from systems we have, based on Raspberry Pi2 (SD
card):

* By default we disable all standard logging to disk.
- It is possible to reenable logging to (r)syslog
- and/or create /var/log/journal (We keep Debian's default of
Storage=auto).
* We tried working without a swap. After some crashes we realised it was
needed.
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-08 15:19:05 UTC

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
* We tried working without a swap. After some crashes we realised it was
needed.

With 1 GB of RAM? You must be running the wrong programs, then. The
original OpenPandora, with only 256 MB of RAM, works perfectly fine
without swap in my experience. You just need to be mindful of how many
programs you're running at once. I seriously doubt people are commonly
going to run into problems with 2GB of RAM.

Besides, swap isn't a solution to low RAM, it's a failsafe. Some people
might find the cost of degrading a microSD card to be worth that
failsafe, as opposed to just letting some programs crash, but I think
most people would prefer the latter option for the most part.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-08 16:37:01 UTC

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64bit somethingorother is off. i'm giving serious consideration to
just putting the OS on a small microsd card and shipping that out.

i really wanted to put ubifs on but it's not working well with 3.4

Post by Julie Marchant
Ditto for swap, but given the small amount of NAND on the A20 card, I'm
sure not having swap is a given anyway. ;)

yeah no on the swap

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-08 18:35:50 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
64bit somethingorother is off. i'm giving serious consideration to
just putting the OS on a small microsd card and shipping that out.
i really wanted to put ubifs on but it's not working well with 3.4

That's not really what I was asking. Regardless of what storage device
it's on, I just want to make sure the filesystem doesn't use journaling
(e.g. ext2 rather than ext4) and that the system is set up to not record
logs of things like warnings and errors. These things will do a number
on an SD card. (I can't say I know what you're referring to by "64bit
somethingorother".)

It won't hurt me personally either way because I'm capable of
reformatting to a non-journaling FS and should be capable of disabling
logging myself, but it would suck if your computer cards got a
reputation for chewing through SD cards because of the default settings.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-08 19:00:14 UTC

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i'm saying i have to switch off a couple of flags anyway so that
should remind me to remove journalling as well.

l.

Post by Julie Marchant
It won't hurt me personally either way because I'm capable of
reformatting to a non-journaling FS and should be capable of disabling
logging myself, but it would suck if your computer cards got a
reputation for chewing through SD cards because of the default settings.

appreciated. thx julie.

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-08 19:34:50 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i'm saying i have to switch off a couple of flags anyway so that
should remind me to remove journalling as well.

Alright, that's good to hear. :) Just don't forget the logging bit, as
well; that's a separate thing from journaling and equally important.
(Journaling is something the filesystem does, logging is something
either syslogd or rsyslog does.)

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-09 06:50:24 UTC

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Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i'm saying i have to switch off a couple of flags anyway so that
should remind me to remove journalling as well.

do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command?

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 11:03:06 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command?

No, but just using an ext2 filesystem instead should suffice (since ext2
doesn't support journaling). That's the standard advice for the OpenPandora.

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-09 11:11:58 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command?

No, but just using an ext2 filesystem instead should suffice (since ext2
doesn't support journaling). That's the standard advice for the OpenPandora.

So what happens on a violent poweroff? Just lose data?

There's also f2fs. But you do need a recent enough kernel to use it. The
versions from some older kernels may eat some files occasionally.
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m***@gmail.com

2017-02-10 07:53:11 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command?

No, but just using an ext2 filesystem instead should suffice (since ext2
doesn't support journaling). That's the standard advice for the OpenPandora.

As we all have established. We have flash memory. Which comes in a few
flavors. NAND (Not AND) and NOR (Not Or). Which is the type of logic gate
used.

Then we have SLC (Single level), MLC (Multi level) (And TLC, QLC)

With MLC, TLC, QLC you read/write multiple bits at once.
These come with an issue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Battery_or_supercapacitor

Then we have wear leveling. With bare Flash you have none. With SD/MCC/eMMC
and SSD you have some. This is done via hardware/firmware. This is useally
done in a way that is support regular rotating disk filesystem.

The mechanics are though obscure and those controller usually are
programmed by closed firmware.

So for bare NAND you should not use a regular filesystem like EXT, XFS,
FAT, NTFS, etc. Also F2FS is not build for bare nand. It is made for
controlled flash.

For bare NAND you should use special drivers and filesystems like MTD and
UBIFS or YaFFS.
http://linux-sunxi.org/NAND

The Allwinner 3.4 kernel contains a NAND driver. But I don't know what the
quality of it is. I though that I read it was not that great and that the
new mainline driver had a lot of hoops to go trough to support flash
formatted/controlled by the 3.4 driver.

So MLC has problems with power loss. So a journalling filesystem is a must.
A journalling FS has noting to do with logging. But with write consistency.

With (e)MMC/SD adn SSD you lose a bit of freedom and gain extra security
issues. But makes programming easier.

So weather NAND suffers from wear or age: You need a good controller
(hardware or software) identifying broken cells and marking them unfit and
not bother progams or users with unwritable sectors.

Post by Julie Marchant
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m***@gmail.com

2017-02-10 09:59:53 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command?

No, but just using an ext2 filesystem instead should suffice (since ext2
doesn't support journaling). That's the standard advice for the OpenPandora.

As we all have established. We have flash memory. Which comes in a few
flavors. NAND (Not AND) and NOR (Not Or). Which is the type of logic gate
used.
Then we have SLC (Single level), MLC (Multi level) (And TLC, QLC)
With MLC, TLC, QLC you read/write multiple bits at once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Battery_or_supercapacitor
Then we have wear leveling. With bare Flash you have none. With
SD/MCC/eMMC and SSD you have some. This is done via hardware/firmware. This
is useally done in a way that is support regular rotating disk filesystem.
The mechanics are though obscure and those controller usually are
programmed by closed firmware.
So for bare NAND you should not use a regular filesystem like EXT, XFS,
FAT, NTFS, etc. Also F2FS is not build for bare nand. It is made for
controlled flash.
For bare NAND you should use special drivers and filesystems like MTD and
UBIFS or YaFFS.
http://linux-sunxi.org/NAND
The Allwinner 3.4 kernel contains a NAND driver. But I don't know what the
quality of it is. I though that I read it was not that great and that the
new mainline driver had a lot of hoops to go trough to support flash
formatted/controlled by the 3.4 driver.
So MLC has problems with power loss. So a journalling filesystem is a
must. A journalling FS has noting to do with logging. But with write
consistency.

The biggest writer in a desktopish environment are the system and
application logs.

So move var log to ram. This is usually enough for debugging purposes. But
it should remain easily possible to write to flash/disk if debugging
hanging systems issues.

Further the files system "acces time" stamps is a big writer. With BTRFS
you have the "relatime" option (relax acces time updates).

This does break some programs which rely on accurate "atime". But for most
end users this is not a problem.

Post by m***@gmail.com
With (e)MMC/SD adn SSD you lose a bit of freedom and gain extra security
issues. But makes programming easier.
So weather NAND suffers from wear or age: You need a good controller
(hardware or software) identifying broken cells and marking them unfit and
not bother progams or users with unwritable sectors.

Post by Julie Marchant
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jtd

2017-02-10 13:17:50 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
o move var log to ram. This is usually enough for debugging purposes. But
it should remain easily possible to write to flash/disk if debugging
hanging systems issues.
Further the files system "acces time" stamps is a big writer. With BTRFS
you have the "relatime" option (relax acces time updates).

noatime with other fs.

Post by m***@gmail.com
This does break some programs which rely on accurate "atime". But for most
end users this is not a problem.

works flawlessly for my use case with debian.
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Stefan Monnier

2017-02-10 20:36:20 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
Further the files system "acces time" stamps is a big writer. With BTRFS
you have the "relatime" option (relax acces time updates).

AFAIK nowadays the default is already relatime (or is it lazytime even?).

Stefan

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 11:41:02 UTC

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
So what happens on a violent poweroff? Just lose data?

Sure, if you happened to be in the middle of writing to the card, but this isn't that big of a deal really. People routinely take this risk with USB flash drives and SD cards.

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do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command?

No, but just using an ext2 filesystem instead should suffice (since ext2
doesn't support journaling). That's the standard advice for the OpenPandora.

So what happens on a violent poweroff? Just lose data?
There's also f2fs. But you do need a recent enough kernel to use it. The
versions from some older kernels may eat some files occasionally.
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Stefan Monnier

2017-02-09 13:50:51 UTC

FWIW, I think that journaling is a non-issue. The underlying assumption
is that journaling causes more writes and hence ages the NAND faster.
While this is true in some cases, it's not true in all cases (the
reverse can also be true in some cases), and whether it's true in the
common case is still up for debate AFAIK. Furthermore, even if when
it's true, the factor by which it is increased is small (IIRC the worst
case is a factor 2).

Now it's true that all those extra writes go to the same place on the
filesystem, so if your NAND's wear leveling sucks rocks, you'll kill
your NAND very quickly. But if your NAND's wear-leveling is anywhere
close to honest, then journalling shouldn't make any noticeable
difference to the expected lifetime of your NAND.

There's been a few reports of people seeing that SD die after a fairly
short use of a journaling filesystem on it. I don't think I've ever
seen conclusive evidence that the two were related (e.g. I've also seen
SD cards die even though they've never touched a journalling
filesystem), and I've seen lots of SD cards live long happy lifes with
a journalling filesystem on them.

So, IMO, go ahead and take advantage of the latest journalling
filesystem. If you SD card dies, it's just that you got a lemon.

W.r.t to logging, I've agree that you're probably better off logging to
RAM (or to a remote host) than to a local "disk", and AFAIK that's the
default behavior of systemd anyway.

Stefan

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-09 14:59:02 UTC

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Post by Stefan Monnier
W.r.t to logging, I've agree that you're probably better off logging to
RAM (or to a remote host) than to a local "disk", and AFAIK that's the
default behavior of systemd anyway.

with the exception of fedora which has only a few backers i will NOT
be distributing a filesystem which contains the completely
unethically-developed and very dangerous systemd application. having
evaluated its development, watched the predicted security
vulnerabilities unfold and cause massive disruption, and witnessed its
"ram it down people's throats" deployment without due consideration or
consultation with end-users, nor the distros respecting end-users
rights to NOT be forced into using it, i cannot and will not be
associated or endorse such totally unethical behaviour, so will be
removing it from all rootfs images. post-distribution, if people then
wish to undo that because they find systemd to be useful and have no
objections to its usage they are entirely free to do so.

l.

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-09 15:37:50 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
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I very much like systemd and can hardly see myself using a system
without it. Thus I will personally want to have systemd on my systems.
Please don't make that too difficult a task for me.

That is: you don't like systemd? fine. Installing Debian without it is
rather simple:
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).

However, if "removing it from the rootfs" means something similar to
Devuan, then It'll probably be simpler for me to reinstall the image
with a proper Debian system.

Please don't make my life complicated.
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Adam Van Ymeren

2017-02-09 15:53:02 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
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Please don't spread this mis-information. Installing Debian without
systemd is far from simple, and many things just won't work right as
systemd has become a dependency on more and more packages.

It's possible, yes, but it's not simple, not supported, and tends to leave
the user debugging weird behaviours.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).
However, if "removing it from the rootfs" means something similar to
Devuan, then It'll probably be simpler for me to reinstall the image
with a proper Debian system.
Please don't make my life complicated.
--
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Christopher Havel

2017-02-09 16:20:00 UTC

If I may add my own perspective.

Like most people who don't use Win or Mac, I started off my Linux journey
with Ubuntu. This was 2007 or so. I eventually (through a story far too
long to relate here, particularly since it's not relevant) settled on Puppy
Linux of various varieties for my main distro. Puppy, AFAIK, uses BusyBox
Init. When SystemD started being developed, it was universally reviled by
almost the entire Puppy community... we lost a couple members that way,
IIRC.

Anyways, I have heard a lot about SystemD, almost all of it negative. While
I have not, to my knowledge, interacted directly with the devs of it, I
have heard that they tend to dismiss any bug or issue they are notified
with, as "not our problem" -- the underlying attitude being, why make more
work for *us* when you can change *your* code to adapt? A similar attitude
seems to be prevalent about adopting it -- hey, new kid on the block, let's
get to know each other -- and to heck with anyone who doesn't like it.

I find those sorts of attitudes troubling, to say the least. It reminds me
a little too well of the Borg, from *Star Trek*...

Yet, my distro of choice right now is not Puppy. (Another painfully long
irrelevant story.) I'm using Linux Mint 18.0, and it runs SystemD
underneath everything. So far, I have absolutely zero complaints. SystemD
has not yet shot my cat, metaphorically or otherwise.

Am I converted? No. I am still skeptical. Would I choose another init
system, given the choice? Absolutely. Puppy's cobbled-together nasty
pile-of-patches mess of a BusyBox Init served me well for many years and
I'd take it back in a heartbeat.

But is SystemD something that keeps me up nights chewing my nails about
whether or not my computer will boot tomorrow? Absolutely not.

I have my concerns about how SystemD has been formed and how it propagates.
But, by the same token, the people who designed it are not *complete*
idiots, regardless of how developed they are (or aren't) socially, because
it at least *seems* to work well enough to withstand everyday use... so far
at least. I know that SystemD tends to be a divisor amongst Linux users and
devs -- you either really love it or you really hate it -- but I find it a
little hard to get passionate about it, one way or the other, at this point.

Please don't shoot me. I'm just a messenger :)

Michael Howard

2017-02-09 16:20:43 UTC

---

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<https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68>

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 1:50 PM, Stefan Monnier

Post by Stefan Monnier
W.r.t to logging, I've agree that you're probably better off

logging to

Post by Stefan Monnier
RAM (or to a remote host) than to a local "disk", and AFAIK

that's the

Post by Stefan Monnier
default behavior of systemd anyway.

with the exception of fedora which has only a few backers i

will NOT

be distributing a filesystem which contains the completely
unethically-developed and very dangerous systemd application.

having

evaluated its development, watched the predicted security
vulnerabilities unfold and cause massive disruption, and

witnessed its

"ram it down people's throats" deployment without due

consideration or

consultation with end-users, nor the distros respecting end-users
rights to NOT be forced into using it, i cannot and will not be
associated or endorse such totally unethical behaviour, so will be
removing it from all rootfs images. post-distribution, if people

then

wish to undo that because they find systemd to be useful and have no
objections to its usage they are entirely free to do so.

This is not mis-information. Removing systemd from Debian (jessie) is
simple, I did only a couple of days ago actually because it screwed with
a mail server that was installed on the system.

Who cares if it's supported or not, the Debian devs didn't care whether
users wanted it or not in the first place. Can have a link to some
examples of 'user debugging weird behaviours'?

What really is simple, is to use Devuan instead :)

Cheers,

--
Mike Howard

Stefan Monnier

2017-02-10 20:15:14 UTC

Post by Michael Howard
Who cares if it's supported or not, the Debian devs didn't care whether
users wanted it or not in the first place. Can have a link to some examples
of 'user debugging weird behaviours'?

My own experience recently: installing systemd on a Debian testing
system fixed the following two bugs I had:
- I couldn't control network-manager from nm-applet any more for lack of
permissions.
- upon wakeup from s2ram, the wifi wouldn't reconnect (it would stay in
the state it was before sleeping, thkning it's still connected, but
with packets not going anywhere), so I had to kill&restart
network-manager every time.
Obviously, if you don't use network-manager, you won't be affected.

Stefan

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-09 16:47:20 UTC

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Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
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On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 1:50 PM, Stefan Monnier

Please don't spread this mis-information. Installing Debian without systemd
is far from simple, and many things just won't work right as systemd has
become a dependency on more and more packages.
It's possible, yes, but it's not simple, not supported, and tends to leave
the user debugging weird behaviours.

for my laptop i'm using angband.pl's nosystemd, which is not kept
up-to-date with security updates, so what i have learned is that i can
simply "apt-get build-dep" on whatever package is not up-to-date, then
"apt-get source" it, build it and install the resultant .debs and that
way i can keep running a debian/testing system completely free of
systemd and libsystemd0.

... yeah it's not for the faint-hearted :)

l.

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Elena ``of Valhalla''

2017-02-10 09:37:02 UTC

Post by Adam Van Ymeren

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
That is: you don't like systemd? fine. Installing Debian without it is
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd

Please don't spread this mis-information. Installing Debian without
systemd is far from simple, and many things just won't work right as
systemd has become a dependency on more and more packages.
It's possible, yes, but it's not simple, not supported, and tends to leave
the user debugging weird behaviours.

This is mostly false:

installing debian without libsystemd0 is not supported. Lots of packages
have added optional support for systemd, so they are built linking that
*648 bytes* library to access it *when available*.
Not doing so would require multiple builds of all packages and that
would lead to mainteinance hell.

Using another init system on debian is fully supported, mandatory on
non-linux archs (sadly, none of them are release archs, but people are
still working on them). Since less people are using it it is likely that
there are bugs and that it will take more time to find them, but please
if you do *report them*, they will be taken care of as any other bug
(i.e. not always, because sometimes maintainers disappear).

The only way to be sure that other init systems will die completely in
Debian is not reporting bugs, because that way the maintainers have no
idea that they exists and no chance to fix them.

Running GNOME without systemd is a different beast: I don't know if it
has happened already, but sooner or later systemd will be required
because of an *upstream* decision.
Debian fully supports a number of other Desktop Environment and window
managers, some of which (e.g. KDE/Plasma) have a committed to being
multi-platform and thus will not for the foreseeable future force the
use of systemd.

--
Elena ``of Valhalla'' - who is very grateful to the systemd maintainers
in Debian because they are dealing with *that* upstream and are managing
to protect us users from some upstream insanities.

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pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)

2017-02-11 12:15:11 UTC

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''
Running GNOME without systemd is a different beast: I don't know if it
has happened already, but sooner or later systemd will be required
because of an *upstream* decision.
Debian fully supports a number of other Desktop Environment and window
managers, some of which (e.g. KDE/Plasma) have a committed to being
multi-platform and thus will not for the foreseeable future force the
use of systemd.

Current GNOME needs systemd interfaces which is why the not yet stable
GNU distribution GuixSD uses extracted parts of systemd like elogind to
provide them so it can run GNOME without running the systemd init system
(which it cannot do on GNU Hurd). So GNOME only needs parts of systemd. See:

https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/gnome-in-guixsd.html

I don’t know what Debian GNU/Hurd does. Either way, it’s the
distributions’ problem.

Regards,
Florian

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-09 16:45:07 UTC

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Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
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does it include removal of libsystemd0? (it doesn't). it's not as
straightforward as it's made out to be, tzafrir.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).

i'm considering one of two options:

(1) providing the image (a snapshot of debian/testing from before
jessie) i've been working with for a couple of years, now, as-is. if
people want to upgrade, they just do "apt-get dist-upgrade" and they
get systemd and everything else.

(2) putting on angband.pl's nosystemd repositories. this is "hard
work" for me to both set up, and for others to remove (revert) just as
you say, so i am unlikely to do it... but it's an option.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
However, if "removing it from the rootfs" means something similar to
Devuan, then It'll probably be simpler for me to reinstall the image
with a proper Debian system.

that's why i made devuan available, separately. which, after liking
it for a long time i also have issues with: their mission statement
says "all-inclusive PID1 choices"... yet systemd is *excluded* from
that list. that's disintegritous and so i will not be using devuan.
if they gave people the *choice* i'd celebrate and be recommending
devuan everywhere and to everyone.

l.

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Michael Howard

2017-02-09 17:10:42 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
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Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
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does it include removal of libsystemd0? (it doesn't). it's not as
straightforward as it's made out to be, tzafrir.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).

(1) providing the image (a snapshot of debian/testing from before
jessie) i've been working with for a couple of years, now, as-is. if
people want to upgrade, they just do "apt-get dist-upgrade" and they
get systemd and everything else.
(2) putting on angband.pl's nosystemd repositories. this is "hard
work" for me to both set up, and for others to remove (revert) just as
you say, so i am unlikely to do it... but it's an option.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
However, if "removing it from the rootfs" means something similar to
Devuan, then It'll probably be simpler for me to reinstall the image
with a proper Debian system.

That's a fair point, but the point of Devuan is/was to provide choice, a
choice the Debian devs would not provide, and that is Debian without
systemd. So, if you want systemd, go debian, if not, go devuan. Devuan
_with_ systemd would be a debian mirror wouldn't it?

Anyway, the main thing is _choice_ and I choose devuan, others can
choose whatever, whenever :)

Cheers,
--
Mike Howard
Lancashire
England

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 17:11:33 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
(2) putting on angband.pl's nosystemd repositories. this is "hard
work" for me to both set up, and for others to remove (revert) just as
you say, so i am unlikely to do it... but it's an option.
for my laptop i'm using angband.pl's nosystemd, which is not kept
up-to-date with security updates

Luke, for the love of God and for your own sake, please do not
distribute something to your customers that doesn't receive reliable
security updates because of your personal preferences. If someone's
machine gets compromised because of this, it will tarnish your
reputation. Remember your target audience: they're not the type of
people to go into a command-line and do...

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
simply "apt-get build-dep" on whatever package is not up-to-date, then
"apt-get source" it, build it and install the resultant .debs

that.

You're advertising computer cards with Parabola, Debian, Fedora, and
Devuan pre-installed. You should not attempt to do "more" than that by
distributing something that won't update properly (that "testing" image
you mentioned) or that might not receive security updates. Just
distribute the systems as they are officially distributed, with the
exception of the custom kernel needed for the computer card (to ensure
that the hardware works correctly) and some custom default settings to
disable logging (to avoid needless degradation of the NAND or SD card).

At the risk of repeating myself: Devuan should satisfy the needs of
everyone who doesn't like systemd, and I guarantee you that no one who
ordered a computer card with Debian wants a version of Debian without
systemd.

--
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-09 17:21:56 UTC

---
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Luke, for the love of God and for your own sake, please do not
distribute something to your customers that doesn't receive reliable
security updates

i will not be distributing something that doesn't receive reliable
security updates. i appreciate you raising this, it's important.

ah. i see where you got the misimpression from. *angband.pl* does
not keep up to date with security updates. however that is my
personal laptop. i would not recommend *to anyone* that they follow
(qty 1000 or 10,000) what i use for my *personal* laptop. it's a
highly complex and comprehensive specialist setup.

Post by Julie Marchant
because of your personal preferences. If someone's
machine gets compromised because of this, it will tarnish your
reputation. Remember your target audience: they're not the type of
people to go into a command-line and do...

then what i might do instead is get debian-installer set up instead.
i cannot and will not give something to people that i know will cause
them pain or distress, even if they don't understand it.

lots of possibilities, and some time to think about them.

bob's definition of "an ethical act" applies here, so if anyone else
can think of something that we've missed, so that it becomes possible
(as best we can) to come up with a solution that people are in *100%*
agreement is acceptable, that would be... good.

l.

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Russell Hyer

2017-02-09 17:29:01 UTC

thanks for raising this issue Luke

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Luke, for the love of God and for your own sake, please do not
distribute something to your customers that doesn't receive reliable
security updates

i will not be distributing something that doesn't receive reliable
security updates. i appreciate you raising this, it's important.
ah. i see where you got the misimpression from. *angband.pl* does
not keep up to date with security updates. however that is my
personal laptop. i would not recommend *to anyone* that they follow
(qty 1000 or 10,000) what i use for my *personal* laptop. it's a
highly complex and comprehensive specialist setup.

then what i might do instead is get debian-installer set up instead.
i cannot and will not give something to people that i know will cause
them pain or distress, even if they don't understand it.
lots of possibilities, and some time to think about them.
bob's definition of "an ethical act" applies here, so if anyone else
can think of something that we've missed, so that it becomes possible
(as best we can) to come up with a solution that people are in *100%*
agreement is acceptable, that would be... good.
l.
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Allan Mwenda

2017-02-11 12:10:18 UTC

It got really heated in here
Dear Luke, please just ship stock versions of the distros you promised. Customers will feel very cheated if they don't get what you promised. If SystemD nukes the card as it were, then it'll be Debian devs problem not yours, as you already provide libre well documented hardware.
If indeed you want systemd-less versions of the distros you promised let them be officially supported ones, but I repeat yet again, don't ship a Frankendistro.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
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Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
(2) putting on angband.pl's nosystemd repositories. this is "hard
work" for me to both set up, and for others to remove (revert) just

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
you say, so i am unlikely to do it... but it's an option.
for my laptop i'm using angband.pl's nosystemd, which is not kept
up-to-date with security updates

Luke, for the love of God and for your own sake, please do not
distribute something to your customers that doesn't receive reliable
security updates

i will not be distributing something that doesn't receive reliable
security updates. i appreciate you raising this, it's important.
ah. i see where you got the misimpression from. *angband.pl* does
not keep up to date with security updates. however that is my
personal laptop. i would not recommend *to anyone* that they follow
(qty 1000 or 10,000) what i use for my *personal* laptop. it's a
highly complex and comprehensive specialist setup.

then what i might do instead is get debian-installer set up instead.
i cannot and will not give something to people that i know will cause
them pain or distress, even if they don't understand it.
lots of possibilities, and some time to think about them.
bob's definition of "an ethical act" applies here, so if anyone else
can think of something that we've missed, so that it becomes possible
(as best we can) to come up with a solution that people are in *100%*
agreement is acceptable, that would be... good.
l.
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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-09 19:43:16 UTC

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
That is: you don't like systemd? fine. Installing Debian without it is
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd

does it include removal of libsystemd0? (it doesn't). it's not as
straightforward as it's made out to be, tzafrir.

Neither it include the removal of libselinux. I am yet to hear proper
technical arguments why this library should be removed.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).

I would rather start with a fresh install of Debian than this.

I would rather start with a fresh install of Debian than this.

Neither of those options is a properly supported Debian system. This is
not what I meant when I opted for Debian as the OS (IIRC this was also the
most common option among others). I guess some of us will need to
provide an alternative image of Debian with instructions on how to
install it.
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Jonathan Frederickson

2017-02-09 20:23:19 UTC

I agree with Julie here. If you tell users you're providing Debian, it
should be stock Debian (or as close as possible as is needed to
support the hardware). Likewise for every other distro.

I would be incredibly irritated to get a "Debian" computer card, only
to find out that some of the software I planned to use doesn't work
properly because the distributor of the card decided to tweak the
software before sending it to me. With a stock Debian install, it's
Debian's responsibility if something doesn't work properly, not yours.

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Paul Boddie

2017-02-09 21:03:39 UTC

Post by Jonathan Frederickson
I agree with Julie here. If you tell users you're providing Debian, it
should be stock Debian (or as close as possible as is needed to
support the hardware). Likewise for every other distro.

I agree with Jonathan and Julie here. ;-)

Let the distinction between Debian and Devuan be the means by which people
choose to run systemd or not. After all, that is more or less the reason why
there are two such distributions rather than one. [*]

By all means indicate why you do not agree with systemd, but instead of making
more work for yourself, may I respectfully suggest that you just let people
switch their order from Debian to Devuan if they agree with you now, perhaps
not having thought about the matter before?

And let people switch the other way (or to something else) if they agree with
your view of Devuan and actually want the option of having systemd from first
power-on. As for people who agree with you on both systemd and Devuan's
attitude towards it, I guess you could just see if this affects anyone who
placed an order.

Paul

[*] There are supposedly improvements in the distribution-building process
with Devuan, which I thought could be of interest to various libre
distributions - removing unwanted packages and content is what they do, after
all - but the documentation isn't that great for any of these distributions in
informing what the possibilities might be.

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Philip Hands

2017-02-09 21:56:00 UTC

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
That is: you don't like systemd? fine. Installing Debian without it is
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd

does it include removal of libsystemd0? (it doesn't). it's not as
straightforward as it's made out to be, tzafrir.

Neither it include the removal of libselinux. I am yet to hear proper
technical arguments why this library should be removed.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).

I would rather start with a fresh install of Debian than this.

Quite.

Luke, you're going to have some seriously unhappy customers if you start
trying to supply mangled versions of Debian in place of the advertised
"Debian GNU/Linux".

I'm sure that Tzafrir and I are not the only Debian Developers who have
paid you, and knew _exactly_ what to expect from Debian when they did so.

It strikes me as seriously condescending to assume that Debian users are
somehow clueless about what they mean by Debian GNU/Linux. Especially
when offered the choice of OSs you presented.

Deciding to supply something else, now, strikes me as ... impolite.

If you are concerned about ethics, consider the ethics of bait-and-switch,
which is what you appear to be contemplating here.

Cheers, Phil.

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Wolfgang Romey

2017-02-10 15:58:52 UTC

Yes, I would be an unhappy customer, I ordered the original debian and
nothing else.

And BTW Luke, if you do not want to deliver unethical products, you can
not deliver hardware. There is not such a thing as ethical harware:
conflict minerals, working conditions, poisoning the enviroment, ...

We should be glad, if we get open and free hardware in the near future
with running Free software on top. But that would be not ehtical
produced hardware. It is a very, very long way to go, until we get that.

Wolfgang

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
That is: you don't like systemd? fine. Installing Debian without it is
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd

does it include removal of libsystemd0? (it doesn't). it's not as
straightforward as it's made out to be, tzafrir.

Neither it include the removal of libselinux. I am yet to hear proper
technical arguments why this library should be removed.

Post by Tzafrir Cohen
In that case, all I'll have to do would be to install a few more
packages (and maybe disable syslog logging to reduce unnecessary disk
writes, and similar tweaks).

I would rather start with a fresh install of Debian than this.

Quite.
Luke, you're going to have some seriously unhappy customers if you start
trying to supply mangled versions of Debian in place of the advertised
"Debian GNU/Linux".
I'm sure that Tzafrir and I are not the only Debian Developers who have
paid you, and knew _exactly_ what to expect from Debian when they did so.
It strikes me as seriously condescending to assume that Debian users are
somehow clueless about what they mean by Debian GNU/Linux. Especially
when offered the choice of OSs you presented.
Deciding to supply something else, now, strikes me as ... impolite.
If you are concerned about ethics, consider the ethics of bait-and-switch,
which is what you appear to be contemplating here.
Cheers, Phil.
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 15:49:25 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
with the exception of fedora which has only a few backers i will NOT
be distributing a filesystem which contains the completely
unethically-developed and very dangerous systemd application. having
evaluated its development, watched the predicted security
vulnerabilities unfold and cause massive disruption, and witnessed its
"ram it down people's throats" deployment without due consideration or
consultation with end-users, nor the distros respecting end-users
rights to NOT be forced into using it, i cannot and will not be
associated or endorse such totally unethical behaviour, so will be
removing it from all rootfs images. post-distribution, if people then
wish to undo that because they find systemd to be useful and have no
objections to its usage they are entirely free to do so.

I don't personally care whether or not my system includes systemd (it
does), but I have seen no evidence of wrongdoing by the systemd
developers. Every single case of systemd adoption I am aware of was
because the maintainers of a distro wanted to adopt it. And systemd is
libre, even copylefted. There are no ethical grounds to oppose it.

Besides, people who hate systemd would choose Devuan rather than Debian.
Why would you give people who ordered a computer card with Debian (i.e.
using systemd) something they didn't ask for? Best-case scenario, no one
cares. Worst-case scenario, you make a decision that turns out to be a
maintenance burden for you and annoys some of your backers. Regardless
of your opinion on the matter, this isn't a battle you should be
fighting, at least not here.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-09 17:15:28 UTC

Post by Julie Marchant
I don't personally care whether or not my system includes systemd (it
does), but I have seen no evidence of wrongdoing by the systemd
developers. Every single case of systemd adoption I am aware of was
because the maintainers of a distro wanted to adopt it. And systemd is
libre, even copylefted. There are no ethical grounds to oppose it.

you're right... at face value. it's complicated, and took me a long
time to work out what the problem is, and even longer to be able to
express it.

Post by Julie Marchant
Besides, people who hate systemd would choose Devuan rather than Debian.
Why would you give people who ordered a computer card with Debian (i.e.
using systemd) something they didn't ask for? Best-case scenario, no one
cares. Worst-case scenario, you make a decision that turns out to be a
maintenance burden for you and annoys some of your backers. Regardless
of your opinion on the matter, this isn't a battle you should be
fighting, at least not here.

i have some rules, julie, which are not really negotiable. i cannot
provide something to people which i *know* will cause them pain and
anguish. it's simply not possible for me to do that, even if they
themselves are not able to follow the (potentially complex) logic
which led me to conclude that, by providing something to them, it
would cause them distress at some point in their future.

the *whole project* is based on that premise. if i start
deliberately and consciously compromising *even once* then i am
screwed and cannot be trusted publicly to ever honor my commitments to
integrity of purpose, ever again. mistakes, yeah fine. *deliberate*
compromises that cost me my integrity: i'm done, and the entire
project's a failure.

so the consequences are much more severe than it seems at face value.

you noticed that all the individual distros made a choice. they made
those decisions freely and without consultation with other distros
because their job is to focus on *their* distro.

and that the systemd team, working in isolation from distros and only
having links to the software package writers, also made their
technical decisions as best they can.

then, also, the package writers, working in isolation, because it's
not their job to be a distro maintainer or an init PID1 software
developer, *also* made their decisions freely and perfectly well,
without wider consultation, because that's *also* their job.

so it's important to note: there is *nothing wrong* with these
separate processes, *nobody did anything wrong*. each team is
*perfectly* executing their localised strategy for the development and
maintenance of *their* project.

taken collectively, however, is where the problems start. the
*ENTIRE* free software community, like a "shoal of fish", suddenly
switched direction, without warning, without thinking, and, crucially,
WITHOUT CONSULTING THE USERS.

now, if we take for example debian, we know that it has a charter.
it's a written contract that everyone understands and accepts. the
bits that are *NOT* included - *NOT* written down - but are
"unspoken", is that the end-users place their trust in the debian
maintainers to not disrupt their lives by making decisions that would
force them to take drastic and costly action.

this UNSPOKEN and UNWRITTEN agreement is what the debian developers
very unfortunately violated by ignoring the vote on default choice of
init system which SPECIFICALLY concluded that systemd would be the
absolute worst possible choice to make. they paid the price for that
decision with the loss of many key strategic developers, and are
beginning to make amends by incorporating several init systems into
the current debian/testing (but still leaving libsystemd0 in place).

archlinux, as a smaller community which is a running distro, fared
much better, because it is a tight-knit community where all its users
are required to keep much more up-to-date. thus there was much less
of a problem. as they are a little bit more technically-minded,
several of them created community-based repos that allow systemd to be
replaced entirely by sysvinit, and udev to be replaced with eudev. it
works very well and is faster to boot on the a20. it's also seamless
and completely non-disruptive. the faster turnaround time on
archlinux allowed debugging and testing to be completed rapidly.

now, from a technical perspective, the *specific* technical issues
with systemd are best expressed by andrew tridgell's evaluation of
systemd, which can be found on the samba mailing lists. the warnings
that he outlined would come true *have* come true - several times
already, in the form of the security vulnerabilities that he predicted
would occur. remember: andrew is an extremely experienced low-level
systems programmer and reverse-engineer, who has had to deal with some
extreme attacks against samba, so he's very knowledgeable about how to
code and design software in a strategic fashion that will mitigate
against attacks.

summary: he's *deeply* unimpressed with the design and continued
escalating scope-creep of systemd, but, unlike many people who warn or
complain about it, he actually *knows* what he's talking about.

so do i... but i lack his ability to vocalise my thoughts in a
short-term timeframe, it tends to take me much longer to be able to
express things clearly (by which time often it's far too late *sigh*).

anyway, bottom line: from what i know of systemd (that includes
libsystemd0) i know the pain that it will bring people, and because of
that i cannot possibly distribute it to others. it would be a
fundamental violation of my ethical principles to do so. i'm *really*
not happy with the fact that i'll be supplying it to the backers who
pledged for fedora cards. i'll have to think how to deal with that.

l.

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 19:38:43 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i have some rules, julie, which are not really negotiable. i cannot
provide something to people which i *know* will cause them pain and
anguish. it's simply not possible for me to do that, even if they
themselves are not able to follow the (potentially complex) logic
which led me to conclude that, by providing something to them, it
would cause them distress at some point in their future.

I've been using systemd ever since I installed Debian 8, and then Ubuntu
16.04. It's the same experience: I push the power button, and it boots
successfully every time. It hasn't caused me "pain" or "distress".

What *could* cause me distress is if I ordered a computer with Debian on
it, and I instead got some modified version that doesn't work the same
way. Another thing that could cause me distress is if a problem occurs
that just doesn't happen in stock Debian because of unnecessary
modifications you made. Anyone experiencing distress for either of these
reasons is not going to be persuaded by your vague "I looked into it,
systemd is terrible" stance. They will simply stop trusting you.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
the *whole project* is based on that premise. if i start
deliberately and consciously compromising *even once* then i am
screwed and cannot be trusted publicly to ever honor my commitments to
integrity of purpose, ever again. mistakes, yeah fine. *deliberate*
compromises that cost me my integrity: i'm done, and the entire
project's a failure.

Where in the EOMA68 campaign did you say that you would purge systemd
from the Debian and Parabola systems you distribute?

For the record, if you had said that, I would have only ordered a
computer card with the understanding that I would have to wipe clean
whatever system is pre-installed on it and install my system of choice
myself. Not because I want systemd per se, but because I've used an
unofficial barely maintained spin of Debian before (Pandian), and it was
not a great experience.

As for not compromising, the only compromises you should avoid are
*ruinous* compromises. Is offering systems that have systemd on them a
ruinous compromise? I don't think so. The only issues raised by it are
technical issues. If there is any reason that systemd is *unethical*, no
one to my knowledge has raised that as an issue.

If your principles include refusing to give something to someone simply
because of *technical* inferiority, that's just a bad principle. You
seem to be an intelligent guy, but you don't know everything, and in
particular you are not in a position to judge the entire world's
technical needs. If you don't think Debian is something that fits
people's needs, it's fine to not offer it, but if you do agree to put
Debian on the card, that should be *stock Debian* to the best of your
ability, not some custom version of it.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
you noticed that all the individual distros made a choice. they made
those decisions freely and without consultation with other distros
because their job is to focus on *their* distro.
and that the systemd team, working in isolation from distros and only
having links to the software package writers, also made their
technical decisions as best they can.
then, also, the package writers, working in isolation, because it's
not their job to be a distro maintainer or an init PID1 software
developer, *also* made their decisions freely and perfectly well,
without wider consultation, because that's *also* their job.
so it's important to note: there is *nothing wrong* with these
separate processes, *nobody did anything wrong*. each team is
*perfectly* executing their localised strategy for the development and
maintenance of *their* project.
taken collectively, however, is where the problems start. the
*ENTIRE* free software community, like a "shoal of fish", suddenly
switched direction, without warning, without thinking, and, crucially,
WITHOUT CONSULTING THE USERS.

Luke, that's standard practice in libre software development. No one
voted on GNOME 3, the recent interface change for Firefox, or Linux as
the kernel everyone uses. These all just *happened*. Some are the result
of individual projects, and in that case you get forks like MATE and
Pale Moon. Some are a result of implied consensus, like the adoption of
Linux and now systemd.

But in any case, no one is ever forced to go with the changes. They go
along with the changes either because they agree with them, or they
don't care. Now, the people who don't care can cause social inertia to
favor things that are bad, like proprietary programs, but you have to
demonstrate that those things are bad. You can't just say that
*everything* that's allowed to happen because the users don't care is a
problem, and if there is a problem you can identify, the fact that it's
being adopted because of social inertia from people who don't care is
unimportant.

And like you admitted here, the systemd developers did nothing wrong. So
how, then, is it appropriate to boycott systemd?

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
now, if we take for example debian, we know that it has a charter.
it's a written contract that everyone understands and accepts. the
bits that are *NOT* included - *NOT* written down - but are
"unspoken", is that the end-users place their trust in the debian
maintainers to not disrupt their lives by making decisions that would
force them to take drastic and costly action.
this UNSPOKEN and UNWRITTEN agreement is what the debian developers
very unfortunately violated by ignoring the vote on default choice of
init system which SPECIFICALLY concluded that systemd would be the
absolute worst possible choice to make. they paid the price for that
decision with the loss of many key strategic developers, and are
beginning to make amends by incorporating several init systems into
the current debian/testing (but still leaving libsystemd0 in place).

First of all, Debian made a change for its *next* release, i.e. during
the testing period. There is not an unwritten agreement that the testing
release will be stable; only the stable releases are stable. People who
are using Debian still have time *now* before they need to upgrade to
the version of Debian that uses systemd, and heck, there's nothing
stopping them from continuing to use sysvinit if they really want to. I
find it baffling that you consider this to be something that "disrupts
their lives", and not the Iceweasel updates which always come in due to
the way Firefox is developed. Because of security concerns, Debian
Stable actually adds major updates to Iceweasel. Yeah, it sticks with
ESR releases when possible, but when the next ESR release comes in, it's
updated to that. So you have the potential (although unlikely) for
browser add-on breakage *within* a stable release, and what you're
worried about is the potential (although unlikely) for init script
breakage *between* releases?

Secondly, it just isn't true that systemd was voted as the "absolute
worst possible choice to make". systemd was tied for *first place* with
Upstart.[1] In fact, *sysvinit* was voted as least favorable.

But ultimately, if you think that *Debian* did something wrong, why are
you pinning this on systemd? If you're going to take a hardline stance
based on the way that Debian switched to systemd, then surely you should
be refusing to give people Debian, period.

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/02/msg00402.html

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Isaac David

2017-02-09 21:00:47 UTC

Post by Julie Marchant
Where in the EOMA68 campaign did you say that you would purge systemd
from the Debian and Parabola systems you distribute?

parabola openrc is also a thing, i'm neither using nor
maintaining it, but others are, and updates/support
should not be worse than systemd's.
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zap

2017-02-09 23:11:56 UTC

you're right... at face value. it's complicated, and took me a long
time to work out what the problem is, and even longer to be able to
express it.

i have some rules, julie, which are not really negotiable. i cannot
provide something to people which i *know* will cause them pain and
anguish. it's simply not possible for me to do that, even if they
themselves are not able to follow the (potentially complex) logic
which led me to conclude that, by providing something to them, it
would cause them distress at some point in their future.
the *whole project* is based on that premise. if i start
deliberately and consciously compromising *even once* then i am
screwed and cannot be trusted publicly to ever honor my commitments to
integrity of purpose, ever again. mistakes, yeah fine. *deliberate*
compromises that cost me my integrity: i'm done, and the entire
project's a failure.
so the consequences are much more severe than it seems at face value.
you noticed that all the individual distros made a choice. they made
those decisions freely and without consultation with other distros
because their job is to focus on *their* distro.
and that the systemd team, working in isolation from distros and only
having links to the software package writers, also made their
technical decisions as best they can.
then, also, the package writers, working in isolation, because it's
not their job to be a distro maintainer or an init PID1 software
developer, *also* made their decisions freely and perfectly well,
without wider consultation, because that's *also* their job.
so it's important to note: there is *nothing wrong* with these
separate processes, *nobody did anything wrong*. each team is
*perfectly* executing their localised strategy for the development and
maintenance of *their* project.
taken collectively, however, is where the problems start. the
*ENTIRE* free software community, like a "shoal of fish", suddenly
switched direction, without warning, without thinking, and, crucially,
WITHOUT CONSULTING THE USERS.
now, if we take for example debian, we know that it has a charter.
it's a written contract that everyone understands and accepts. the
bits that are *NOT* included - *NOT* written down - but are
"unspoken", is that the end-users place their trust in the debian
maintainers to not disrupt their lives by making decisions that would
force them to take drastic and costly action.
this UNSPOKEN and UNWRITTEN agreement is what the debian developers
very unfortunately violated by ignoring the vote on default choice of
init system which SPECIFICALLY concluded that systemd would be the
absolute worst possible choice to make. they paid the price for that
decision with the loss of many key strategic developers, and are
beginning to make amends by incorporating several init systems into
the current debian/testing (but still leaving libsystemd0 in place).
archlinux, as a smaller community which is a running distro, fared
much better, because it is a tight-knit community where all its users
are required to keep much more up-to-date. thus there was much less
of a problem. as they are a little bit more technically-minded,
several of them created community-based repos that allow systemd to be
replaced entirely by sysvinit, and udev to be replaced with eudev. it
works very well and is faster to boot on the a20. it's also seamless
and completely non-disruptive. the faster turnaround time on
archlinux allowed debugging and testing to be completed rapidly.
now, from a technical perspective, the *specific* technical issues
with systemd are best expressed by andrew tridgell's evaluation of
systemd, which can be found on the samba mailing lists. the warnings
that he outlined would come true *have* come true - several times
already, in the form of the security vulnerabilities that he predicted
would occur. remember: andrew is an extremely experienced low-level
systems programmer and reverse-engineer, who has had to deal with some
extreme attacks against samba, so he's very knowledgeable about how to
code and design software in a strategic fashion that will mitigate
against attacks.

S does Systemd have security issues? privacy issues? stability issues?

or a combination of two or all three?

If you say yes to one or more,

then probably people shouldn't be using systemd... at least if it has
more issues than the other options anyways.

which I am assuming is the case.

right Luke?

I may not know all the issues so please enlighten me further.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
summary: he's *deeply* unimpressed with the design and continued
escalating scope-creep of systemd, but, unlike many people who warn or
complain about it, he actually *knows* what he's talking about.
so do i... but i lack his ability to vocalise my thoughts in a
short-term timeframe, it tends to take me much longer to be able to
express things clearly (by which time often it's far too late *sigh*).
anyway, bottom line: from what i know of systemd (that includes
libsystemd0) i know the pain that it will bring people, and because of
that i cannot possibly distribute it to others. it would be a
fundamental violation of my ethical principles to do so. i'm *really*
not happy with the fact that i'll be supplying it to the backers who
pledged for fedora cards. i'll have to think how to deal with that.
l.
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Julie Marchant

2017-02-09 23:23:30 UTC

Post by zap
security issues? privacy issues? stability issues?

No on all three counts. The only thing "wrong" with systemd is that some
people don't like it.

Kind of like how I can't stand vi. But that's a whole other discussion. :P

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Russell Hyer

2017-02-10 00:44:05 UTC

Well a quick web search (though I couldn't quite find the reference to
the mailing list reference from Andrew at Samba) shows that the issue
is that it is a) a change from unix style services that do something
well and don't overtake the rest of the system b) a system that
increasingly does more (whether that's negotiate DNS for you and/or
log in a binary format) and more besides. It's true that I've no idea
if any of those sources on the internet are super trustworthy. But I
did already kill my distro's setup a little, so I can kinda see how
sudo/su/and a host of other services can accidentally on purpose die
just because of the init system changing (like if you (well, I
personally in this instance) modify or dpkg delete (whatever the
vernacular for that is) systemd (or partially))

As to my order, not that it probably matters, as I ordered the
LibreTea card. (I'm not sure if that'll come with systemd since
libsystemd is (perhaps) free in some senses of the term. But
increasingly less, as per Luke's post.

Though, I also see your points about wanting to have expected
behaviour, and seeing a distro as whatever that distro is (good or
bad).

Happy hacking,

Russell

Post by zap
security issues? privacy issues? stability issues?

No on all three counts. The only thing "wrong" with systemd is that some
people don't like it.
Kind of like how I can't stand vi. But that's a whole other discussion. :P
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Russell Hyer

2017-02-10 00:44:42 UTC

Oops, I left out some web links, here's one I found:
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Post by Russell Hyer
Well a quick web search (though I couldn't quite find the reference to
the mailing list reference from Andrew at Samba) shows that the issue
is that it is a) a change from unix style services that do something
well and don't overtake the rest of the system b) a system that
increasingly does more (whether that's negotiate DNS for you and/or
log in a binary format) and more besides. It's true that I've no idea
if any of those sources on the internet are super trustworthy. But I
did already kill my distro's setup a little, so I can kinda see how
sudo/su/and a host of other services can accidentally on purpose die
just because of the init system changing (like if you (well, I
personally in this instance) modify or dpkg delete (whatever the
vernacular for that is) systemd (or partially))
As to my order, not that it probably matters, as I ordered the
LibreTea card. (I'm not sure if that'll come with systemd since
libsystemd is (perhaps) free in some senses of the term. But
increasingly less, as per Luke's post.
Though, I also see your points about wanting to have expected
behaviour, and seeing a distro as whatever that distro is (good or
bad).
Happy hacking,
Russell

Post by zap
security issues? privacy issues? stability issues?

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-12 09:10:24 UTC

Post by Russell Hyer
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Which has tons of links and no actual content. I figure that most linked
pages generally recycle content. So I'm looking at content of the first
link from the first link:
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Local_copy_of_boycottsystemd.org_archive

Answering just the first items:

1. False. It can handle hostname, locale, and such. But doesn't have to.
For instance, systemd introduced systemd-localed and localectl. However,
you don't like them? just disable systemd-localed.service and use
whatever method you used for locale settings.

The only extra component of systemd that is required is the journal.

2. Somewhat true. However, I have hardly had cases of he journal files
corrupted. Syslog test files are likewise not ACID compliant, but this
is irrelevant when you have a single writer.

3. Somewhat true. Right now systemd requires kernel >= 3.12, IIRC.

4. Somewhat true. Both udev and dbus have been part of most Linux
systems (certainly desktop ones) for quite some time. However, the
separate dbus transport is not intended to move dbus into systemd.
Rather, it intends mostly to move it into the kernel and thus improve
efficiency.

5. Misleading. Debian does not use that interface by default. Which
means it is an optional component. That said, it is very handy to use.

6. Somewhat true. How about all the CVEs systemd saved by avoiding
poorly written scripts (with poorly written temporary files handling and
other races)? By making it simple to drop privileges? And other cases?
Or using timedatectl insteead of ntpd?

That said, I have no idea what those entries refer to. So I hope those
numbers are corect.

I suppose it won't get much better.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 09:40:50 UTC

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Post by Tzafrir Cohen
3. Somewhat true. Right now systemd requires kernel >= 3.12, IIRC.

ah - then the discussion is over, as it is necessary for the Cards to
go out with the sunxi 3.4 kernel by default, as this is the only
stable (full featured) kernel available.

a stable kernel, clearly, takes top precedence.

once the first Cards are out there, i would assume it would be
natural for people to help each other get things up-to-date and to
sort out any software issues.

that leaves me free to focus on hardware design (which i would like
to also be moved to the responsibility of others) and on being the
guardian of the eoma68 standard.

l.

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Eric Duhamel

2017-02-12 10:20:02 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
once the first Cards are out there, i would assume it would be
natural for people to help each other get things up-to-date and to
sort out any software issues.
that leaves me free to focus on hardware design (which i would like
to also be moved to the responsibility of others) and on being the
guardian of the eoma68 standard.

Indeed, this us vs. l. attitude isn't productive. We are a community built around a standards project. I think l. is hard at work to get a product out the door with the software that is tested and working on it without unnecessary delay, as part of the project. If any of us are dissatisfied with the idea of what's on the product, then one or more of us ought to get cracking on producing some of those "specially prepared microSD card"s that will flash a proper image onto the product, as another part of the project.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 10:39:48 UTC

Post by Eric Duhamel
Indeed, this us vs. l. attitude isn't productive. We are a community built around a standards project. I think l. is hard at work to get a product out the door with the software that is tested and working on it without unnecessary delay, as part of the project. If any of us are dissatisfied with the idea of what's on the product, then one or more of us ought to get cracking on producing some of those "specially prepared microSD card"s that will flash a proper image onto the product, as another part of the project.

thank you eric. update due soon which asks pretty much exactly this.
so, thank you.

l.

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Stefan Monnier

2017-02-10 20:11:02 UTC

I mentioned systemd simply as a data point indicating that its
considered normal nowadays to log to ram.

Post by Julie Marchant
cares. Worst-case scenario, you make a decision that turns out to be a
maintenance burden for you and annoys some of your backers. Regardless

FWIW, I recently "solved" some odd permission problems I was having with
network-manager as well as a few other minor oddities on a Debian
testing system by installing systemd on it (I hadn't worked hard to
avoid it, but that 10 year old installation of Debian testing somehow
had managed to go through incremental upgrades without install systemd).

So, yes, I wouldn't be surprised that Debian-without-systemd suffers
from latent bugs.

Stefan

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-11 12:39:46 UTC

ok, so, apologies for not responding for 2 days: the latest cold,
which is back again a fourth time in as many weeks, is leaving me
exhausted. again.

tzafrir: i've mentioned this a number of times, and am happy to
mention it again, as you appear to have missed it. the key difference
is massive scope-creep. look at how the NSA developed libselinux1 and
associated infrastructure. they got a university involved to develop
the FLASK model. they set out a design strategy, they set out what
they were going to do, then they did it. whilst almost everything
else that the NSA does may be questionable, steven smalley is clearly
a smart guy and knows what he's doing.

by contrast the development of systemd has become a critical
single-point of failure for a massive number of distros, where its
developers are clearly and pathologically not taking responsibility
for the consequences of their *technically-driven* decisions, and are
continuing to develop their software without wider consultation.

so, i read what everyone wrote: i think the simplest thing to do is to
just go with the image that i have been working with and testing over
the past two years. it's using xfce4 (gnome is too heavy). i know it
works, and i simply don't have the time - or importantly the energy -
to create a new image, *especially* based on people's comments and
reactions that they'd be deeply unhappy with it not being a "stock
image", even if all i did was make it boot sysvinit instead by
default. those comments *alone* immediately terminate all and any
possibility that i can provide debian/jessie in a 100% ethical way.

on receipt of the cards, anybody who wants to will be free and
entirely at liberty to do "apt-get dist-upgrade" and they will be
taking direct responsibility for doing so. for those people who are
technically-minded they are also entirely free and at liberty to set
up a from-scratch root filesystem.

this is a decision that is easily justifiable based on the fact that
it's going to have to be distributed with the sunxi 3.4 kernel as
that's the only one which supports the full hardware.

l.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-11 13:21:05 UTC

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/systemd_flaw/

"Newer" versions of systemd deployed by Fedora or Ubuntu have been
secured, but Debian systems are still running an older version and
therefore need updating.

systemd is a suite for building blocks for Linux systems that provides
system and service management technology. Security specialists view it
with suspicion and ***>>>complaints about function creep are not
uncommon<<<***.

https://betanews.com/2016/10/07/systemd-vulnerability-linux-crash/

The reason he has decided to disclose the bug publicly was to bring
further attention to problems with a widely used component in Linux
called systemd that Ayer believes is "defective by design".

However, others believe disclosing such a bug without first contacting
systemd's developers is irresponsible. Ayer was critical of systemd
for being overly complex and made the argument that Linux developers
have "fallen behind other operating systems in writing secure and
robust software".

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=systemd

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-11 14:43:11 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/systemd_flaw/
"Newer" versions of systemd deployed by Fedora or Ubuntu have been
secured, but Debian systems are still running an older version and
therefore need updating.
systemd is a suite for building blocks for Linux systems that provides
system and service management technology. Security specialists view it
with suspicion and ***>>>complaints about function creep are not
uncommon<<<***.
https://betanews.com/2016/10/07/systemd-vulnerability-linux-crash/
The reason he has decided to disclose the bug publicly was to bring
further attention to problems with a widely used component in Linux
called systemd that Ayer believes is "defective by design".
However, others believe disclosing such a bug without first contacting
systemd's developers is irresponsible. Ayer was critical of systemd
for being overly complex and made the argument that Linux developers
have "fallen behind other operating systems in writing secure and
robust software".
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=systemd

This is all FUD. Of course systemd ends up with vulnerabilities because
of bugs. So does Linux, Bash, OpenSSL, SSH, Apache, etc. Debian responds
to those vulnerabilities by fixing them. There is no fundamental
difference with systemd.

If you want to talk about vulnerabilities, a years-old snapshot of
Debian Testing is almost certainly *filled* with vulnerabilities all
over the place, and only technically minded people will know how to fix
them, because this is an old Testing snapshot. So in the name of
"ethics" where it's somehow unethical to distribute a 100% libre program
you don't like, you'll be giving any non-technical users an insecure
system that they don't know how to update, and if they do find out how,
they'll just be left wondering why it wasn't updated in the first place.
Most likely, they'll assume that you are incompetent or just don't care.

And this is especially bad considering that of all the distros you
offered, Debian is the most user-friendly, if you distribute *stable,
stock* Debian. That was the only reason why I ordered some Debian cards.
Knowing that you are not delivering what I want to be on the card that
I'm going to give to my mother, I see now that this was completely
pointless. I'm going to have to do all of the work to make sure she has
a system she can use properly because you refuse to cooperate just by
delivering the current, stable, stock Debian.

This is not something that personally affects me very much; I should be
able to figure out how to install Debian on my own, and I was planning
to do so anyway. But you are making it needlessly difficult for your
project to succeed by taking this zealous hardline stance against
systemd; it means that only retailers that know how to install whatever
OS the user wants (e.g. Think Penguin) will be able to sell anything
that non-technical people can use. You can forget your dream of having
EOMA68 hardware on Wal-mart's shelf in that case.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-11 19:53:05 UTC

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Post by Julie Marchant
And this is especially bad considering that of all the distros you
offered, Debian is the most user-friendly, if you distribute *stable,
stock* Debian. That was the only reason why I ordered some Debian cards.

if you misunderstood and believed that you were buying a product,
that you were placing an order, as opposed to helping reach the goal
of bringing ethically-developed eco-conscious computing devices to
mass-volume, then on the basis that i can only accept money from
people who are 100% happy with the service that i am providing i am
obligated, even though the components have been ordered from the
factory, to offer you the opportunity to have your money returned to
you. 100% integrity is *that* important to me, it takes *absolute*
precedence.

one of

Post by Julie Marchant
Knowing that you are not delivering what I want to be on the card that
I'm going to give to my mother, I see now that this was completely
pointless. I'm going to have to do all of the work to make sure she has
a system she can use properly because you refuse to cooperate just by
delivering the current, stable, stock Debian.

it's actually very simple to do (i wish it was as easy as using
debian-installer): either find someone else's rootfs and literally
just drop it onto the microsd card, or, if you cannot trust random
arbitrary downloads from the internet of 4 gigabytes in size, look up
debian qemu or debootstrap foreign architectures (which use qemu in
headless mode i believe to run the final pre-preparation steps), and
the job's pretty much done in under an hour.

... ah! here you are:
https://wiki.debian.org/EmDebian/CrossDebootstrap#QEMU.2Fdebootstrap_approach

it's really amazingly straightforward.

Post by Julie Marchant
This is not something that personally affects me very much; I should be
able to figure out how to install Debian on my own, and I was planning
to do so anyway.

great. it would be very helpful if you could document that process,
so that others can benefit and also help you out.

Post by Julie Marchant
But you are making it needlessly difficult for your
project to succeed by taking this zealous hardline stance against
systemd;

julie: i'm sleeping for about 12 to 14 hours a day, i've some sort of
virus that's affected my health for over 25 years and is increasing in
its virulence, i haven't the *time* or energy to be zealous.

it's much simpler than you imagine it to be, and it's down to a
pathological systemic flaw in the way that software libre is developed
(as a world-wide community). i'm deeply disturbed by the way in
which systemd has been developed and deployed: it's unethical in ways
that go beyond acceptable boundaries which the actual *software
license* simply doesn't cover. i haven't the time or energy to spend
on it, and its unethical development and deployment is not something i
can endorse or distribute to people who are trusting me to deliver
them ethically-developed hardware *and software*.

i don't expect everyone to understand that.

l.

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-12 04:26:35 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
if you misunderstood and believed that you were buying a product,
that you were placing an order, as opposed to helping reach the goal
of bringing ethically-developed eco-conscious computing devices to
mass-volume

Every time someone mentions customers, it seems you bring up this exact
same line. I don't care if *I* am a customer or not; you *are* going to
have customers, are you not? Or is this just always going to be an
endless exchange of "gifts" for you, where you get X orders for this
product, abandon it, and move on to the next one?

Unless that's your plan, you're going to need to address people's
concerns and complaints at some point; you can't just keep handwaving
them away forever. So you're better off addressing them *now*, when the
people making the complaints are doing so because they *care*.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
100% integrity is *that* important to me, it takes *absolute*
precedence.

Also, please, get off your high horse:

1. You're using proprietary CAD software.
2. You use YouTube.
3. You have not released all the PCB CAD files.
4. You have admitted to signing NDAs.

Et cetera.

You are not perfect, you cannot be perfect, and no one expects you to be
perfect. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i haven't the *time* or energy to be zealous.
i'm deeply disturbed by the way in
which systemd has been developed and deployed: it's unethical in ways
that go beyond acceptable boundaries which the actual *software
license* simply doesn't cover.

And you're so convinced that systemd is the worst thing in the world,
for reasons you cannot explain, That you would rather ship a testing
snapshot of Debian from years ago than just ship a stable version of
stock Debian.

This goes beyond "not having time" to "deal with" systemd. You are
*actively* making decisions to "protect" people from what they
*specifically* asked for, which you also *specifically* offered.

If you want to talk about ethics, what about the ethics of promising one
thing, but delivering another? OK, you're technically delivering Debian,
but no one is going to see delivery of a years-old Testing snapshot as
delivering on your promise. You'll be seen as a guy who is trying to
force anti-systemd hysteria down their throats.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i haven't the time or energy to spend
on it

Then why did you offer Debian and Fedora as options? By offering them as
options, you implicitly volunteered to *at least* install stock Debian
and stock Fedora. You could just as easily have only offered Devuan.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
if people - even on this list - did not go into full-on "attack"
mode, getting extremely defensive and upset when i try to point
something out, instead took the time to ask questions, it would be a
lot easier.

It's you who is being defensive, Luke. No one is in "attack mode". You
have this bad habit where you treat your critics like they are
adversaries. We are not your adversaries. The only reason I am so
critical of your decisions is because I want EOMA68 to succeed.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 08:56:57 UTC

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Every time someone mentions customers, it seems you bring up this exact
same line. I don't care if *I* am a customer or not; you *are* going to
have customers, are you not?

no, julie, i'm not. the certification mark process requires that i
not have any customers at all, only licensees of the certification
mark. the only reason why i'm here at all is to bootstrap the
ecosystem, and to fulfil the requirements in order to be able to even
*apply* for the certification mark i have to be very *very* careful
not to have actual customers.

l.

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-12 14:37:26 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
no, julie, i'm not. the certification mark process requires that i
not have any customers at all, only licensees of the certification
mark. the only reason why i'm here at all is to bootstrap the
ecosystem

Well, that changes everything. I'm sorry I misunderstood; I always
assumed that you would start selling the hardware after the first batch
was made (like e.g. the OpenPandora).

I still think your opposition to systemd is unfounded and wrong, and I
still think that you should drop Debian and Fedora as options if you're
going to do it, but as long as it only affects hardcore supporters /
early adopters, everything will be fine.

Also, I understand now that the way I have been writing has
unintentionally caused distress. That being the case, I apologize.

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Eric Duhamel

2017-02-12 18:47:21 UTC

.... the certification mark process requires that i
not have any customers at all, only licensees of the certification
mark. the only reason why i'm here at all is to bootstrap the
ecosystem, and to fulfil the requirements in order to be able to even
*apply* for the certification mark i have to be very *very* careful
not to have actual customers.

This is an important point. Will it be part of a future update? I was under the impression that rhombus-tech would be producing and selling products *without* the certification mark to jump-start a market where others would produce and apply for the certification mark.

If a different entity out of this community must take over the flagship of the first mass-produced products, I'm confident the research and information developed up to the point of shipping to backers is enough to facilitate that happening. I do however wonder who is going to be doing it.

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Wolfgang Romey

2017-02-12 15:12:06 UTC

Hallo,

Post by Julie Marchant
1. You're using proprietary CAD software.
2. You use YouTube.
3. You have not released all the PCB CAD files.
4. You have admitted to signing NDAs.
Et cetera.

I will put something on top of it because I am getting angry:
Unfortunately Luke is or is becoming a Ethics-Extremist. Extremism
allways does harm. So it is hurting the project (and Lukes health). Out
of his extremism he uses an extreme language. He calls for example
enterprises and people criminal, which never have broken any law. One
could write, that have conducted completely wrong, but calling them
criminal is burning bridges. This extreme language is one of the reasons
for the heated discussion on the list.

If Luke is so extrem about ethics, how can he distribute hardware at
all? There is no ethical hardware: they get gold and/or other material
from warlords or other criminals, the working conditions are ruining the
health of the workers, chip-production does great harm to the
enviroment, ...

I cannot see that Luke has tackeld any of this problems at all, which he
should as he is so extrem. Distributing hardware is much, much more
unethical than distributing systemd.

One last example: Luke hates Fairphone too and calls them a criminal
enterprise. Fairphone not Apple! That is burning bridges! Fairphone as a
tiny enterprise does try to go a few steps in the direction of ethical
hardware. They try to find ethical produced minerals, they care about
working conditions. In these questions they are far ahead of Luke (in
other questions Luke is far ahead). In his hate Luke cannot respect what
they do and does not recognize any progress, because they are great
criminals.

So for me there are limits in being ethical. You can be ethical in only
part of your life. That should make you refining from extreme positions
and not using extrem language. Some are unethical in this area, which
you can critizise, you are unethical in an other area. So be kind with
the people, which does not exclude sharp critizism, and you would too
reduce the harm done to your project (and your health).

Wolfgang

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Elena ``of Valhalla''

2017-02-11 14:50:49 UTC

Debian backports (when possibile) security fixes to the packages they
distribute; a quick check for the CVE listed in that article shows that
most debian systems should be fine:

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-2118

note that security fixes are released through the "<release> (security)"
repository and only merged in "<release>" when there is a point update
of it (every few months for as long as the release is supported) and
most systems do have the security repository enabled (that happens by
default with the installer and is considered a good practice).

Wheezy is still listed as vulnerable, but that's because it's out of
regular support (since april 2016, currently only under LTS_ support),
and thus there won't be another point release to include the changes
published via the (security) repo.

.. _LTS: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

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Philip Hands

2017-02-11 16:47:18 UTC

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''

Debian backports (when possibile) security fixes to the packages they
distribute; a quick check for the CVE listed in that article shows that
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-2118

That should be:

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-10156

Note the "<not-affected>" against all releases.

The "fixed" in the status column actually means "didn't need fixing in
the first place" in this instance AFAIK.

Cheers, Phil.

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Elena ``of Valhalla''

2017-02-11 17:40:22 UTC

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-2118

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-10156

uops, thanks, big duckduckgoing-fail on my part

(I searched for the CVE number + debian, and didn't check that I was
actually opening the right one)

Philip Hands

2017-02-11 18:53:33 UTC

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-2118

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-10156

uops, thanks, big duckduckgoing-fail on my part
(I searched for the CVE number + debian, and didn't check that I was
actually opening the right one)

np -- I'd done exactly the same thing earlier and was surprised when
then getting to a CVE for Samba -- clearly duckduckgo were trying to be
helpful by showing us a vulnerability that actually existed on Debian
;-)

Cheers, Phil.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-11 20:11:51 UTC

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''

On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 5:40 PM, Elena ``of Valhalla''

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-2118

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-10156

uops, thanks, big duckduckgoing-fail on my part
(I searched for the CVE number + debian, and didn't check that I was
actually opening the right one)

thank you to both of you for investigating.

l.

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Philip Hands

2017-02-11 16:29:35 UTC

You appear to be in full confirmation-bias mode when it comes to
systemd, and thus will accept any criticism of systemd as truth without
applying any critical thinking at all.

That makes your signal to noise ratio on this subject _really_ poor.

In this particular case, the vunlerability was in systemd v228.

No release version of Debian has ever shipped that version.

The version in Debian stable is 215-17+deb8u6 -- so was never
vulnerable.

That's why there's no DSA (Debian Security Alert) related to this.

Of course, I don't know why I'm bothering to point this out. As I said,
confirmation bias means that none of you that despise systemd will take
the slightest notice, and I see that recent sociological research shows
that doing things like debunking Trump's unusual versions of reality
actually hardens the views of his supporters, becuase people are
cheerful to assume that the source of the critism is fatally biased, and
then spend mental effort on contradicting what is being said by coming
up with counter-arguments, which they then remeber for later. *sigh*

Cheers, Phil.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-11 20:10:56 UTC

You appear to be in full confirmation-bias mode when it comes to
systemd, and thus will accept any criticism of systemd as truth without
applying any critical thinking at all.

it's simpler than that, phil: i'm exhausted about 90% of the time,
am making mistakes, and haven't the energy to fully research something
that i know to be unethical in ways that are really very hard for me
to explain.

if people - even on this list - did not go into full-on "attack"
mode, getting extremely defensive and upset when i try to point
something out, instead took the time to ask questions, it would be a
lot easier.

this morning, i visited my host. i hadn't been able to sleep (at
all). i woke up on his couch around 11am after he and his family had
gone out. i tried to have a conversation: it was as if i was
completely drunk. my words were slurred, i couldn't finish sentences,
and i couldn't focus my eyes. realising something was wrong i drank
two cups of water straight and within *thirty seconds* i was okay.
tired, but okay.

much of my life i have been able to *perceive* really serious
problems far better than i've been able to *explain* them. i'm amazed
to have gotten this far with this campaign and it's down to the fact
that so many people have helped out in so many ways. that includes
you, most of all, phil.

so if i may ask you something: be kind, please. all of you. i
appreciate your honesty, and i appreciate you keeping an eye out to
compensate for the mistakes i make. i would however ask all of you to
be a little bit kinder in the way that you do that, that's all. don't
ever stop being honest and up-front, though. i'd rather you splurged
angrily than remain quiet and let a fundamental mistake cascade
through by omission.

l.

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Allan Mwenda

2017-02-11 21:20:36 UTC

My 0.02$
Debian, Fedora and Parabola are, to be quite honest, very ethically made distributions. Sure Fedo has *cough*kernelblobs*cough* but that can be fixed very easy by swapping the standard kernel with linux-libre (You should totally do this btw) This is a change I would totally back.
Systemd, cancer as it may be developed, is still free software. So as long as I have the freedom to get rid of it, change it, or even keep it, then it isn't worth purging. But please Luke, don't decide for me, I got enough of that from Microsoft with Winblows 8. (You need some tiles in your life son!)
One of the absolute biggest appeals of your cards is that they actually can run mainline everything. Please recognize this is a huge huge deal especially on a distros like Debian that actually has official ARM builds. Don't mess with it. Stock xfce Debian please.

You appear to be in full confirmation-bias mode when it comes to
systemd, and thus will accept any criticism of systemd as truth

without

Post by Philip Hands
applying any critical thinking at all.

it's simpler than that, phil: i'm exhausted about 90% of the time,
am making mistakes, and haven't the energy to fully research something
that i know to be unethical in ways that are really very hard for me
to explain.
if people - even on this list - did not go into full-on "attack"
mode, getting extremely defensive and upset when i try to point
something out, instead took the time to ask questions, it would be a
lot easier.
this morning, i visited my host. i hadn't been able to sleep (at
all). i woke up on his couch around 11am after he and his family had
gone out. i tried to have a conversation: it was as if i was
completely drunk. my words were slurred, i couldn't finish sentences,
and i couldn't focus my eyes. realising something was wrong i drank
two cups of water straight and within *thirty seconds* i was okay.
tired, but okay.
much of my life i have been able to *perceive* really serious
problems far better than i've been able to *explain* them. i'm amazed
to have gotten this far with this campaign and it's down to the fact
that so many people have helped out in so many ways. that includes
you, most of all, phil.
so if i may ask you something: be kind, please. all of you. i
appreciate your honesty, and i appreciate you keeping an eye out to
compensate for the mistakes i make. i would however ask all of you to
be a little bit kinder in the way that you do that, that's all. don't
ever stop being honest and up-front, though. i'd rather you splurged
angrily than remain quiet and let a fundamental mistake cascade
through by omission.
l.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-11 22:51:57 UTC

---
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Post by Allan Mwenda
My 0.02$
Debian, Fedora and Parabola are, to be quite honest, very ethically made
distributions.

sorry, allan: that's not the case. if a decision-making process is
by "consensus", ignoring or overruling the wishes of *any* one person,
then by definition is is unethical. there is a fundamental and in
many cases pathologically-held belief that is unfortunately ingrained
into western culture that "democracy" - majority voting - is
acceptable. the reality is that *by definition* it's fundamentally
unethical.

Post by Allan Mwenda
Sure Fedo has *cough*kernelblobs*cough* but that can be fixed
very easy by swapping the standard kernel with linux-libre (You should
totally do this btw) This is a change I would totally back.
Systemd, cancer as it may be developed, is still free software.

the unfortunate thing that i am observing is that just because the
license is libre, it doesn't necessarily result in ethical or wise
decisions. i've witnessed that continually, now, for almost 20 years.

Post by Allan Mwenda
So as long
as I have the freedom to get rid of it, change it, or even keep it, then it
isn't worth purging.

do you know the history of hans reiser? is his software available
today? given his history, if his software *was* available today, do
you think anyone would want to install it and use it? why not? it's
free software, right? you can change it, keep it, it's entirely under
a libre license... so what's the problem?

Post by Allan Mwenda
But please Luke, don't decide for me,

allan: please do not appeal to me as if i have the right to overrule
your own right to self-determination. let me be absolutely clear: i
don't appreciate the implication that i have *any* right to make your
decisions. i do not. sorry for having to be so blunt.

Post by Allan Mwenda
I got enough of
that from Microsoft with Winblows 8. (You need some tiles in your life son!)
One of the absolute biggest appeals of your cards is that they actually can
run mainline everything.

yeah... except it's incomplete, hence why i will need to still ship
with 3.4. people are at liberty to replace that with mainline and see
how far they get. i was only able to run up until about 4.7pre1 or so
without problems. i compiled over a hundred different kernels around
that mark trying to find the problematic patch... ran out of time.

Post by Allan Mwenda
Please recognize this is a huge huge deal
especially on a distros like Debian that actually has official ARM builds.

the official arm builds don't have support for EOMA68 because the
devicetree overlays aren't part of mainline yet in a version of the
mainline linux kernel that's stable on EOMA68-A20 boards.

Post by Allan Mwenda
Don't mess with it.

i don't intend to.

Post by Allan Mwenda
Stock xfce Debian please.

of course it will be stock xfce. of course it will be stock debian -
just an older (and thoroughly tested) version.

the line however of systemd is not one that i can cross. you're going
to have to demonstrate to me that systemd has been developed (and
deployed) in a 100% ethical manner, for that to happen.

now, i have no intention of deciding anything for you. you are
entirely at liberty to put whatever OS you choose onto this hardware.

the reason why i made four separate OSes is so that those people who
*can't* follow instructions online to set up their own OS have
something to get started from.

for those of you who *can* do that i *do* expect you to do so, and,
once you've done so, to get together and help out others who can't.

i'll take responsibility for helping those people who need a prebuilt
OS. if you have the technical knowledge, i expect you to take
responsibility for setting up your own preferred OS.

clear?

l.

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Jonathan Frederickson

2017-02-12 01:37:39 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
sorry, allan: that's not the case. if a decision-making process is
by "consensus", ignoring or overruling the wishes of *any* one person,
then by definition is is unethical. there is a fundamental and in
many cases pathologically-held belief that is unfortunately ingrained
into western culture that "democracy" - majority voting - is
acceptable. the reality is that *by definition* it's fundamentally
unethical.

How can any decision-making process meet this requirement? There are
often conflicting desires between different members of a community. In
such a case, making *any* decision will have overruled the wishes of
at least one community member. Democracy at least lets everyone
express their wishes, rather than having e.g. a dictator that makes
decisions regardless of the wishes of the people under their
jurisdiction.

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 08:56:55 UTC

On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 1:37 AM, Jonathan Frederickson

Post by Jonathan Frederickson
How can any decision-making process meet this requirement?

a 20 year study involving hundreds of people was the subject of this
very question.

Post by Jonathan Frederickson
There are
often conflicting desires between different members of a community. In
such a case, making *any* decision will have overruled the wishes of
at least one community member. Democracy at least lets everyone
express their wishes,

does that then empower them to have their wishes *met*? do you feel
that it's good for people to be able to *express* their wishes if they
know that they're not going to be heard?

Post by Jonathan Frederickson
rather than having e.g. a dictator that makes
decisions regardless of the wishes of the people under their
jurisdiction.

do you believe that all dictatorships are inherently bad for the
people under their jurisdiction? are you familiar with paddy
ashdown's instatement as (effective) dictator of one of the (unstable)
eastern eurpoean block countries, about ten years ago? he said it was
scary as hell, having that much power. the sheer overwhelming
responsibility kept him from abusing the power of being head of state,
head of the armed forces, judge, jury and executioner, head of the
central bank and everything else.

l.

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Julie Marchant

2017-02-12 04:36:43 UTC

Post by Julie Marchant
you're going
to have to demonstrate to me that systemd has been developed (and
deployed) in a 100% ethical manner

So systemd is guilty until proven innocent?

Alright then, unless you can demonstrate to me that the EOMA68-A20 has
been developed and deployed in a 100% "ethical" manner (where I am not
going to explain what "ethical" means), I am going to assume that it is
unethical and refuse to support it.

Except I'm not actually going to do that, because that would be
unreasonable. There's a reason our courts don't work this way.

--
Julie Marchant
https://onpon4.github.io

Protect your emails with GnuPG:
https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org

Christopher Havel

2017-02-12 04:53:30 UTC

Julie, while I appreciate your efforts at convincing our kind leader here
to change his mind, you're not going to make any headway. And, for the
record, one of the reasons that Luke has trouble explaining things is
because he has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of Autism and a disorder
primarily affecting communication and social skills. I have Asperger's as
well, and so I can appreciate how it sometimes renders one speechless, or
forces one to use the wrong words for things -- often at a sensitive time.

It's unbelievably frustrating.

In the meantime, since the metaphorical horse is very dead at this point,
perhaps you should stop beating it. I'm sorry if I sound crass -- but
you've voiced your opinion quite thoroughly at this point. I don't see much
purpose in continuing to do so -- for sure there's no confusion as to your
position. Your opinion matters, and it was heard -- that's all you need to
do. That's all you really /can/ do -- and that should be obvious by now.
You're not going to win anything (even an argument) by persisting, and it's
not really your job to do so anyways. Luke is the one who makes the
decisions. He's done that -- he's made his decision. That's basically all
there is to it. All you are doing now is making noise, and it hurts my head
and I'd like it to stop before I have to reach for the bottle of ibuprofen.

Luke's made his bed, for better or worse. Let him lie in it. Quietly. You
are thanked in advance.

Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 11:10:07 UTC

On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 4:53 AM, Christopher Havel

... would you believe it, my conversations with dr stallman cause
*me* to have to take deep breaths on a regular basis.

chris, i appreciate your insight (from personal experience) here.
your phrasing is, in places, as bad as mine can be, but i know your
heart's in the right place.

it is a recurring theme from interactions with people around me that
they in effect ask "give me ONE good reason why i should listen to
you", and i simply... can't. the reason is: my brain simply doesn't
work that way.

in researching why that is, i came across something called "demster
shafer theory". it's a generalisation of bayes theorem, and i was
interested in it as a way to work out *why* i was good at
reverse-engineering (from my work on samba) but also to find out if
there was a way to *improve* my ability as a reverse-engineer and
knowledge derivation expert.

demster-shafer theory basically says that you may statistically
derive a result by taking two *independent* variables in a
massively-complex field, work out the probability of them occurring
together (independently) then you are permitted to *REPEAT* that
exercise and to *SUM* the resultant totally independent results as a
way to gain a statistically-valid result across the ENTIRE FIELD.

in this context, the question "give me ONE good reason" is a
completely INVALID one.

hence, can you (all) understand that if you ask me "give me ONE good
reason" i LITERALLY cannot do that. i could however give you about a
hundred SMALLER reasons each with a low statistical probability of
them occurring.

... but it would overwhelm you to do so, you would (as you have
clearly done so) REJECT the entire APPROACH that i've taken because
it's NOT SOMETHING YOU UNDERSTAND AS BEING VALID.

i come across this time and time again, in the physics forums i'm on,
on free software mailing lists, at workplaces where i can tell there's
something deeply wrong from a whole stack of clues but i CAN'T
VOCALISE THEM ALL.

my brain *literally* works in a completely different way from most
people's on the planet, in a massively-parallel statistical-inference
fashion that hugely and rapidly short-cuts areas of avenue that would
cause most people to get stuck and waste months to decades of their
life investigating to no avail... but this type of approach is NOT
what the human brain was designed to do, and it comes with a heavy
penalty both for my health but also in terms of making it REALLY
difficult to justify the conclusions (or "intuitions") that my brain
flags up as being so brightly "red" that i can no more ignore them
than i could if they were say actual threats on my life.

i would *really* appreciate your patience on this. knowing what i do
about myself, i deliberately tackle areas that nobody else does.
unfortunately, what's happened in the past is that people have stolen
the results and the credit for the work that i've done. did you know
for example that the openchange project's success is down to my work
(not theirs) in reverse-engineering exchange 5.5 back around 2003? of
course you don't... because after tracking my research continually
they DIDN'T MENTION WHERE THEY GOT THE INFORMATION FROM.

that means that you BELIEVE i am not worth respecting, because my
name is not up there in neon lights next to those of "linus torvalds"
or "eric raymond" or "bruce perens" or any other person you've heard
of and respect in software libre for their achievements.

i act in the background, tackling the things that these people *CAN'T*
understand and, because of their position, couldn't deal with anyway
because they now have too much responsibility in their chosen field of
expertise and endeavour to consider abandoning the people who now
depend on them.

put another way:

systemd has a huge - MASSIVE - series of independent statistical
correlations associated with it, none of them INDIVIDUALLY being
statistically significant or indicative of anything (because they're
independent events) but when added up overall, using demster-shafer
theory, give support for the hypothesis that there is something
deeply, deeply wrong with systemd with a confidence level somewhere
around 4 sigma. i simply cannot ignore that, but equally i cannot
really explain it in ways that you would ACCEPT, either, because my
name is not "linus torvalds" or "dr richard stallman".

anyway. the fact that the 3.4 kernel has to be used makes it entirely
moot. which reminds me the last time this happened, was when i was
working in portsmouth, something similar happened. i was ORDERED to
deploy ubuntu, but could not explain or vocalise the dozens of reasons
why that was a bad idea. finally one of the sysadmins got fed up of
hearing the discussion, did some research and found that canonical had
long since terminated support for 486 processors.

so please. understand. sometimes i *can't give you a concrete
reason* because there are instead potentially *hundreds* of
lower-probability ones, some of which i'm not even consciously aware
of.

l.

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Allan Mwenda

2017-02-12 18:03:41 UTC

I don't think effort should be put into purging systemd.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 4:53 AM, Christopher Havel

Post by Christopher Havel
Julie, while I appreciate your efforts at convincing our kind leader

here to

Post by Christopher Havel
change his mind, you're not going to make any headway. And, for the

record,

Post by Christopher Havel
one of the reasons that Luke has trouble explaining things is because

he has

Post by Christopher Havel
Asperger's Syndrome, a form of Autism and a disorder primarily

affecting

Post by Christopher Havel
communication and social skills. I have Asperger's as well, and so I

can

Post by Christopher Havel
appreciate how it sometimes renders one speechless, or forces one to

use the

Post by Christopher Havel
wrong words for things -- often at a sensitive time.
It's unbelievably frustrating.

... would you believe it, my conversations with dr stallman cause
*me* to have to take deep breaths on a regular basis.
chris, i appreciate your insight (from personal experience) here.
your phrasing is, in places, as bad as mine can be, but i know your
heart's in the right place.
it is a recurring theme from interactions with people around me that
they in effect ask "give me ONE good reason why i should listen to
you", and i simply... can't. the reason is: my brain simply doesn't
work that way.
in researching why that is, i came across something called "demster
shafer theory". it's a generalisation of bayes theorem, and i was
interested in it as a way to work out *why* i was good at
reverse-engineering (from my work on samba) but also to find out if
there was a way to *improve* my ability as a reverse-engineer and
knowledge derivation expert.
demster-shafer theory basically says that you may statistically
derive a result by taking two *independent* variables in a
massively-complex field, work out the probability of them occurring
together (independently) then you are permitted to *REPEAT* that
exercise and to *SUM* the resultant totally independent results as a
way to gain a statistically-valid result across the ENTIRE FIELD.
in this context, the question "give me ONE good reason" is a
completely INVALID one.
hence, can you (all) understand that if you ask me "give me ONE good
reason" i LITERALLY cannot do that. i could however give you about a
hundred SMALLER reasons each with a low statistical probability of
them occurring.
... but it would overwhelm you to do so, you would (as you have
clearly done so) REJECT the entire APPROACH that i've taken because
it's NOT SOMETHING YOU UNDERSTAND AS BEING VALID.
i come across this time and time again, in the physics forums i'm on,
on free software mailing lists, at workplaces where i can tell there's
something deeply wrong from a whole stack of clues but i CAN'T
VOCALISE THEM ALL.
my brain *literally* works in a completely different way from most
people's on the planet, in a massively-parallel statistical-inference
fashion that hugely and rapidly short-cuts areas of avenue that would
cause most people to get stuck and waste months to decades of their
life investigating to no avail... but this type of approach is NOT
what the human brain was designed to do, and it comes with a heavy
penalty both for my health but also in terms of making it REALLY
difficult to justify the conclusions (or "intuitions") that my brain
flags up as being so brightly "red" that i can no more ignore them
than i could if they were say actual threats on my life.
i would *really* appreciate your patience on this. knowing what i do
about myself, i deliberately tackle areas that nobody else does.
unfortunately, what's happened in the past is that people have stolen
the results and the credit for the work that i've done. did you know
for example that the openchange project's success is down to my work
(not theirs) in reverse-engineering exchange 5.5 back around 2003? of
course you don't... because after tracking my research continually
they DIDN'T MENTION WHERE THEY GOT THE INFORMATION FROM.
that means that you BELIEVE i am not worth respecting, because my
name is not up there in neon lights next to those of "linus torvalds"
or "eric raymond" or "bruce perens" or any other person you've heard
of and respect in software libre for their achievements.
i act in the background, tackling the things that these people *CAN'T*
understand and, because of their position, couldn't deal with anyway
because they now have too much responsibility in their chosen field of
expertise and endeavour to consider abandoning the people who now
depend on them.
systemd has a huge - MASSIVE - series of independent statistical
correlations associated with it, none of them INDIVIDUALLY being
statistically significant or indicative of anything (because they're
independent events) but when added up overall, using demster-shafer
theory, give support for the hypothesis that there is something
deeply, deeply wrong with systemd with a confidence level somewhere
around 4 sigma. i simply cannot ignore that, but equally i cannot
really explain it in ways that you would ACCEPT, either, because my
name is not "linus torvalds" or "dr richard stallman".
anyway. the fact that the 3.4 kernel has to be used makes it entirely
moot. which reminds me the last time this happened, was when i was
working in portsmouth, something similar happened. i was ORDERED to
deploy ubuntu, but could not explain or vocalise the dozens of reasons
why that was a bad idea. finally one of the sysadmins got fed up of
hearing the discussion, did some research and found that canonical had
long since terminated support for 486 processors.
so please. understand. sometimes i *can't give you a concrete
reason* because there are instead potentially *hundreds* of
lower-probability ones, some of which i'm not even consciously aware
of.
l.
_______________________________________________
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Eric Duhamel

2017-02-12 20:34:35 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 4:53 AM, Christopher Havel

Post by Christopher Havel
Julie, while I appreciate your efforts at convincing our kind leader

here to

Post by Christopher Havel
change his mind, you're not going to make any headway. And, for the

record,

Post by Christopher Havel
one of the reasons that Luke has trouble explaining things is because

he has

Post by Christopher Havel
Asperger's Syndrome, a form of Autism and a disorder primarily

affecting

Post by Christopher Havel
communication and social skills. I have Asperger's as well, and so I

can

Post by Christopher Havel
appreciate how it sometimes renders one speechless, or forces one to

use the

Post by Christopher Havel
wrong words for things -- often at a sensitive time.
It's unbelievably frustrating.

... would you believe it, my conversations with dr stallman cause
*me* to have to take deep breaths on a regular basis.
chris, i appreciate your insight (from personal experience) here.
your phrasing is, in places, as bad as mine can be, but i know your
heart's in the right place.
it is a recurring theme from interactions with people around me that
they in effect ask "give me ONE good reason why i should listen to
you", and i simply... can't. the reason is: my brain simply doesn't
work that way.
in researching why that is, i came across something called "demster
shafer theory". it's a generalisation of bayes theorem, and i was
interested in it as a way to work out *why* i was good at
reverse-engineering (from my work on samba) but also to find out if
there was a way to *improve* my ability as a reverse-engineer and
knowledge derivation expert.
demster-shafer theory basically says that you may statistically
derive a result by taking two *independent* variables in a
massively-complex field, work out the probability of them occurring
together (independently) then you are permitted to *REPEAT* that
exercise and to *SUM* the resultant totally independent results as a
way to gain a statistically-valid result across the ENTIRE FIELD.
in this context, the question "give me ONE good reason" is a
completely INVALID one.
hence, can you (all) understand that if you ask me "give me ONE good
reason" i LITERALLY cannot do that. i could however give you about a
hundred SMALLER reasons each with a low statistical probability of
them occurring.
... but it would overwhelm you to do so, you would (as you have
clearly done so) REJECT the entire APPROACH that i've taken because
it's NOT SOMETHING YOU UNDERSTAND AS BEING VALID.
i come across this time and time again, in the physics forums i'm on,
on free software mailing lists, at workplaces where i can tell there's
something deeply wrong from a whole stack of clues but i CAN'T
VOCALISE THEM ALL.
my brain *literally* works in a completely different way from most
people's on the planet, in a massively-parallel statistical-inference
fashion that hugely and rapidly short-cuts areas of avenue that would
cause most people to get stuck and waste months to decades of their
life investigating to no avail... but this type of approach is NOT
what the human brain was designed to do, and it comes with a heavy
penalty both for my health but also in terms of making it REALLY
difficult to justify the conclusions (or "intuitions") that my brain
flags up as being so brightly "red" that i can no more ignore them
than i could if they were say actual threats on my life.
i would *really* appreciate your patience on this. knowing what i do
about myself, i deliberately tackle areas that nobody else does.
unfortunately, what's happened in the past is that people have stolen
the results and the credit for the work that i've done. did you know
for example that the openchange project's success is down to my work
(not theirs) in reverse-engineering exchange 5.5 back around 2003? of
course you don't... because after tracking my research continually
they DIDN'T MENTION WHERE THEY GOT THE INFORMATION FROM.
that means that you BELIEVE i am not worth respecting, because my
name is not up there in neon lights next to those of "linus torvalds"
or "eric raymond" or "bruce perens" or any other person you've heard
of and respect in software libre for their achievements.
i act in the background, tackling the things that these people *CAN'T*
understand and, because of their position, couldn't deal with anyway
because they now have too much responsibility in their chosen field of
expertise and endeavour to consider abandoning the people who now
depend on them.
systemd has a huge - MASSIVE - series of independent statistical
correlations associated with it, none of them INDIVIDUALLY being
statistically significant or indicative of anything (because they're
independent events) but when added up overall, using demster-shafer
theory, give support for the hypothesis that there is something
deeply, deeply wrong with systemd with a confidence level somewhere
around 4 sigma. i simply cannot ignore that, but equally i cannot
really explain it in ways that you would ACCEPT, either, because my
name is not "linus torvalds" or "dr richard stallman".
anyway. the fact that the 3.4 kernel has to be used makes it entirely
moot. which reminds me the last time this happened, was when i was
working in portsmouth, something similar happened. i was ORDERED to
deploy ubuntu, but could not explain or vocalise the dozens of reasons
why that was a bad idea. finally one of the sysadmins got fed up of
hearing the discussion, did some research and found that canonical had
long since terminated support for 486 processors.
so please. understand. sometimes i *can't give you a concrete
reason* because there are instead potentially *hundreds* of
lower-probability ones, some of which i'm not even consciously aware
of.

I think it's possible for people to learn to understand and trust your intuition. After all, a lot of good leaders make decisions based on uncanny intuition.

--
Eric Duhamel
http://www.noxbanners.net/

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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 09:19:19 UTC

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Post by Julie Marchant
you're going
to have to demonstrate to me that systemd has been developed (and
deployed) in a 100% ethical manner

So systemd is guilty until proven innocent?

it's been demonstrated already to have been unethically developed and
deployed (the problem being in this conversation that any time i
mention why i believe that to be the case, it's dismissed or rejected
- often violently. these reactions *being* symptomatic of the very
underlying reason and cause of my deeply-felt concern... concern that
i am having a lot of difficulty expressing)

i was inviting people to evaluate that for themselves, for two
reasons: firstly i'm completely exhausted so don't have time or energy
to go over it, and secondly, if i provide all the answers that removes
all opportunity and possibility for learning.

an ethical act is defined as "increasing the truth, love, awareness
or creativity
(those qualities being synonymous guide-words for the same underlying
concept) of one or more people without reducing the same qualities
for *anyone*".

now, before asking the crucial questions, i have to ask people to
consider answering them *without judgement*, and *without implied or
expressed criticism*, in an *objective* fashion. if i ask questions
and people react, "what are you saying???? are you saying that
debian's process is incompetent??? how DARE you!!!" or much worse
reactions than that, we're not going to get anywhere.

we know that there's an underlying systemic breakdown that is *not
anyone's fault*. reacting badly by assuming that any *discussion* of
the underlying systemic breakdown *is* one particular group or
individual's fault is itself part of the problem.

so please don't do it. not on this list.

so. the question is: what behaviours or decisions in the development
and deployment of systemd can be shown to have caused a reduction of
truth, love, awareness or creativity in at least one person?

put another way (in terms of energy expenditure and resources, which
is a parallel and identical way to ask the exact same question):

has any individual, anywhere in the world, had to spend extensive
amounts of time and energy as a result of (1) the development or (2)
the deployment of systemd, which *could* have been avoided and,
because it was not, resulted in a reduction of or diversion of their
resources, time or energy?

Post by Julie Marchant
Alright then, unless you can demonstrate to me that the EOMA68-A20 has
been developed and deployed in a 100% "ethical" manner (where I am not
going to explain what "ethical" means),

julie, sorry, but that's not reasonable or rational. reading the
lines i believe i understand the point you are trying to make. bear
in mind i didn't come across an actual definition of an "ethical act"
until about 6 months ago, which doesn't help, much of what i've been
*trying* to do has been subconscious or just not possible to properly
express.

so,

Post by Julie Marchant
I am going to assume that it is
unethical and refuse to support it.
Except I'm not actually going to do that, because that would be
unreasonable.

un-reason-able. you can think of a good *reason* why such action
would cause a reduction of truth/love/awareness/creativity. you
operate by an ethical code. this is fantastic.

Post by Julie Marchant
There's a reason our courts don't work this way.

interestingly dutch law has a fundamental basis that if someone may
show something to be "unreasonable", it is acceptable and *overrides*
existing laws. first country i ever heard of that has such a basis.

l.

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zap

2017-02-12 15:26:39 UTC

Can we all just calm down, about the systemd thing.

Luke is trying his hardest, is sick and also KEEP IN MIND, HE DID NOT
HAVE TO START THIS CAMPAIGN! WE NEED TO BE MORE GRATEFUL!

I must admit, I don't understand the systemd arguments, but if he is set
on doing it that way, then its not a big issue,

we can easily do what we want if need be anyways. IF your on this
mailing list, its a good chance you can reinstall if need be.

I myself would not care if he didn't have systemd in by default. All I
know is, he is a good ethical person who needs support not endless
criticisms.

Please, let us be more patient and kindhearted. He is doing us a favor
even doing this campaign.

I still am curious though, and this question is for Luke,

is systemd lack security, privacy or stability?

I just would like Him to answer and no one else to understand his
thinking process.

Anyways though not here to condemn anyone, just try to be reasonable
that is all.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
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Post by Julie Marchant
you're going
to have to demonstrate to me that systemd has been developed (and
deployed) in a 100% ethical manner

So systemd is guilty until proven innocent?

it's been demonstrated already to have been unethically developed and
deployed (the problem being in this conversation that any time i
mention why i believe that to be the case, it's dismissed or rejected
- often violently. these reactions *being* symptomatic of the very
underlying reason and cause of my deeply-felt concern... concern that
i am having a lot of difficulty expressing)
i was inviting people to evaluate that for themselves, for two
reasons: firstly i'm completely exhausted so don't have time or energy
to go over it, and secondly, if i provide all the answers that removes
all opportunity and possibility for learning.
an ethical act is defined as "increasing the truth, love, awareness
or creativity
(those qualities being synonymous guide-words for the same underlying
concept) of one or more people without reducing the same qualities
for *anyone*".
now, before asking the crucial questions, i have to ask people to
consider answering them *without judgement*, and *without implied or
expressed criticism*, in an *objective* fashion. if i ask questions
and people react, "what are you saying???? are you saying that
debian's process is incompetent??? how DARE you!!!" or much worse
reactions than that, we're not going to get anywhere.
we know that there's an underlying systemic breakdown that is *not
anyone's fault*. reacting badly by assuming that any *discussion* of
the underlying systemic breakdown *is* one particular group or
individual's fault is itself part of the problem.
so please don't do it. not on this list.
so. the question is: what behaviours or decisions in the development
and deployment of systemd can be shown to have caused a reduction of
truth, love, awareness or creativity in at least one person?
put another way (in terms of energy expenditure and resources, which
has any individual, anywhere in the world, had to spend extensive
amounts of time and energy as a result of (1) the development or (2)
the deployment of systemd, which *could* have been avoided and,
because it was not, resulted in a reduction of or diversion of their
resources, time or energy?

Post by Julie Marchant
I am going to assume that it is
unethical and refuse to support it.
Except I'm not actually going to do that, because that would be
unreasonable.

un-reason-able. you can think of a good *reason* why such action
would cause a reduction of truth/love/awareness/creativity. you
operate by an ethical code. this is fantastic.

Post by Julie Marchant
There's a reason our courts don't work this way.

interestingly dutch law has a fundamental basis that if someone may
show something to be "unreasonable", it is acceptable and *overrides*
existing laws. first country i ever heard of that has such a basis.
l.
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Boris Barbour

2017-02-12 15:36:23 UTC

Post by zap
Can we all just calm down, about the systemd thing.

Agree - it's easy to criticise and hard to make. Luke is doing the jobs
of a whole team of designers. People will be able to install what they
want on the hardware. I suggest that getting it together is by far the
most important thing at this stage.

Best wishes to all,

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Christopher Havel

2017-02-12 15:44:04 UTC

I second (third? thank you Boris) Zap's call as well. Julie -- I appreciate
your apology, regardless of for whom it is meant. For the future: there is
a difference between what you can call a "wise endurance" and a "foolish
persistence" -- but the line between them is far thinner than I think most
folks would like to think. Something to meditate on :)

Wolfgang, perhaps you should not post while angry -- it sounds a bit like
you yourself are trying to start something, and that's not cool.

As for Luke. I am blown away by his description of how his mind works --
and, yet, it reminds me somewhat of the gifts of a lot of people I know and
know about. It's kind of ironic how, seemingly, everyone's gift is both a
blessing and a curse (so to speak). In particular, he reminds me of
Cassandra of Troy, a close relative of the (slightly) more famous Helen.
Ancient Greek mythos has it that Apollo wanted Cassandra to be his, er,
lady for a night, and she agreed and then had second thoughts... so he gave
her the ability to see the future -- except that she could never convince
anyone of it! I sense that Luke's mind gives him a similar struggle -- he
can tell you that something is bad (or not), but heaven help the both of
you if you must know why...

It's both fascinating and tragic at the same time.

Post by Boris Barbour

Post by zap
Can we all just calm down, about the systemd thing.

Agree - it's easy to criticise and hard to make. Luke is doing the jobs
of a whole team of designers. People will be able to install what they
want on the hardware. I suggest that getting it together is by far the
most important thing at this stage.
Best wishes to all,
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Christopher Havel

2017-02-12 15:44:44 UTC

Oh, whoops, I top-posted again. Apologies to Luke. I know that's one of
your pet peeves.

Elena ``of Valhalla''

2017-02-12 10:44:53 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
do you know the history of hans reiser? is his software available
today? given his history, if his software *was* available today, do
you think anyone would want to install it and use it? why not? it's
free software, right? you can change it, keep it, it's entirely under
a libre license... so what's the problem?

Actually, yes, his software *is* available today: according to wikipedia
(and to a quick ``ls /lib/modules/4.9.0-1-amd64/kernel/fs/reiserfs/``)
ReiserFS is still available in the linux kernel, altought probably used
more to access legacy systems than for new deployments.
Of course, by this time it's no longer "his software", but more software
that belongs to the community, based on code written by Hans Reiser but
then modified by multiple people in the meanwhile.

I strongly suspect that the fact that it is an early 2000s filesystem
with no modern features is more relevant to the fact that very few
people are using it today than the private life of its main (but not
only) developer. IIRC its decline had already started before the murder
/ arrest, because developement on it had already stopped, and new
features where being added to Reiser4 (which was never ready for
acceptance in mainline, however).

Lyberta

2017-02-11 15:10:00 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
and i simply don't have the time - or importantly the energy -
to create a new image, *especially* based on people's comments and
reactions that they'd be deeply unhappy with it not being a "stock
image", even if all i did was make it boot sysvinit instead by
default. those comments *alone* immediately terminate all and any
possibility that i can provide debian/jessie in a 100% ethical way.
on receipt of the cards, anybody who wants to will be free and
entirely at liberty to do "apt-get dist-upgrade" and they will be
taking direct responsibility for doing so. for those people who are
technically-minded they are also entirely free and at liberty to set
up a from-scratch root filesystem.

Great, and what about newbies who want stock image and don't know the
nooks and crannies of GNU/Linux?

Eric Duhamel

2017-02-12 05:22:11 UTC

Post by Lyberta
Great, and what about newbies who want stock image and don't know the
nooks and crannies of GNU/Linux?

Depending on what you mean by "newbies", I don't think they would know if they want any particular image of GNU/Linux except the one that was designed to run on the product by the maker of the product. After all, they don't know the nooks and crannies of GNU/Linux and would just want to receive a product that works.

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Lyberta

2017-02-12 19:35:00 UTC

Post by Eric Duhamel
Depending on what you mean by "newbies", I don't think they would know if they want any particular image of GNU/Linux except the one that was designed to run on the product by the maker of the product. After all, they don't know the nooks and crannies of GNU/Linux and would just want to receive a product that works.

OK, I'm a software developer, not a system administrator. I have no idea
what 90% of packages installed on my system do. I only use terminal to
upload my code to the Git repository. But I need g++ 6.

Debian Jessie has g++ 4.9.2 which is extremely old and none of my
software will compile there. When I pledged for Debian card, I expected
stock Debian with maybe a few custom packages which would be explicitly
marked as such. And the first thing I'd do is to upgrade to Testing
which as of writing this has g++ 6.3.0.

Now I'm told that issuing "apt-get dist-upgrade" is taking
responsibility, etc. So I'm stuck with old and unusable frankendistro
and on my own if I want to make it work.

I've chosen GNU/Linux because of its freedom and I've chosen Debian
because it doesn't have proprietary software in main. I have no idea of
what is going under the hood. I don't care what init system I run as
long as it is free software and it boots my PC.

A couple of years ago I needed to buy a laptop. I've looked for one
which doesn't come with Windows and I've found one with Ubuntu. Now, I
really hate Ubuntu and the first thing I've done was to install Debian
in dual boot. For some reason, Debian couldn't power off my laptop so I
removed it and I'm still stuck with Ubuntu.

I know what you're going to say: "You should've looked for the solution
on the Internet.". Well, sometimes I don't have time and am scared of
bricking my hardware. I want things to "just work".

It looks like EOMA68-A20 is not going to just work. I don't want it to
end like my laptop.

Eric Duhamel

2017-02-12 19:58:52 UTC

Post by Lyberta
It looks like EOMA68-A20 is not going to just work. I don't want it to
end like my laptop.

This is a legit problem. While the first EOMA68-A20 cards need to be shipped without delay, we also NEED to get EOMA computer cards to work with stock Debian and more as soon as possible.

Thankfully it seems the main argument started by this thread has wound down, but I don't know how to properly split off threads into a new subject. If there's anyone who can continue the discussion on getting modern, update-able images on the A20 or other, please do so.

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Albert ARIBAUD

2017-02-12 22:03:48 UTC

Hi,

Le Sun, 12 Feb 2017 11:58:52 -0800

[...] but I don't know how to properly split off threads into a
new subject [...]

Just start a reply and change the subject in your reply, or if you
can't edit the subject in a reply, just post a new message, not a reply,
with the intended new subject.

Amicalement,

--
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Allan Mwenda

2017-02-13 06:18:18 UTC

Starting this new topic on Eric's request.
I do find this a priority as shipping an aged Debian/Fedora/etc is not ideal at all.
Let's discuss, and maybe even set up targets in the wiki?

Post by Eric Duhamel

Post by Lyberta
It looks like EOMA68-A20 is not going to just work. I don't want it to
end like my laptop.

This is a legit problem. While the first EOMA68-A20 cards need to be
shipped without delay, we also NEED to get EOMA computer cards to work
with stock Debian and more as soon as possible.
Thankfully it seems the main argument started by this thread has wound
down, but I don't know how to properly split off threads into a new
subject. If there's anyone who can continue the discussion on getting
modern, update-able images on the A20 or other, please do so.
--
Eric Duhamel
http://www.noxbanners.net/
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--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Vincent Legoll

2017-02-13 09:43:49 UTC

Hello,

Post by Allan Mwenda
Starting this new topic on Eric's request.
I do find this a priority as shipping an aged Debian/Fedora/etc is not ideal at all.
Let's discuss, and maybe even set up targets in the wiki?

Kernel looks almost OK:
http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix

even if there are still some WIP entries and some green but "?", does
anyone tested those ?

I think DRM display (HDMI, etc.) & VE (video Engine) are important, as
a lot of people will want them.

There's a section here:
http://linux-sunxi.org/index.php?title=Buying_guide&section=6#Rhombus_Tech

Maybe a status page could be added here:
http://linux-sunxi.org/Category:Devices

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Tzafrir Cohen

2017-02-12 09:23:31 UTC

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
this is a decision that is easily justifiable based on the fact that
it's going to have to be distributed with the sunxi 3.4 kernel as
that's the only one which supports the full hardware.

That's a proper technical argument, indeed. Anybody here managed to get
the Jessie systemd running on the 3.4 sunxi kernel?

Also: I figure that currently mainline kernel support fo those is still
not good enough for the image. But what are the chances for me to later
have it running with mainline kernel and get a decent hardware support?
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

2017-02-12 09:49:02 UTC

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