[clue-tech] upstart

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 20:57 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> That said, I agree in some cases new stuff that provides no advantages
> or is not mature enough gets shipped. It happens. I really can't see 
> why anyone would argue thats the case with SysVinit/upstart however. 

I just read the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart),
the upstart web site (http://upstart.ubuntu.com/) and the upstart design
spec (http://upstart.ubuntu.com/misc/upstart.pdf) and, while there is
plenty describing what Upstart will be able to do, I still see little
that says SysVInit (or init) was broken and needed to be replaced.  

On the upstart wiki there is the link
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReplacementInitDiscussion) to some discussion
in 2005 about why upstart is necessary.  This at least offers some
rational and use cases to back up the need for upstart.  Unfortunately,
with a couple of exceptions, the use cases are pretty poor and can be
handled by existing tools fairly easily.  The most compelling argument
is boot speed.  If upstart is the only solution to this problem, so be
it.  But I doubt it.  Most interesting here is the section titled BoF
Agenda and Discussion (at the bottom of the page).  There is some truth
to the problems that exist with dealing with dying daemonised processes.
I'm not sure this warrants replacing init, but maybe.  And a parallel
boot vs a serial boot process would certainly help boot speed.  Some of
this can be handled with boot dependencies.  But while the arguments
here explain the problems that exist they do not explain why the
existing solutions cannot be evolved to handle them. 

So again, I'm not convinced this is a good idea.  While replacing
multiple application layer job schedulers seems a possibly useful idea
simply for the sake of configuration, where is there anything that
says /sbin/init is broken beyond repair?

I'm open to changing my mind and saying I was wrong.  But I won't follow
blindly.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel                                    Principal Software Engineer
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                           http://graphics-muse.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after 
you've accidentally walked through a spider web.