BunsenLabs without systemd?

tranjeeshan · 2015-10-02 08:13:16

I don't have that much of technical expertise (yet) to understand the know-how of init scripts. But after some digging, I came to the conclusion that I don't like systemd, mainly because it doesn't conform to the UNIX philosophy. systemd tries to control everything, which slaps on the face of UNIX philosophy, "Do one thing and do it well". systemd has binary blobs instead of simple text files to manage and control initialization processes.
Therefore, is there any way I can use BunsenLabs without systemd? Any other simple init would do, e.g. SysV init, etc.
I found a link that describes the way of removing systemd from Debian jessie. I didn't test it, hence don't know whether it works flawless. But if it's that simple to remove systemd from Debian, then why there's a whole new Debian fork, Devuan? Perhaps, someone can enlighten me here?

MrDowntempo · 2015-10-02 10:15:25

Bunsen is Debain based, and Debian uses systemd, and I imagine the Debian maintainers put a fair amount of thought into it before adopting it. Debian's not the only distro to do so either, in fact, MOST major distros have converted to systemd. I'm not super knowledgeable on init systems either, but from my meager understandings, it appears the instructions in your link should work. Why not give it a try and see if it works for you? You might also try the instructions for installing Bunsen on a debian netinstall but using Devuan instead of Debain.

Last edited by MrDowntempo (2015-10-02 10:16:48)

damo · 2015-10-02 11:10:45

[HowTo] Use sysvinit or upstart in Debian jessie

damo · 2015-10-02 11:15:46

tranjeeshan wrote:

.... But if it's that simple to remove systemd from Debian, then why there's a whole new Debian fork, Devuan? Perhaps, someone can enlighten me here?

You will have to do your own reading on this, and wade through all the mud you find.

Snap · 2015-10-02 11:20:03

Not for noobs, but if I can do it, anyone with some Debian experience can do it too. Better try a virtual machine first, so you can check things and nicely break your system as many times as needed without borking your main metal OS. I installed my main system this way and it runs nicely without systemd. I want to replace sysvinit for open-rc or runit too, but I need some more reseach and testing to be done.

1- Start from the antix-base iso instead of the Debian net installer. (Better use this mirror instead of sourceforce. It's good and fast).

If you want Sid you can use either antix (set your mirrors in the live iso before installing) or a Linux-BBQ iso. Not all BBQ isos have sysvinit, check wich ones are systemd-free. Most of them are. Better use a non-X version to get closer to the vanilla net-installer results. Also, there are not many 64 bit choices there, but But IIRC there is at least one recent enough (My current main system was built on top of Bork! 64 a few weeks ago, But the older isos having the kernel 4.0 won't boot in virtualbox unless tweaked and remastered. The last ones boot nicely in both VM or live/metal). - Sorry for not posting the BBQ iso links, but I hate posting Sourceforge links anywhere. They're easy to find anyway. Startpage is your friend.

2 - Read all this and that. Check the scripts and test if anything wants to pull systemd in. It shouldn't. Maybe you'll need to edit the bl-exit script to be able to reboot and shutdown from there. I haven't checked it yet.

3 - Setup a virtual machine and enjoy.

My 3 current metal installs are all sysvinit Debian 64s (Sid and Jessie) built from either antix-base or BBQ isos. All run smooth and trouble free. I will install Bunsen RC this way too whenever I find the time.

Snap · 2015-10-02 11:26:03

Oooops... damo was faster.

damo wrote:

tranjeeshan wrote:
.... But if it's that simple to remove systemd from Debian, then why there's a whole new Debian fork, Devuan? Perhaps, someone can enlighten me here?
You will have to do your own reading on this, and wade through all the mud you find.

It's not that simple. It's very easy to bork the system in the process. systemd can be quite hard to remove depending on the packages you have installed. It's a better practice (and much easier) to start fresh without it. For now the only ready-to-go choices I know are the ones I posted above. Devuan is not yet released and the rest of the Debian flavors I'm aware of are (obviously) on systemd.

nobody · 2015-10-02 11:50:07

Nah, it's pretty trivial to set the init system to systemv in Jessie, however to reduce possible frictions it might better be done on a very fresh install.

The reason why we used systemd is because we didn't decide to use it; we just went with the default.

tranjeeshan · 2015-10-02 12:37:41

Thanks, everyone. I'll try'em.

tknomanzr · 2015-10-02 13:06:04

Ozitraveller mentioned he was working on a Devuan respin. I asked him to let me know when he got it built so I could check it out. It will very likely end up being a live iso as well.

Addy · 2017-10-05 10:47:25

I stay living with systemd.

I also dislike systemd. But day to day, more and more apps are adopting systemd as dependency. I can't resist it, so I go with it

EDIT : Hate sounds like not a correct term, I replace it with dislike. Sounds more soft O:)

Last edited by Addy (2017-10-06 14:25:13)

hhh · 2017-10-05 10:57:08

@Addy, why do you hate it? I can say that Debian's switch to systemd has had no effect on me as a user (except for faster boot times), and has made my life easier as an administrator.

Steve · 2017-10-05 11:16:16

Im not really cluey about all this but i cant understand why a systemd-dummy module would be needed in a non systemd distro, i found this out with a more recent one called artix linux..

libsystemd-dummy https://packages.debian.org/sid/libsystemd-dev

I couldnt get mkdir -p to work so researched and found that this package was a fix, albeit in arch-openrc of course, not debian.

bigbenaugust · 2017-10-05 13:13:12

There is MiyoLinux (Miyo = Make It Your Own). I have it on one machine and it's pretty good:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/miyolinux/

Bearded_Blunder · 2017-10-05 14:51:01

It's not hard to do, pretty trivial for Hydrogen, switch init and use the netinstall.
There's a little more to it for Helium-dev/Stretch.
In the latter case, the init switch is still trivial (same process) for the base netinstall of stretch, but...
You'll need to add an "off reservation" repo as outlined at without-systemd.org and do some apt pinning to keep it off, second method.
You'll also have to edit the netinstall script before applying it, there's a couple or three gotchas:
It tries to install network-manager, which depends on systemd, and bombs out when it can't, to work around that, you'll need to comment out network-manager and network-manager-gnome in packages-norecs.
The script will nuke /etc/network/interfaces leaving you with broken networking after installing, fixable bty any of:
restore the backup the script makes | substitute cmst (which pulls in connman functionally equivalent) | substitute wicd (not as nice as either cmst or network-manager, but gtk based and functional).
Additionally bl-exit won't install *it* depends on systemd, here you'll need to:
Download, extract and modify it (if you know perl) | Write your own menu entries | Perform those actions (logout, shutdown, suspend, hibernate, reboot) from a terminal.
There are some other functions written using systemd timers which won't be operational (look in the development & suggestions thread).

The devs here are clearly not init agnostic bl-exit in particular *could have been* written to work regardless what init you used, since systemd responds perfectly to the commands you'd issue under sysv-init or openrc.

I've recently also discovered that installing Stretch without ever installing or booting systemd *is* possible, if hard work, switching post-netinstall is actually easier.

Last edited by Bearded_Blunder (2017-10-05 14:51:56)

martix · 2017-10-05 15:14:46

There is also Zephyr Linux and this guide here.

Bearded_Blunder · 2017-10-05 15:19:00

hhh wrote:

@Addy, why do you hate it? I can say that Debian's switch to systemd has had no effect on me as a user (except for faster boot times), and has made my life easier as an administrator.

Slowed my boots down, and increased cpu usage (compared to switching back) but then I use some VERY old hardware, plus there's the learning curve with new stuff, and the man-pages for systemd were written bty persons who understood it.. and presupposed *anyone reading them also did* result: they're COMPLETELY impenetrable!

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-10-05 16:39:05

Addy wrote:

I also hate systemd

Switch to sysvinit with this command:

sudo aptitude install sysvinit-core systemd-shim systemd-sysv-

No need for pinning or any of that nonsense and it seems to work just fine in my Debian stretch-based Helium-dev machine:

empty@testbed:~ $ cat /proc/1/comm                                                 
init
empty@testbed:~ $ ls -l /sbin/init
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 40728 Feb 12  2017 /sbin/init
empty@testbed:~ $

Note however that the systemd-shim is currently orphaned (ie, un-maintained) so any problems may not be picked up or fixed quickly and will be dependent on user input to bugs.debian.org

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

The devs here are clearly not init agnostic

No indeed, I also dislike systemd — OpenRC ftw!

bl-exit in particular *could have been* written to work regardless what init you used, since systemd responds perfectly to the commands you'd issue under sysv-init or openrc.

It was my understanding that bl-exit is almost init-agnostic — it doesn't work with runit-init but some idiot got that removed from Debian thus rendering that issue irrelevant — and should work with sysvinit

Let me just try a reboot in my sysvinit-booted Helium-dev system...

EDIT: yes, I can confirm that bl-exit in Helium-dev works just fine if sysvinit is used as PID1 8)

And now to change back to systemd, this init system doesn't remember the backlight level and it's quite annoying to have to turn it down every time I boot up...

EDIT2: ah, that's better, free of the bloat at last:

empty@alpine:~ $ ls -l /sbin/init
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 14 20:35 /sbin/init -> /bin/busybox
empty@alpine:~ $

8o

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2017-10-05 18:55:18)

beaker · 2017-10-05 20:01:10

Surprised there are still ppl whining about this tbh. Mind you I like systemd for the most part.

johnraff · 2017-10-06 06:50:48

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

bl-exit in particular *could have been* written to work regardless what init you used

This topic has been extensively discussed, and while it's true that most of the BL devs are at least somewhat reconciled to using systemd, we bent over backwards to make bl-exit init-agnostic. It does hovever need systemd to be installed. For more detail, start here: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 961#p49961

Addy · 2017-10-06 14:31:04

Ups! I'm really sorry for leading to systemd vs non-systemd. I don't mean to separate you all
I just dislike it because it control everything, and it sounds evil.

And Thank You all for the explanation! Now I more understand about systemd.

@HoaS, I bookmarked your post. I'm still a noob now, I would try it if I have been an advanced Linux user

I have to go now

*Run*

#1 2015-10-02 08:13:16

BunsenLabs without systemd?

#2 2015-10-02 10:15:25

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#3 2015-10-02 11:10:45

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#4 2015-10-02 11:15:46

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#5 2015-10-02 11:20:03

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#6 2015-10-02 11:26:03

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#7 2015-10-02 11:50:07

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#8 2015-10-02 12:37:41

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#9 2015-10-02 13:06:04

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#10 2017-10-05 10:47:25

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#11 2017-10-05 10:57:08

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#12 2017-10-05 11:16:16

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#13 2017-10-05 13:13:12

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#14 2017-10-05 14:51:01

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#15 2017-10-05 15:14:46

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#16 2017-10-05 15:19:00

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#17 2017-10-05 16:39:05

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#18 2017-10-05 20:01:10

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#19 2017-10-06 06:50:48

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

#20 2017-10-06 14:31:04

Re: BunsenLabs without systemd?

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