Initially the bug report was shot down by systemd developer Luca Boccassi of Microsoft with:
So an option that is literally documented as saying “all files and directories created by a tmpfiles.d/ entry will be deleted”, that you knew nothing about, sounded like a “good idea”? Did you even go and look what tmpfiles.d entries you had beforehand?
Maybe don’t just run random commands that you know nothing about, while ignoring what the documentation tells you? Just a thought eh"
Good devs, good product, I’m really excited about our shitty, shitty future.
For anyone defending the dev ensure you have the version before this patch and run
systemd-tmpfiles --purgejust a heads up, it will delete your home because/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/home.confexists and lists your home as a temporary file. This is a HUGE issue, tmpfiles.d default behavior is to list /home as a temporary dir, that should NOT be the case. Their fix is also sort of bullshit, instead of removing home as a tmpdir they made it so that you need to specify which files to purge.Deleting your home directory on Linux is inevitable. A temporary classification is correct.
So are we all ok with Microsoft now being in charge of systemd? The same company made famous by Blue Screens of Death?
When I consider this, it makes me think Linux has lost. Do you think Microsoft would let the Linux community be on charge of The Registry? Or any other part of the OS?
Mac may be the only decent option left…?
The BSOD really isn’t something to be mad at, it actually in theory is good but there is only so much you can do when a kernel panics. What you should be mad at is shitty drivers causing BSODs
Just pick a non-systemd distro instead of reinforcing this fear-mongering nonsense. I can’t tolerate corporate stooges putting their dick in our space, so I’ve switched to Guix. You have a choice, you can switch if you want to - nobody is stopping you. This way, you are also helping the maintainers and the contributors by giving them feedback.
And that’s not even the complete list (link may be a little dated, I think).
“If you can’t win, lead.” Systemd development is in the hands of Microsoft employees. systemd has taken over almost all of Linux. Experts answer - in whose hands is Linux now? :)
Most subtle instance of Microsoft’s Embrace-Extend-Extinguish to date.
Microsoft
Ah so that’s where they pulled the run0 idea out of their asses from.
brb gonna go tell RedHat to make a fork lol.
It’s bluca, yo.
As a random example, here is bluca breaking
suspend-then-hibernate, then being a complete asshole about it, while other systemd devs are trying to put the fire out. Do read his code reviews on the latter. yuwata and keszybz have nerves of steel.The current behaviour is fully expected and documented
bluca is cancer.
Luca Boccassi sounds like he got pantsed a few too many times in high school.
After briefly reading about systemd’s tmpfiles.d, I have to ask why it was used to create home directories in the first place. The documentation I read said it was for volatile files. Is a users home directory considered volatile? Was this something the user set up, or the distro they were using. If the distro, this seems like a lot of ire at someone who really doesn’t deserve it.
I guess reading the history, systemd did a better job of dependency resolution and parallel loading of startup services. Then some less interesting stuff like logins, permissions, and device management - which definitely seems out of scope. There’s been like 15 alternatives since it was made, but none of them got critical mass, and now pretty much every mainstream distro can’t run without it. Sad face
While I’m here complaining, I really miss the days when Arch was configured from a single global file that handled many things like setting your hostname, locale, etc. I think it was dropped bc of maintenance & being not unixy enough. Kinda ironic
I mean that argument is ridiculous, saying that things are “documented” when the thing is literally called tmpfiles.d and the man page starts with the following explanation:
It is mostly commonly used for volatile and temporary files and directories (such as those located under /run/, /tmp/, /var/tmp/, the API file systems such as /sys/ or /proc/, as well as some other directories below /var/).
So basically some genius decided that its a good idea to reuse this system for creating non-tmp directories. Overall my opinion of systemd is reluctant acceptance though I always wondered why the old way was a problem. Need a service started on boot? Well, we had crontab and sysvinit with some plain files. Need a service shut down? Well that’s the kill command. I guess I don’t really know why systemd was made
It is shown by non-systemd distros that systemd doesn’t really solve problems for desktop usage. When you switch away, not much changes basically. I sometimes hear that it is a different story on servers.
I sometimes hear that it is a different story on servers.
Wonder what their usages are, especially in a container-focused context, where most containers simply don’t have an init, and the base system just needs, at most, to have a container runtime (+/- a few other things, see: talos linux and their 130MB bare-metal ISOs).
Exactly.
My take is that the issue isn’t with tmpfiles.d, but rather the decision to use it for creating home directories.
The guy replying is a total dick, and for people that like to encourage change to create software that evolves with needs, they sure do refuse to change when needs evolve.
This is definitely just a dangerous cause of that one xkcd. At the very least, Debian unstable caught something before it could reach everyone else. That works, at the very least.
So an option that is literally documented as saying “all files and directories created by a tmpfiles.d/ entry will be deleted”, that you knew nothing about, sounded like a “good idea”?
Bro, if it sounded like a good idea to someone, you didn’t fucking warn them enough. Don’t put this on them without considering what you did to confuse them.
Also, nfn, the systemd documentation is a nightmare to read through, even if you know exactly what you’re looking for.
(I’m still gonna keep using systemd because it’s better than the alternatives, though. OP, don’t write stuff off because 1 guy is a dick.)
Unfortunate. However, one bad move doesn’t justify dismissing systemd altogether.
Do I wish for s6 and dinit to be competitive with systemd? Absolutely. Do I wish for systemd what PipeWire has been for PulseAudio? Yes, please. Do I wish that distros/DEs would be less reliant on systemd? Hell yeah! (Can I please have an rpm-based distro without systemd?)
But, unfortunately, at least for now, systemd is the most robust and (somehow) most polished init we got. And I’m actually grateful for that.
Oof, that quote is the exact brand of nerd bullshit that makes my blood boil. “Sure, it’s horribly designed, complicated, hard to understand, unnecessarily dangerous, and extremely misleading, but it’s your fault for nOT rEAdiNg ThE dOCUmeNtATiON”
A command that basically reads “purge tempfiles” should absolutely never purge anything but temporary files. I understand the context of it being called that, but if
systemd-tmpfilesis literally responsible for creating the user’s home folder, it might be a good idea to rename it.This whole saga reminds me of the time I somehow ended up with Windows 9x’s “Recent Documents” feature pointed at the root of a drive, so when I pushed the button to “clear recent documents” it dutifully started deleting all the files on the drive.
At the time, the “Recent Documents” feature created shortcuts to, as you might guess, recently opened documents and put them in a user folder specifically for that purpose. Clearing them was only supposed to remove the shortcuts.
Or perhaps more relevantly, that one Steam
bashscript that could delete things it shouldn’t under some very rare circumstances.The ‘d’ stands for drama.
And also dick.
Singular.
