Re: BSD Init

[Nathaniel Reindl <fiction@sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 10:27:57AM -0400, Drews, Jonathan* wrote:
> > BSD-style init is an unmaintainable mess.  It's not simpler by *any* 

An unmaintainable mess?  Nah.

A mess that could potentially render your system inoperable for a
possibly long period of time if not managed properly?  Yes, indeedy.

> > stretch of the imagination.  It's actually *ridiculously* complicated
> > compared to SysV init, which simply uses a bunch of symbolic links 
> > to determine what gets started/stopped at any given runlevel.

Let's not forget to mention that BSD init doesn't even have runlevels.

>  I don't think it is that bad really.  After all Apple uses FreeBSD as the
> basis for their computers now in the form of OS X. So there must be some

In all reality, they didn't use FreeBSD in its entirety as the base of
OS X.  People like to say this, but it really isn't true.

Does anyone here remember NeXTstep from Steve Jobs's exile days?  For
those not in the know, NeXTstep was the OS that NeXT Computer's
NeXTstations and NeXTcubes ran, and it used the Mach microkernel and a
BSD subsystem of some sort.  Without the GUI, the system acted like a
4.3 BSD UNIX box.  With the GUI, it was one of the more intuitive
systems to use, and it had a beautiful (as in design) user interface
to boot.  It was from the NeXT Workspace Manager that Apple got the
columns view in today's Finder.  Funny, that. :)

Well, OS X is the reincarnation of that system (note the NS* classes
in the Carbon toolkit) with an attitude.  It uses the same microkernel
with some drivers hacked in from FreeBSD.  Well, they also had to
update some of the utilities, and they yanked those also from FreeBSD.

>  As for the compiling from source argument, Netcraft shows that FreeBSD runs
> on 2.5 million sites on 5 million hostnames.
> http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearly_25_million_active_sites_
> running_freebsd.html
> Compare that with 1,465,000 sites that run RedHat:
> http://news.netcraft.com/
>  So source compiles can't be that big an impediment. BTW it's possible to
> package fetch on the *BSD's.

Okay.  Protip: Strength in numbers doesn't work everywhere.

Also, I'm willing to bet that most of those FreeBSD machines are
serving up static pages instead of Web applications or similar.  Has
one ever tried to get Tomcat 4 working properly under FreeBSD, eh?
It's a pain in the rear, and it often leaves one feeling violated in
some way.

Moreover, you are right; there are binary packages available for the
BSD systems, but a good lot of them haven't gone through QA testing,
so YMMV when using them.

-- 
Nathaniel Reindl

    "Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt."
       (The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.)
			-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

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