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by pmden 2961 days ago
Systemd isn't one component, so you'd be mistaken assuming everything in the systemd project is necessary to start a service. But second to that, I'm not sure why you think nginx_enable='YES' is fundamentally less opaque than an nginx.service file. Both are parsed by another application. As for why someone would make that 'trade-off' - I much prefer being able to add "Restart=on-failure" than using daemontools, and I don't have the luxury of working with one single distribution and remember the faff involved with initscripts differing between CentOS and Debian.

My reasons aside, I'd think a more sensible question would be "why would you actively avoid using the init system that's shipping by default on what constitutes at least 90% of the Linux server market when you're using Linux?". I don't think eyes equate to quality and stability, but I do think Red Hat, and SUSE, and Canonical and Oracle selling server solutions using it will.
2 comments
dozzie 2961 days ago
> I'm not sure why you think nginx_enable='YES' is fundamentally less opaque than an nginx.service file. Both are parsed by another application.

My guess: because the "another application" that parses nginx_enable=YES is a (rc) shell script instead of an ELF blob, so you can track its execution.

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JdeBP 2960 days ago
That is not actually true. It is of course parsed by a shell, not by a shell script, which is indeed an "ELF blob".

Moreover, that shell is, on some operating systems, only one of the parsers. OpenBSD, for example, introduced a rule a few versions ago that rc.conf is not shell script. It is a set of key=value assignments that can be written and read by other programs too, not just by a full shell parser and not requiring a shell script parser.

One such program is rcctl. Another is FreeBSD's sysrc.

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andrewshadura 2961 days ago
But do you need to?
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dozzie 2961 days ago
Yes, when something goes awry with the initscripts system. And systemd is not exactly famous for its transparency of execution and stability of options' behaviour.
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alxlaz 2961 days ago
> But second to that, I'm not sure why you think nginx_enable='YES' is fundamentally less opaque than an nginx.service file. Both are parsed by another application.

That's true of both plain-text configuration files and Windows Registry keys ;-).

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