[fanf2]

In a traditional unix, when things go wrong you can use common tools like grep and text editors and shell scripts to work out what happened. With systemd, there is no way to lift the lid and find out where it broke and how to fix it. That is why the magic is hidden magic, not learnable magic.

[andrewshadura]

That’s not true: systemd gives you tools to not just lift the lid but actually effectively find what broke.

[growse]

Sure there is. It's just software. All the regular tools work just fine.

I've happily been using grep, strace, etc to debug issues in both systemd and 'traditional Unix' systems for years.

[makomk]

PID 1 is not quite the same as other processes. Historically it wasn't even possible to use gdb or strace on it without patching the kernel, though I think this changed at some point. Any crash in it still causes a kernel panic that brings down the system though.