[zanny]

I've had huge productivity gains with unit files for systemd over trying to write spaghetti shell code for old sysv. The syntax and features are well documented and writing them is extremely simple. I also don't believe any sysv implementation had crash recovery or socket activation of daemons, both of which are huge feature wins.

[nitrogen]

I also don't believe any sysv implementation had crash recovery or socket activation of daemons, both of which are huge feature wins.

That's because there were other components handling those tasks, like inetd and /etc/inittab. I do like having Upstart handle respawning for me, though.

[icebraining]

Inetd only did TCP socket activation, not of unix sockets, though.

[thwarted]

Inetd only did TCP socket activation, not of unix sockets, though.

False.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man8/inetd.8.html

    The service name entry is the name of a valid service in the file
    /etc/services. … For UNIX domain sockets this field specifies the
    path name of the socket.


    The protocol must be a valid protocol as given in /etc/protocols.
    Examples might be “unix”, “tcp” or “udp”. … A protocol of “unix”
    is used to specify a socket in the UNIX domain.

xinetd does not appear to support this feature.

[icebraining]

Oops, you're right, I misread an article about socket activation.