Hunt the Wumpus

I started trying to understand how upstart works recently and feel like I'm in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. The documentation and configuration files provide many disjoint bits of information but there is nothing to knit it all together into an understandable pattern. Figuring out what the connections are between all these little bits is as challenging now and finding the Wumpus was then. And, according to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177, even more dangerous. I know I can read the source, but it really shouldn't be so hard.

I decided to replace Ubuntu with something that doesn't use upstart, but a little research gives the impression that upstart has already been adopted by many of the major distributions and is being considered by many more. It seemed I would have to live in fear of the Wumpus, lost in a maze of twisty little passages, too scared to shoot my crooked little arrows.

Then I came across Lennart Poetterin's blog about systemd: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html. It is refreshingly lucid and leaves me feeling there is hope after all. The concepts are expressed simply, making them understandable. The big picture is presented, providing a context in which the technical details can be understood and related. It feels like a solution and something I would like to work with.

This is in sharp contrast to upstart, which feels like manifold layers of obscure complexity heaped on the problem with little or no hints how it works, except in its parts. The original problem is out of sight and soon forgotten as one struggles to find where all the events come from and go to to knit the bits (jobs) together.

So, bravo to Lennart. I know it is early days for systemd but based on what I have seen I would be very pleased if it supplanted upstart and even the very comfortable old Sys V init scripts.