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What gentoo should do with udev
Keep udev as-is
29%
 29%  [ 12 ]
Make udev optional
70%
 70%  [ 29 ]
Total Votes : 41

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krinn
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:30 am    Post subject: Time to gentoo to reconsider udev Reply with quote

I found this bug in funtoo http://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-34
I think it's time for gentoo to consider that option too.

(sorry ulenrich, no "Lennart forever !" choice, i'm afraid you'll have to pick choice 1 only).
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Anon-E-moose
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting read (the link)

I personally have no problem with going that direction,
but I'm pretty sure that the NIH syndrome will raise it's head
(we already saw that when the udev replacement by greydot (sp?) started before eudev)
and the udev/systemd/pottering groupies will scream loud and long
that it will somehow take away their rights to run said systems.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Since udev is already optional, the poll is flawed. Any /dev manager will satisfy the dependendy of the virtual. || ( ) in dependency syntax means "any of"

Quote:

# Copyright 1999-2012 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/virtual/dev-manager/dev-manager-0.ebuild,v 1.5 2012/11/24 17:55:28 ssuominen Exp $

EAPI="2"

DESCRIPTION="Virtual for the device filesystem manager"
HOMEPAGE=""
SRC_URI=""

LICENSE=""
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="alpha amd64 arm hppa ia64 m68k ~mips ppc ppc64 s390 sh sparc x86 ~sparc-fbsd ~x86-fbsd"
IUSE=""

DEPEND=""
RDEPEND="|| (
virtual/udev
sys-apps/busybox[mdev]
sys-fs/devfsd
sys-fs/static-dev
sys-freebsd/freebsd-sbin
)"
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krinn
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 6:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Please ssuominen, don't flaw the poll...

The bug speak about making udev out of the boot process, and only use for desktop related dependencies, so udev OUT except if user ask for it or a package must need it.
That's not its current state in gentoo where it is in livecd and pull per default if you ask the virtual.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 7:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I voted for keep as is as udev is already optional.

I'm upset enough by udev to consider going back to a static /dev.
It will just work on my servers and I can still still write an xorg.conf by hand, so I don't need udev for device detection.
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steveL
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't see it as optional after reading that bug: it's required for a stage1 build and during catalyst, which I personally think is horrendous. If it can be treated how funtoo are doing it, and still work with kde et al as a later dependency, not required during early-boot (and I know the latter is true since I've been running that setup for a year without mdev or eudev) for the vast majority of users who do not require a bluetooth keyboard to boot, I'm all for it.

NeddySeagoon wrote:
I'm upset enough by udev to consider going back to a static /dev.
It will just work on my servers and I can still still write an xorg.conf by hand, so I don't need udev for device detection.

Well, that should be a wakeup call to any "developer" reading who still thinks they can stick their fingers in their ears and say "lala I'm not listening": Neddy is the admin guru of Gentoo afaic, and an expert at adjusting to upgrades. If he says "basta" then enough already.

Though I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed you didn't even try the delayed initscript Neddy: I understand your point about root on lvm or encrypted, but it seems a lot easier to have a minimal root (and no initrd) than all the shenanigans you've gone thru in the last year. To my mind, encrypted root doesn't really add anything: if they can write to the root device before it's up (which is what encryption of root protects against), they can write to /boot, irrespective of fstab noauto.

I'd be more concerned about physical access, and much more interested in a read-only device to boot from (like the SDHC card on RPi, tabbed read-only), or a BOOTP setup, for security than encrypted root.

Though if I were in your position, at this point I'd use mdev on servers, unless you actually need udev for something (in which case I'd use the delayed initscripts;) - either way I'd keep initrd out of the equation, since it's just another layer, and another thing to incorporate into the maintenance cycle, for zero benefit to the installation.

In any event I'd like to see funtoo's work rolled back into Gentoo: that's in the spirit of collaboration, and a benefit to all, imo.

One thing I really like the look of:
Code:
/etc/mdev/settle-nics --write-mactab
$EDITOR /etc/mactab

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
I'm upset enough by udev to consider going back to a static /dev.
It will just work on my servers and I can still still write an xorg.conf by hand, so I don't need udev for device detection.


I hear you. :)

I am still running 171-r6 because it works without a lot of extra stuff added.
If it quits working (for whatever reason) then I'll probably go back to a static /dev also.
I don't use anything terribly fancy for X and it would not be hard to write an xorg.conf for keyboard/mouse.
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mv
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

udev is needed by foo2zjs to send certain firmware to printer.
udev is needed by usb_modeswitch to make certain G3 (and perhaps other) cards usable by sending certain codes.

So it is not only a question of fancy desktops environments whether udev is required, but it is needed for rather fundamental functionality if you have corresponding hardware. Only if all these issues are solved or have workarounds and also a corresponding network renaming and cdrom linking is possible in mdev (no experience with this, maybe this is already possible), one can seriously discuss whether udev can be dropped somehow.
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The Doctor
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Personally, I think it is a great idea. mdev does 99.9% of what I need it to with an openbox setup. The one annoyance is that the deprecated kernel options have been dropped, so my usb printer still requires udev to print. Other than that, udev has become a rather unimportant dependency for a few packages.

I think the precedent set by a major distro defaulting to drop udev would send a strong message and may just start the process of getting the good idea fairy to visit less often.
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GFCCAE6xF
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Doctor wrote:
I think the precedent set by a major distro defaulting to drop udev would send a strong message and may just start the process of getting the good idea fairy to visit less often.


Too bad even Debian are going to be phasing in systemd as a whole much more, even some devs at a recent talk spoke about how they will maybe even go as far as to make some "linux only" packages because literally nobody uses their FreeBSD stuff which they spend so much time trying to even make work.

Saying that, I wouldn't mind if this was a change to be honest, all choices would still be available but going to such measures I think would just be another PR disaster and come off as another knee-jerk reaction by Gentoo just like when eudev was born. Not that I care what people think but people are still laughing at 'us' for that, unfortunately.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL,

steveL wrote:
Neddy is the admin guru of Gentoo afaic

That honour belongs to the -infra team headed by robbat2. I don't have root on any gentoo infrastructure systems.

steveL wrote:
Though I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed you didn't even try the delayed initscript Neddy

I may yet. I've just got a SSD that I can play on, so I shall do a clean install.
I will probably use eudev and xfce4 as its only a matter of time before udev and systemd cannot be separated. Worse, if the hype is to be believed, Gnome will depend on systemd, so Gnome will have to go too.

Anyway - thats way off topic. Please don't turn this thread into another systemd hate thread.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Doctor wrote:
The one annoyance is that the deprecated kernel options have been dropped, so my usb printer still requires udev to print.


Udev doesn't do anything magical.
Whatever it's doing should be able to be done by shell script or another method.
It just automates the process of things like creating device nodes or perhaps loading firmware.
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asturm
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For this desktop system, I am not at all concerned right now with udev, as long as it works and can be fixed easily when breaking.

However, my next server will likely run without udev - at least I'll try.
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grey_dot
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 6:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

hmm.. I should really consider switching to Funtoo. Those dudes seem to be in their right mind.
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steveL
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
steveL wrote:
Neddy is the admin guru of Gentoo afaic

That honour belongs to the -infra team headed by robbat2. I don't have root on any gentoo infrastructure systems.

Not imo. I'm not talking about keeping infra running, important as that is; I'm talking about helping countless people to setup and configure their machines, such that you are up to date with everything that goes on in Gentoo, in software and administration terms.

Infra does not have as wide exposure to that full range, nor should they: we want them to focus on keeping their sometimes esoteric setups running, and not think about anything else unless everything else is working fine.

And don't worry I'm not sucking up to you: afaic the world is a lot bigger than Gentoo, even though people inside it get caught up in their little bubble. And in that arena, you're up against Griz which is no contest ;-) Not that any of us thinks in those terms; I don't think like that in coding, as it's a) untrue, since we always make mistakes, and always have more to learn, and b) useless and simply leads to friction for no-one's benefit apart from your competitors. And I know you and Griz are way past that kind of chest-thumping.
Quote:
steveL wrote:
Though I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed you didn't even try the delayed initscript Neddy

I may yet. I've just got a SSD that I can play on, so I shall do a clean install.
I will probably use eudev and xfce4 as its only a matter of time before udev and systemd cannot be separated. Worse, if the hype is to be believed, Gnome will depend on systemd, so Gnome will have to go too.

Anyway - thats way off topic. Please don't turn this thread into another systemd hate thread.

Eh? I wasn't: just asking why you'd never tried the simple approach which uses the same upstream software, before you went off changing your entire setup, which struck me as somewhat sheep-like at the time.

And no offence, but most of your problems appear to come from the systemd/udev "integration" (or what most of us would call a "land-grab"). So don't take your woes with systemd out on me, as I never even mentioned it ;-)

Trust me, I did not change my sig for this thread.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL,

Neddyseagoon wrote:
Anyway - thats way off topic. Please don't turn this thread into another systemd hate thread.
wasn't aimed at you.

It was first of all a reminder to myself that my udev/systemd musings were off topic and a general request to other readers not to continue what I started.
My apologies as you have taken it personally. On rereading my post, I realised I had addressed it to you. Oops - sorry.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 7:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like the idea of getting rid of udev. I have been using eudev happily for some time now, but mdev is a good solution as well. static-dev still works to be perfectly honest. I think that this would be a smart choice for Gentoo.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 3:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
It will just work on my servers and I can still still write an xorg.conf by hand, so I don't need udev for device detection.


for a while now you can probably get away with a blank xorg.conf, this is what I do on the livedvd image.

I for one are using mdev on servers and do not look forward to the udev/systemd shit storm that is coming. Lets remove udev from stage1 builds and @system, let the user decide but using mdev will work for most folks and those that need systemd/udev/eudev can at will.
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hcaulfield57
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 5:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

While I think that systemd is much of the current issue, I think it's largely only part of the issue. The current udev issue is much larger than that in my opinion.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 9:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Udev used to work fine, maybe not perfect in all cases but fine for ~99.9% of uses.

All the "cleverness" that they have added has caused most of the problems we hear about in the last year or so.

The "claim" I hear most often is that eth? conflicted with the kernel naming but udev was handling that for most cases
so the "need" for changing wasn't really there, and if they wanted they could have renamed eth? to net? even with the old versions
and no need for all the silliness that they are trying to add and seems to be causing all the problems.

Just some thoughts.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 2:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I voted for "make udev optional" ... though, honestly, I think there little chance it will become a reality.

As we are speaking about udev as a stage1 requirement and as part of @system then the further systemd-udev is from being so embedded the better. By removing it from @system, and making it an optional dependency of those packages which absolutely require it, a barrier is placed between systemd-udev as an integral part of the boot process (by default), and systemd-udev as a requirement to have one or other application that depends on it work. Given the level of "integration" going on in that regard, and the level of disruption, that would seem to be a sensible barrier.

best ... khay
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krinn
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 20, 2013 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

khayyam wrote:
... though, honestly, I think there little chance it will become a reality.


I know... But as it seems any devs maintaining something is his own God at handling it, i hope catalyst maintainers will do the same so ; making what changes they think is good for the installation process. And i do think that funtoo bug report speak about a good change. Maybe they will see it too.
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 5:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anon-E-moose wrote:
eth? conflicted with the kernel naming but udev was handling that for most cases so the "need" for changing wasn't really there

"in most cases" unfortunately does not mean reliable. Having a reliable boot process is a need - it is the same reason why systemd is bad[TM].
Quote:
and if they wanted they could have renamed eth? to net? even with the old versions

Well, in the lack of any other rules defaults should be provided which are not eth?
Moreover, if one wants to do a change to the defaults (and the old rules had many drawbacks: I remember many complaints when they were introduced into udev) it is the ideal time to combine both changes. (Of course the new default naming scheme has its drawbacks, too, but at least you now can exchange a damaged network card [if you do it carefully] without the force of a software change which is sometimes not easily possible without having the network running...)

To be honest, I do not understand all the excitement about the change: After all, it is only a change in the defaults. If you want to have the previous unreliable defaults you can still write corresponding rules and live with the risk. It is only for rolling release distributions like gentoo for which you have to be aware to change something if you update udev, but for such a core component like udev you should always be aware that such changes can happen (changes requiring different rules happened many times in udev, even long before 197), and it was announced in news - more information is hardly possible in gentoo.
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 10:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mv wrote:
To be honest, I do not understand all the excitement about the change: After all, it is only a change in the defaults. If you want to have the previous unreliable defaults you can still write corresponding rules and live with the risk. It is only for rolling release distributions like gentoo for which you have to be aware to change something if you update udev, but for such a core component like udev you should always be aware that such changes can happen (changes requiring different rules happened many times in udev, even long before 197), and it was announced in news - more information is hardly possible in gentoo.


This thread isn't about udev new naming scheme, just about removing udev from boot and system per default as it seems a better solve exist.
It's amazing to see you emphasis the need for a reliable boot process and not seeing a problem with a core package that keep changing and introduce new ones...
You can open a thread or read arguments given in existing ones if you want to understand, but to me, you have all the knowledge already for that.
Just vote for "keep udev" if you cannot get why, or just love udev or any reason you wish.
Some people had certainly vote "make udev optional" for strange reasons too anyway.
That's a problem all votes have, that's why i try to lower it without adding a 3rd choice, "I don't know, but i like to vote and click everywhere".
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mv
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2013 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
This thread isn't about udev new naming scheme

The thread not, but the posting to which I replied was.
Quote:
It's amazing to see you emphasis the need for a reliable boot process and not seeing a problem with a core package that keep changing and introduce new ones...

Reliable means that it works on the system reproducable. If you change/update a core component you cannot expect that it works with exactly the same configuration in exactly the same way. If such a change would disqualify a package then the first thing which would have to be thrown out is the linux kernel: It happened more than once that if you just would run make oldconfig without any thinking then the system would not run with the new kernel. Change per se is not a disadvantage - that's how development goes.
Quote:
That's a problem all votes have

I cannot vote, since the alternatives are not clear: udev already is optional since eudev can be used instead. I would vote against making both optional since the alternatives (mdev or static dev) break some hardware, as mentioned earlier.
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