Questions from my local LUG ML

[Conrad Knauer]

Hi there! ^_^

On my local LUG ML a small question about init in Ubuntu escalated
into a complex discussion about upstart
(http://list.slg.org/200701/index.html#11942)

While the initial question of 'why do we need to replace init?' was
answered fairly quickly by several people, there are still a few
matters that I (still relatively new to the inner workings of Linux :)
can't answer and so would like to pose here:


- "Has anyone [outside of Ubuntu] taken a good, close look at upstart
to see if there's any design problems there?" (and a corollary; are
any other distros planning on adopting upstart?)

- In trying to replace "cron, atd, anacron and inetd" in addition to
init, does "Upstart [run] contrary to the basic philosophy of Unix
[...] Make each program do one thing well"? I quoted the Rationale
section from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReplacementInitDiscussion but
they didn't seem to agree that those "perform the same kind of job";
one person said "Adding cron/at or inetd to the mix just doesn't make
any sense." and another elaborated:

"I still fail to see how at/anacron/cron and inetd and init are
variations of the same task, other than the most vague idea that "they
are all ways of starting programs/services."  (so is the command
line... are we somehow going to move that into upstart too?)  Their
functions are quite different.  I stand by my statement that putting
at/cron/anacron/inetd functionality into upstart is contrary to the
KISS principle."

-  Is upstart's design itself a potential security risk?  As one person put it:

"The idea of any monolithic program listening on a few dozen network
ports is scary, as is any program responsible for managing many task
along with extra stuff. [...] one tool running with privileges
managing all that stuff is silly.  The day Window became insecure was
the day MS started pushing all the userland tools into system space.
BIND has been rewritten several times and still hasn't eliminated all
the security problems associated with it's monolithic design. In
comparison, how often do we see exploits for ls, head, cat, etc.?"


Thanks in advance for the answers! :)

Sincerely,
Conrad Knauer