Bug#825394: systemd kill background processes after user logs out

[erdnaxeli]

On Mon, 30 May 2016 22:19:48 +0200 John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <
glaubitz at physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > don't think the right response should be to just fix it one way
> > for everyone, especially not since those people in charge of hundreds
> > of systems have exactly one vote, similar to those who just develop
> > for their own home workstation.
>
> I'm sorry, but this is a very bad argument. People who are in charge
> of hundreds of systems almost never use the default settings but use
> something like FAI, Puppet or ansible to configure their systems
> exactly the way they need them. No one is installing hundreds of
> computers manually with the d-i images like you would do on a single
> machine, that would just be nuts. And in these scenarios, changing
> the default settings of configuration files in packages is a daily
> routine and nothing special. So, this change has *zero* negative
> impact for these users.
>
> As for the usefulness of this change: I used to work at the IT departmant
> of a large university in the past and I have some experience in this
regard.
> In fact, this particular change in systemd solves a *very* common problem
in
> these setups which are leftover processes on the computers in the student
computer
> pools as around at least a dozen different users are logging in and out
again
> on these machines per day with many different processes still staying
around, and,
> no, this is not particularly a GNOME problem - it's a general problem
which
> is usually solved with a cron job which kills leftover processes
regularly.
>
> Some people here suggested that, instead of adding such a functionality to
> the session manager, affected projects should just fix their software
which
> effectively translates to "People should write bug-free software" which
> is, of course, an unrealistic goal and therefore not really adding to
> the discussion in any fruitful manner.
>
> Thus, the systemd approach is actually sane and exactly what most admins
of
> larger setups with many users want. And it's not that the systemd
developers
> did not provide an opt-out solution. As it was clearly documented in the
> release notes, users are free to disable this feature or use systemd-run
> to explicitly prevent a process from being killed upon logout which is
> *exactly* what every admin wants: Processes should be killed upon logout
> by default and anything that should remain running should request an
> explicit permission from the session management. There is really no other
> good way to tackle this problem. Admins will neither be able to prevent
> buggy software (since users could just write and run their own buggy
> software) nor is it practical to keep a long black list with runaway
> processes which are being killed upon logout.

I don't understand something. You are a sysadmin, in an IT department. So I
suppose
you use something like « FAI, Putter or ansible to configure [your] systems
». Why
can't *you* set the right option you want? The feature already exists!

I think the problem is not about the feature. The problem is only about the
default value. The solution with debconf seems pretty good to me for end
users,
and the sysadmin already know what they want, as you say it.

>
> It's honestly very frustrating to read bug reports like these as they
> are usually written by people who lack the necessary background or refuse
> to accept that their particular use case is not the common use case. And I
> have more the impression that these bug reports are merely written to
> stir up emotions because, again, the systemd developers dared to touch
> something in the Linux software stack which has not been touch for years
> while solving yet another long-existing problem. A reasonable person
wouldn't
> even mind about such changes. They would either just disable the feature
> completely or use the provided mechanisms to white-list individual
processes
> which takes less time than writing up such a bug report and stirring up
> emotions.
>
> Thanks,
> Adrian
>


Alexandre Morignot
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