Ubuntu Server And Upstart - Frustrated Again!

[welo]

I'm just coming back to Linux after a 2 year break - mainly used it as development server OS - and Linux already gets on my nerves. I mean how hard can it be to provide an easy way to disable/enable a startup service...?!?

http://ubuntuforums.org/printthread.php?t=1319122&pp=75

Please read the whole thread and you will understand what I mean...

Upstart has been introduced in Ubuntu 6.10, so I've been told, still using SysV style init scripts back then (2006). Recently (with 9.10?) Ubuntu actually introduced 'native' Upstart scripts and everybody now seems to be caught by surprise that existing service manager tools no longer work (on those scripts) and no easy-to-use Upstart compatible tool is provided. Even worse, from what I understand (and I might be wrong here since I'm not a Linux expert) the concept doesn't really seem supported. Furthermore, some of the tools working on SysV init scripts have been removed from the Ubuntu repository (e.g. sysv-rc-conf).

Upstart was first included in Ubuntu in the 6.10 (Edgy Eft) release in late 2006, replacing sysvinit. While the new Upstart daemon is used, most of the services are managed using the old sysvinit scripts. The reason for this has been attributed to missing features that prevent the complete replacement of the existing scripts with native Upstart service descriptions. Since then, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) introduced native Upstart bootup as of Alpha 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstart

The Services option was removed because services-admin is not compatible with the Upstart jobs.

Some of the services are still managed by SysV style init scripts. You can use BUM to disable this services, but you have to manually disable the ones managed by the new Upstart jobs.

source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1351501

And again, if you read the thread from my first link again, it seems that the two discussed options to disable an Upstart script are both not really good.

1. Remove/Rename the conf files in /etc/init - this will break mechanism to start the service manually via 'sudo initctl start SERVICENAME'

2. Edit the script directly to NOT start at any runtime level - this is easy enough by changing only one line in the script 'start on. However, what happens the next time the package is updated?

Don't want to rant about Linux, just take my frustration somewhere so I can continue working

And maybe somebody points me to something that I have missed, there is always hope...

welo

[dave_boo]

(Click on the picture)

The fact that YaST (YaST > System > System Services (Runlevel)) handles what you're trying to do just fine should win you over....stop using a n00b OS!

[welo]

Yeah, I'll think about it.

I guess your noob reference was intentionally provocative, wasn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux...ns#Ubuntu-based

I remember Suse from my early Linux days, and I actually appreciated the gain in ease-of-use that it provided. The package manager was ahead of its (Linux) time. However, the configuration part of Yast had the problem that it made a mess out of the system's configuration files and you had to use it exclusively. I guess this changed with Yast2?

The Linux guru at my former company (who deeply disliked any kind of UI) swore on debian, maybe that is why I ended up with Ubuntu.

I leave it up to others to start a flamewar on which distro is the best, I go with the crowd, since a popular distro means many resources on the internet on how to do things

If I need a headless server installation and don't want to download 4.7 gigs, how would I do that with Suse?

welo

Edited March 12, 2010 by welo

[siamect]

Yeah, I'll think about it.

I guess your noob reference was intentionally provocative, wasn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux...ns#Ubuntu-based

I remember Suse from my early Linux days, and I actually appreciated the gain in ease-of-use that it provided. The package manager was ahead of its (Linux) time. However, the configuration part of Yast had the problem that it made a mess out of the system's configuration files and you had to use it exclusively. I guess this changed with Yast2?

The Linux guru at my former company (who deeply disliked any kind of UI) swore on debian, maybe that is why I ended up with Ubuntu.

I leave it up to others to start a flamewar on which distro is the best, I go with the crowd, since a popular distro means many resources on the internet on how to do things

If I need a headless server installation and don't want to download 4.7 gigs, how would I do that with Suse?

welo

Ubuntu is just fine for both server and desktop... and it is great for booth noobs and others.

I used to run Slackware and Gentoo for years and yes, they are much more fun and you learn a lot...

But after all, someone has to pay your hours so you end up with Ubuntu. It is quite efficient because of all ready to use instructions you find everywhere...

What is it you are trying to do? Most of the things you do installs the services through the package manager and if you just want to stop something temporarily then you just type something like

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or whatever you need to do...

Take care

Martin

[welo]

What is it you are trying to do? Most of the things you do installs the services through the package manager and if you just want to stop something temporarily then you just type something like

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or whatever you need to do...

Take care

Martin

Well, I ticked a bunch of server apps during the Ubuntu install and don't need all of them yet running all the time. So I thought I just disable automatic startup for now so the Vm boots up faster. No reason to remove the corresponding packages.

Everything works pretty nicely so far, I am using VirtualBox in headless mode and can start the VM via batch script, then open a terminal with putty. I use it as a development server for subversion, mysql, maybe trac and other stuff.

Ubuntu Server seems lightweight enough, starts up pretty fast already, and I want to keep memory consumption low so I don't have to assign a lot of RAM to the VM.

The inconvenience with the service management is not a big deal for me, it is more a continuation of my previous love/hate relationship with Linux.

I just like a simple command to disable/enable automatic startup for a specific service. Something like chkconfig.

chkconfig provides a simple command-line tool for maintaining the

/etc/rc[0-6].d directory hierarchy by relieving system administrators

of the task of directly manipulating the numerous symbolic links in

those directories

chkconfig --list [name]

chkconfig --add name

chkconfig --del name

chkconfig [--level levels] name <on|off|reset>

chkconfig [--level levels] name

Unfortunately those tools have been deprecated with 9.10 and removed from the repository since they don't work with Upstart scripts - at least this is what I understood.

Maybe I just install 9.04... I didn't setup a lot of stuff yet, so this would be an easy move...

welo

[siamect]

What is it you are trying to do? Most of the things you do installs the services through the package manager and if you just want to stop something temporarily then you just type something like

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or whatever you need to do...

Take care

Martin

Well, I ticked a bunch of server apps during the Ubuntu install and don't need all of them yet running all the time. So I thought I just disable automatic startup for now so the Vm boots up faster. No reason to remove the corresponding packages.

Everything works pretty nicely so far, I am using VirtualBox in headless mode and can start the VM via batch script, then open a terminal with putty. I use it as a development server for subversion, mysql, maybe trac and other stuff.

Ubuntu Server seems lightweight enough, starts up pretty fast already, and I want to keep memory consumption low so I don't have to assign a lot of RAM to the VM.

The inconvenience with the service management is not a big deal for me, it is more a continuation of my previous love/hate relationship with Linux.

I just like a simple command to disable/enable automatic startup for a specific service. Something like chkconfig.

chkconfig provides a simple command-line tool for maintaining the

/etc/rc[0-6].d directory hierarchy by relieving system administrators

of the task of directly manipulating the numerous symbolic links in

those directories

chkconfig --list [name]

chkconfig --add name

chkconfig --del name

chkconfig [--level levels] name <on|off|reset>

chkconfig [--level levels] name

Unfortunately those tools have been deprecated with 9.10 and removed from the repository since they don't work with Upstart scripts - at least this is what I understood.

Maybe I just install 9.04... I didn't setup a lot of stuff yet, so this would be an easy move...

welo

Ok I understand... you use VM under windows... In that case RAM can be an issue.

I always have a server running in my kitchen so startup time is never an issue and

RAM is not a problem either...

I usually do development locally on my laptop and I use git to push the stuff to my

"kitchen-server" and from there the webserver can pull the version I want to run.

This can be done automatically or manually and it gives me a good backup at the same time.

Take care

Martin

[dave_boo]

Yeah, I'll think about it.

I guess your noob reference was intentionally provocative, wasn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux...ns#Ubuntu-based

I remember Suse from my early Linux days, and I actually appreciated the gain in ease-of-use that it provided. The package manager was ahead of its (Linux) time. However, the configuration part of Yast had the problem that it made a mess out of the system's configuration files and you had to use it exclusively. I guess this changed with Yast2?

The Linux guru at my former company (who deeply disliked any kind of UI) swore on debian, maybe that is why I ended up with Ubuntu.

I leave it up to others to start a flamewar on which distro is the best, I go with the crowd, since a popular distro means many resources on the internet on how to do things

If I need a headless server installation and don't want to download 4.7 gigs, how would I do that with Suse?

welo

Very intentional....

And to quote my grandpa, if popularity is equal to quality, than Britney Spears is almost as good as the Beatles.

To be honest, I farted around in YaST back in the day, but eventually learned my ways around otherwise; I can't honestly answer your questions in that regard since I haven't used it for configuration for some 5-6 years. And SuSE has great support, if you've ever tried to join a Domain (and I'll hear crap about that I know), there's no easier distro to do it on-for example.

To install without a bunch of crap...go here and choose the "Network" icon/picture thingy (1/2 down the page on a 1280x1024 screen). Scroll back up and choose the options that match your installation (32/64 bit PC, Direct Link/BitTorrent/Metalink/Pick Mirror). It's some 110 mb. Burn to CD and reboot. A minimal install launches (actually YaST IIRC) and you get to choose the packages that you want installed with dependencies resolved automatically.

[welo]

I installed Ubuntu Server 9.04 and installed sysvconfig... works.

However, I noticed that the startup speed of 9.10 increased quite a bit (roughly 10 seconds) compared to 9.04. This might be due to the change to Upstart, which is event based and doesn't require a strict sequential execution of startup processes.

I am trying to install openSuse, too, just to give it a try and since it is so easy using VM's. Network install works, had to change to a Thai mirror manually though, although the webpage states that this should work automatically (using 3BB's DNS server btw).

I am also doing a text based install since I assumed that would be better with only 256 of memory assigned to the VM

It failed three times already with a non-explaining error message.

Will try graphical install with more RAM.

welo

[welo]

Solved one issue so far...

On the setup page one should configure the online repository manually (F4)

server: 61.7.253.242

directory: osarchive/opensuse/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/

Not sure why it doesn't work by domain name (mirror.in.th) - don't think it's my router's DNS that causes problems since it resolved the IP correctly.

The directory is different from what is stated on http://mirrors.opensuse.org/, the osarchive/ directory is missing.

welo

Edited March 14, 2010 by welo

[welo]

Forget about HTTP! The Thai mirror seems to be broken. Without the osarchive/ subdirectory it reports 'cannot find repository', adding it will allow the install to start but fail later during package download.

Using FTP now and it works.

server: 61.7.253.242

directory: opensuse/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/

Also increased RAM to 512 MB, still using text install.

Error from screenshot didn't come back so far.

welo

Edited March 14, 2010 by welo

[welo]

And yet another update.

Had to manually change to the Singapore server during the install process since the Thai mirror doesn't provide the update files for 11.2

Wasn't the smoothest install though - didn't Suse provide CD install images before and you could just take the first CD to setup a basic system, the other images containing more 'exotic' software.

Maybe the LIVE CDs offer a server install...?

Suse is the slowest to start up by far (compared to my two Ubuntu VMs).

Yast2 seems to be very extensive, can't say more yet.

I like that it auto-loaded some VirtualBox addons.

welo

[dave_boo]

And yet another update.

Had to manually change to the Singapore server during the install process since the Thai mirror doesn't provide the update files for 11.2

Wasn't the smoothest install though - didn't Suse provide CD install images before and you could just take the first CD to setup a basic system, the other images containing more 'exotic' software.

Maybe the LIVE CDs offer a server install...?

Suse is the slowest to start up by far (compared to my two Ubuntu VMs).

Yast2 seems to be very extensive, can't say more yet.

I like that it auto-loaded some VirtualBox addons.

welo

Glad you got it up and running; I've noticed that even with Ubuntu the Thai servers give me errors...don't know the reasons.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether or not SuSE still has the 'Slackware' style offering with the base system CD and add-ons; I'd assume that your thoughts in regards to using the live image would work; perhaps installing it to a USB thumbdrive would be the fastest way of getting it on your system (least ways that's what I've found out over time).

Did you install Gnome or KDE? KDE is terrible for startup times, but I do give n00buntu credit for pushing startup times downwards.

[welo]

Did you install Gnome or KDE? KDE is terrible for startup times, but I do give n00buntu credit for pushing startup times downwards.

No XWindow, just plain command line.