I am a Linux user, but I don’t really know how most things work, even after years of casual use on my Main, I just started getting into Devuan and wondered then, what exacly does systemd do that most distros have it? What even is init freedom? And why should I care?
It’s main purpose is to make some die-hards angry, I think.
After fighting with multiple network devices today, I feel like I have a right to be angry. Checking the info in dmesg what I see is that the system initially sets up all six NICs (two on the motherboard, four on a card) in the correct order with eth* names. Then something else comes along a couple seconds later (which I assume is systemd) and renames everything to enp* NIC names. If I move the card to a different slot or install a different card with the same model then all those enp* names change to something different, but dmesg still shows their initial eth* names in the expected order before being renamed.
“Predictable” names are anything but, and now you can’t even use the standard udev naming or even put link files under /etc/network/interfaces.d/ because all that stuff has been changed again so now I have to move all the link files to /etc/systemd/network/. I don’t know how anyone considers this a good thing when the convention keeps changing every few years and I actually have to do extra work to put the names back to what linux originally called them at each boot. Where does the madness end?
If you’re using /etc/network/interfaces.d/ and all the NetworkManager related crap you’re doing it wrong. https://garajau.com.br/2022/01/configure-networkd-debian
https://tadeubento.com/2023/systemd-hidden-gems-for-a-better-linux/
There is a grub argument to pass to the kernel that disables that renaming behaviour entirely.
Yep I’m aware of it. Seemed like it worked for a bit, then reverted back to the enp* names. And then all the pages I was finding for manually renaming the devices said to put the files under interfaces.d for deb11 but oddly it only seemed to read those link files for a few reboots, then it would revert back to the enp names. Found something about using OriginalName because the name changes were overlapping, that worked for a few boots and then reverted back to the enp names. So then I found something about a Path statement using the full pci device names, and THAT worked for a few boots and then reverted. So now I found out that the link files have moved to the systemd/network folder so I’m waiting to see how long that lasts…
And I realize it sounds like I’m talking about a system I’ve been running for years… I actually just put together this machine last Thursday. I had to start with Debian 9 because I couldn’t get any newer memory stick images to boot (this machine doesn’t have EUFI support), upgraded to deb10 and everything was still working as expected with the grub lines to disable renaming. Upgraded to deb11 and it all went to hell. I’m having some serious thought of trashing the machine and switching to deuvian now even though I really want to support debian.
