[tsc-devel] Re: Server problems with systemd

Ryan Gonzalez | Thu, 07 Jun 2018 13:14:52 UTC

On June 7, 2018 7:21:00 AM Marvin Gülker <…r@p…> wrote:

> Hi everyone,

>

> it has long been known that our server has some problems, especially

> when starting up not all daemons are properly started. Most notably, the

> Cron daemon doesn't start.

>

> It has been discovered that the reason is that our VPS is hosted on an

> OpenVZ system with kernel 2.6.32, which is too old for Debian Stretch's

> systemd. See https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5236 (beware flamewar


That nosedived the second the guy brought in MariaDB...

>

> This is unfortunate and we'll have to think about how we continue. I

> have been in contact with our server sponsor (First Root) already, and

> they say that a kernel upgrade is outright impossible. Access to a KVM

> machine has been denied to us earlier, so that's not an alternative

> either. They have suggested we disable systemd and switch to SysV init

> for the time being.

>

> While this is certainly an option, it strikes me as problematic. Debian

> has ported much to systemd already and is not going to go back. I regard

> the alternative distribution Devuan as no professional alternative that

> could be used. We have different options now.

>

> 1. We could, for now, remove systemd and replace it with SysV init,

>    hoping that First Root at some point upgrades their OpenVZ

>    installation. This sounds easiest to me for the moment.


Question: how much is this Debian version dependent on sysvinit?

> 2. We could switch from Debian to a non-systemd distribution (hard to

>    find a professional one, believe me).


There's always CentOS 6, which uses that old kernel version but still gets 
security updates until 2020.

> 3. We could host our infrastructure elsewhere.

>

> Option 3 means leaving our sponsor or paying for a KVM machine. xet7 has

> offered to host our infrastructure on his employer's cloud machine, but

> as they're US-based this might be giving us trouble under the GDPR which

> I as the project lead do have to take into consideration as I'm a EU

> citizen.


If the company offers service to EU customers, shouldn't they already be 
GDPR-compliant?

>

> Option 3 also is going to cause a lot of work as everything needs to be

> ported. I don't think I have enough free time for this available at the

> moment.

>

> Any thoughts on different alternatives are highly appreciated. I even

> thought I could set aside a Raspberry Pi at my home and have it run

> everything, but it turns out that hosting servers at my home violates my

> ISP's terms of service, so this option is out as well. Sending email

> from customer IPs also doesn't do any good, they're always

> hard-blacklisted as spam sources.


I'd offer my VPS, but it's dirt cheap ($10/year) and randomly goes 
down...not really ideal...

In theory, depending on how much we directly use systemd, could we switch 
the main distro (e.g. to CentOS 6) but then throw up a Debian container 
inside it? That way the config could be nearly identical, but the part 
touching the kernel would be compatible.

>

> Marvin

>

> --

> Blog: https://mg.guelker.eu

> PGP/GPG ID: F1D8799FBCC8BC4F

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