Hi all,

First let me get this out of the way: although I have definite opinions in the "systemd is God!"/"systemd is Satan!" kerfuffle, that is NOT my reason for posting. So if you are tempted to reply in flamefashion on either side, I kindly request that you breathe, count to ten, and Just Walk Away. ;^)

I am one of those distro-hopper types, and have a Netbook on which there are three Linux installs: Slackware, Debian and Arch. Slackware is my default, and Slackware has so far not adopted systemd. Everything is working fine there, and I have no complaints.

The other two distros, however, have had enormous problems since systemd came on board:

1) Debian now takes forever to boot completely (reminding me unpleasantly of Windows, in fact). Once up and running, although NetworkManager shows a strong connection, I am apparently NOT connected (and cannot so far connect) to my home network, because I can't even ping anything (let alone do anything more complicated). Finally, the system seem to never want to completely shut down, but just hangs at various points.

2) Arch is the one with which I have the least experience. It has the same no-network symptoms as Debian does, and if I recall correctly (haven't booted it for a while) it also has the same reluctance to shut down. Bootup is (again if I recall) pretty fast, but that is probably because there is not much installed.

I have Googled some and have not found a consistent answer (or one that worked for me) to the networking issue, which is the most annoying of the three.

I'm doing my best to give systemd a fair shake, mainly because I have friends -- who are much smarter than I am -- who say it is a Good Thing. However, I have to admit it now has a rather large strike against it.

Can anyone point me at a good resource for doing what seems to me are very fundamental things with a systemd'd system?

Thanks,

Glenn

Weeeell, I don't know whether I can directly answer your question and I'm not sure how much it would help if I could. but here are some fragments, which may have some helpful elements (if you are really lucky).

This is the closest I get to a flame on the subject: I expected to hate/loathe/despise systemd, but, actually I don't even notice it. This does mean that although I use it, I don't know that much about it, not having had to fix problems... I hope that was tolerable.

I've no reason to suspect that this is a systemd problem. It might be, it might not be. NM is quite capable of having problems all on its own, and in version a few years back, often did.

I'm not sure whether debugging NM issues is on topic here, but

• are there any error messages?
• does the ip address get set?
• default gateway?
• does /etc/resolv.conf get re-written, and does it make sense?
• have you tried the alternative of using wicd?

Now, on to the main course. let's assume that the problem is that you don't understand systemd. I don't know whether this is the case, but it might be. So, here are some linky things that might help with that.

https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorial...tro-to-systemd
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorial...x-with-systemd
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorial...with-prejudice
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Soft...AskedQuestions

I think, in particular, the 'blame game' article might be what you want.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks! Great links -- maybe this was a "Let me Google that for you" moment for me ...

/Glenn

The only thing that you stated that is actually relevant to systemd is the boot & shutdown times. As far as having systemd in debian you would have to have testing, sid or upgraded to systemd thru backports.

As far as booting my debian system takes 2 mins. to get to login screen & a couple of secs to shutdown so I beleive that your debian install was wheezy or you installed to a virtual machine, which isn't going to be the same as on bare metal.

Hmm. 2 minutes? That's way slower than my Slackware box.

I'm not convinced the connectivity issue is not systemd-related. As I said at the outset, I have one system without systemd and networking works as it always has. The two distros that had (Arch had it when I installed, and I've never been able to connect to a network) or adopted (I've had the Debian installation, and systemd-less, for years - and networking used to work great) systemd won't connect to anything.

I will have to keep tinkering, at any rate.

For what it is worth, my Debian install is jessie with a couple of sid packages sewn in.

Now it's down to 56secs. from powerbutton to actual desktop(after input of password).