systemd: time-outs, journal size, Xorg terminals

I prefer SysVinit to Systemd, in the same way I prefer OSS to ALSA, and ALSA to PulseAudio: the newer stuff creates problems where there were none. Among these problems are locating configuration commands or files in the face of opaque memory or CPU hogging defaults.

time-outs

During shut down and start-up, systemd will wait too long to kill or initialize internet connections, among other things. Set the systemd time-out restrictions...

dhcpcd tries to initialize

After an update, dhcpcd occasionally is re-enabled at boot. Since it tries all interfaces, it will hang on any that are not connected. Furthermore, the process is partly obscured, so it's tricky to find. The standard "list-unit-files" does not give a complete syntax. So although one disables dhcpcd.service, the other service is not fully named and is cryptically called by a different name in boot.

# systemctl list-unit-files |grep dhcpcd
dhcpcd.service disabled disabled
dhcpcd@.service indirect disabled

$ systemctl status dhcpcd*@*.service
* dhcpcd@enp4s0.service - dhcpcd on enp4s0
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/dhcpcd@.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2020-06-09 04:32:17 PDT; 7min ago
Process: 362 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dhcpcd -q -w enp4s0 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

The name you need here is dhcpcd@enp4s0.service, it cannot be disabled as the first name given, simply dhcpcd@.service. To stop this hang...

# systemctl disable dhcpcd@enp4s0.service
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/dhcpcd@enp4s0.service.

journald logs

Prior to systemd, boot-ups used to log to /var/log, pretty much auto-magically via rsyslog (syslog). The only thing one had to configure was chron's timeline for rotating old logs into the trash. Suckily, journald logs grow until they take over something like 10% of disk space by default. To me, it's yet another mistake of the last 8 years of Linux -- adding boggy new application layers instead of improving and simplifying long-standing daemons¹. At any rate, journald must be configured if you want anything reasonable and intelligible. Secondly, you must use "journalctl" the read them, because they are stored in a binary format.

Since there are about 30 settings in /etc/systemd/journald.conf, an hour is wasted researching journald's settings.

# nano /etc/systemd/journald.conf
Storage=auto
SystemMaxUse=200K

When I want an ASCII record for grepping, etc, I use journalctl -r -o short-iso ("r" reverses time to put most recent on top, "short-iso" is for giving normal clock timestamps), and save screen output to text:

$ journalctl -r -o short-iso 2>&1 file.txt

Alternatively, one can output other formats such as the apparently standard JSON format. It cannot however export directly to text unless it's to another application.

This the file when the system is running well and no logging is needed:

Storage=none

notes

• 200K of logging seems to cover about the last 10 boots.
• journalctl --verify checks logs for corruption

xorg terminals

If systemd is not restricted, it will open 40+ terminals when you open X, buring hundreds of unnecessary MB's of memory. Seven terminals is sufficient for operations inside X

# nano /etc/systemd/logind.conf
NAutoVTs=6

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¹It's as stupid as when PulseAudio took hold of Alsa (which itself overlaid OSS)