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A comment on Systemd v228 local root exploit. Parent comment

Re:Systemd v228 local root exploit by scrollaway on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @10:50PM (#13478319)
Sorry, I read your post the wrong way around.

I think you're conflating "transparent" and "deterministic".

Init is more transparent in that there are less layers to it. But systemd is more deterministic because it is able to make more guarantees about the state of the system.

Similarly, docker is also more opaque but far more deterministic than a provisioning script.

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Re:Systemd v228 local root exploit by bandrami on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @09:03AM (#13481401)
No, we're just thinking about determinism differently.

Systemd makes (or at least tries to make) guarantees about outcomes, which means it doesn't make guarantees about process. SysV (at least the traditional BSD-style a la Slackware) makes guarantees about process, which means it doesn't make guarantees about outcomes. I prefer determinism of process to determinism of outcome.

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