> On 3 May 2023, at 12:50, altoid via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
> From the provided link:
>
> ----
>
> This page shows how to download and install AlloyDB Omni into your
> own Linux-based computing environment.
>
> Before you begin
>
> Before you install AlloyDB Omni, ensure you meet the following system requirements:
>

>    A virtual or physical machine running a Debian-based OS, such as 
>    Debian or Ubuntu, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 8 or 
>    higher.   

>
> --- snip ---
>
> ----
>
> -> Debian-based OS => uses systemd
> -> Devuan-based OS => does not use systemd
>
> Therein lies the *basic* difference: that systemd seems to be a
> requisite.
>
> Best,
>
> A.

I like to think in this case the intention was purely to be a requirement on OS supporting deb packages.

Unfortunately it also appears that the engineers developing this had a one-track mind and didn’t realise that Debian still offers non-systemd process management.

This is noticeable when running the installer script that it uses `systemctl` to check if the docker daemon is running.

My guess is that the hosted Google Cloud version of AlloyDB is running under a special custom systemd configuration somehow on their infrastructure and they didn’t bother to do any changes when bundling and packaging it up as Omni edition for self-hosted usage. It feels a bit like the self-hosted Omni edition was an afterthought after the cloud version was already released.

A proper ground-up development would have done it as a single deb package, similar to what Google offers for the Cloud SDK or Chromium/Chrome browser. The current installer is just a custom shell script stored on some Google Storage drive.

Tom