Remove the complexity of transactions from the attributes-setting code.

Remove the complexity of transactions from the attributes-setting code.

I think it is just too complex and error prone to init and cancel
transactions during the module init code.  Instead, this isn't prone
to races as it will always achieve a steady state (eventually), and
most cases will never do the write.

Andrew Bartlett
(This used to be commit d60977cc7f89f89f34187f310c91d1ab7db6ccf2)