When people complain about systemd "violating the unix philosophy", this is what they actually mean
Credit for the answer used in the right panel: https://serverfault.com/a/841150
When you hate something so much you have to find weird corner cases to support your views. Even then the way described isn’t how someone who knows that they are doing would do.
The best way for an unprivileged user to manage a service is for that user to run it. That way you inherit the correct permissions / acls / selinux contexts.
The command to do so is:
systemctl --user start the_service.service
What if multiple users have to manage that service?
Edit: nvrmnd, pretty sure the runnit solution won't allow this either, your answer is correct. What about while the service is already running? Wouldn't your solution require a restart?
If the service is already running it has to be stopped as a system service and run as a user service. In order to ensure that the service inherits all the correct permissions / acls / se linux policies the service needs to be launched from the limited permissions context.
With the systemd approach you’re not just passing a control handle around. You’re ensuring the process is running under an appropriate security context.
If you want to let multiple users manage the user systems service, I would probably go with sudo and systemd user files. You could create a group which has sudo access etc. The important idea is that an unprivileged user controls an unprivileged service.
pretty sure the runnit solution won’t allow this either
I'm no expert, but I think you could make a special group, set the supervise directory to be owned by that group, and add all relevant users to that group? Either way, as I explained in a different reply, running the service as a user vs letting that user control a root service are completely different things, and one is not always a substitute for the other.
A generic stack overflow answer:
Do you REALLY need multiple users to manage that service? Maybe it's better to have multiple instances of that service and.... (This goes on and on)
have to find weird corner cases
Lol. Lmao even. I needed to do this because I wanted to learn the miryoku keyboard layout , and I wanted a way to quickly switch between Miryoku and standard QWERTY. The best way to do this that I could come up with was to bind a special key on my keyboard to toggle kmonad on and off. So I wrote a service for kmonad and gave my user permission to manage it. Running kmonad as my user wouldn't work, because kmonad needs root to create a virtual input device.
Luckily, I am running Void, so the solution was a single well-documented command. Out of curiosity I decided to take a look at what this would look like on systemd distros, leading to this meme. Honestly, I had to do a double take by the time the guy started talking about Javascript.
I feel kind of useless typing this out because you're just gonna ignore it anyway. In my post, I am talking about needing to do X. Your response is "why are you doing X, you should do Y". Why am I not surprised that you're a systemd user? Do you also use Gnome by any chance?
Hey. There is no reason to feel useless. Everyone has value. And the best part about Linux is that we all can make our own choices. If people hate systemd they don’t have to use it. That’s ok. Void linux I think is actually a pretty cool distro. It reminds me of the BSDs for some reason.
I use systemd because I like how it works and I think it’s well designed. As for desktops I am a huge fan of sway. Gnome isn’t bad on a laptop or tablet though. What do you use?
Your response is "why are you doing X, you should do Y"
Because they're right, you shouldn't do X. I know that's not a satisfying answer for most people to hear, but it's often one people need to hear.
If the process must run as root, then giving a user direct and unauthenticated control over it is a security vulnerability. You've created a quick workaround for your issue, and to be clear it is unlikely to realistically cause you problems individually, but on a larger scale that becomes a massive issue. A better solution is required rather than recommend everybody create a hole in their security like yours in order to do this thing.
If this is something that unprivileged users reasonably want to control, then this control should be possible unprivileged, or at least with limited privilege, not by simply granting permanent total control of a root service.
This is ultimately an upstream issue more than anything else.
he's trying to run the service as a user without run sudo, good luck trying that with runit
Maybe its a root shell?
he don't want to log as root, so a root shell isn't what he want
And people who like systemd just thought of the first part of the answer which is exactly what the asker ended up doing.
Which is basically the same as the runit way while putting everything in the user's directory.
Haters gonna hate
Correct. I fucking hate systemd.
Ok, just stop complaining. Almost everyone else disagrees and most of the community doesn't even know that there is a different init system. Systemd was widely accepted 6 years ago and we have moved on.
The good news is that you don't have to use it. The bad news is pretty much everyone expects you to be using it.
Big news (from 2017): debian held back software features because someone doesn't like the new way of doing things. Let's blame systemd for this unprecedented case.
What's wrong with giving access to the specific sudo command, as suggested in the other answers?
How is chown-R someuser different from systemctl—user?
one is giving the permission to manage the system service to a specific user, the other is running the service as the current user so they have permission to manage it by default
I'm gonna fuck up my desktop now breaking away from systemd
Yeah, I would switch off, but it just doesn't seem worth the effort for something I rarely interact with.
If it’s providing you the functionality you want using an overhead you’re fine with, there’s no reason to change it.
I'm using Debian without ever having been involved in the init-wars. What's wrong with Systemd and why should i not use it?
I'd like to know too, a ELI5 version if possible. Somethingsomething monolithic, but what does that actually mean for me as an end user?
In my personal opinion, correct me if I'm wrong:
Systemd was created to replace the init system, then through extreme scope creep took over way more than wanted and needed, the main developer was "problematic" to say it politically correct, and in practice it has over complicated many super easy tasks to the point that I hate it. Other init systems were intuitive, systemd is all but.
Few weeks ago I setup a systemd server ssh server. Changing the port would be 5 seconds in changing a line in the sshd config, but now with the new and improved systemd I need to follow some nightmare documentation into creating systemd files in unrelated places and reload configs or something and I'm done with it
If you've never had a reason to not use it, then it's fine to continue using it. Systemd has been shown to be more or less stable, fast, and secure. The reason I don't like it is because it makes simple things really complicated. Some examples:
If none of these sound familiar, then switching to a non-systemd distro likely won't make your life easier. But if you do, then it might be worth considering.
I'm out of the loop. The answer that references "one person's personal opinion" is from 2017, and the context it links to is from 2016. Surely things have changed since then, right?
.. Right?
(I'm genuinely asking, I've got no idea)
Edit: I just checked on Linux Mint 21.3. It's still on the same version as back then, 0.105. Well, Debian is nothing if not sable!
Bookworm looks to be on version 122, so as downstream distros update to newer Debian versions, it should be updated now
lol, I didn't even attempt to read the full thing. But now you made me curious.
But only curious. I don't feel smart enough to read and comprehend the entire thing.
And how do you do this in gnu shepherd?
You don't!
Is it r-unit, or run-it?
I've read it as r-unit for so long and now I've only just realised that run-it makes far more sense
Someone is asking the important questions
lol I've been pronouncing nginx as "enn-jinx" for so long before I learned that it was "engine-ex".
I'm not yet convinced that "violating the unix philosophy" is a bad thing. I'm not saying that it's not, I don't have a defined opinion about this yet
Guys I only used SystemD and I didn’t know you could use anything else lol stop hating I never had any problems!
DJB is a genius
Which one looks more enterprisey and ensure your job security?
your job security
I think I finally understand why systemd bots defend their init system so aggressively.
Does resolve.d let me use DHCP address with a manually set DNS server yet?
netwok and resolve d are cancer
Runit, making systems easily pwnable since 2004 🎉
Wow much philosopy. Is great. Incredible chievement. Very pressive!
Gonna be honest, never heard of running before this. Briefly considered switching before OPs presentation in the comments turned me off. I don't want to associate with his/ her mind of weirdo, they aren't fun.
systemd is for the weak. red hat and lennart are just shit.
I don't support calling people who volunteer their time to develop free software "just shit", but I can't help but agree at least a little bit about redhat. Redhat is kind of like Richard Nixon: if you just assume that eveything you dislike is their fault, you would be right surprisingly often.
That being said, they did also contribute to a lot of kickass software, from btrfs to Firefox to linux namespaces to qemu to pipewire, as well as to software that you can't really live without like glibc or gdb. So I guess the converse also holds: if you just assume that everything you like is there thanks to redhat, you would be correct pretty often as well. Can't really say that about Nixon though.
hitler built the autobahn. enough to not call him shit? doubt that.
what lennart and red hat have done is just terrible.