this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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I feel like Im dancing around perhaps the most fundamental piece of my operating system everytime I run and install software. Starting services with systemctl and checking logs with journalctl is the extent of my knowledge.

Do you know of good resources or tutorials for learning how systemd works and how to use it to run software on my desktop and servers? Thanks.

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[–] TCB13 26 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Next up: Learn how to create .service file, you may be able to use it from the template provided.

Then learn about target and unit

Find these on Youtube

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Then .timer. Then .mount. Then .automount. Then .socket.

[–] InnerScientist 4 points 1 week ago

see systemd.unit(5), systemd.service(5), systemd.socket(5), systemd.device(5), systemd.mount(5), systemd.automount(5), systemd.swap(5), systemd.target(5), systemd.path(5), systemd.timer(5), systemd.slice(5), systemd.scope(5) systemd.link(5), systemd.netdev(5), systemd.network(5) and honorable mentions podman-systemd.unit .container, .volume, .network(...again), .kube, .image, .build and .pod

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It seems even I have many many many things to learn still

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Then .device and .boot and .home and .gov and .co.uk

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

The best crash course I received was when I needed to translate my startup scripts into systemd services. The hands-on learning was priceless.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

The arch wiki is always a good place to check for these sorts of things, whether or not you use arch btw.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

The man pages.

[–] seaQueue 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Write a couple of your own toy services as practice. Write a one-shot that fires at a particular time during boot, a normal service that would run a daemon and a mount service that fires after its dependencies are loaded (like, say, a bind mount that sets up a directory under /run/foo after the backing filesystem is mounted - I do this to make fast ext4 storage available in some parts of the VFS tree while using a btrfs filesystem for everything else.) You can also write file watcher services that fire after changes to a file or directory, I use one of those to mirror /boot/ to /.boot/ on another filesystem so it's captured by my system snapshots.

I'd start by reading the docs so you have some ideas about what services can do, then you'll find uses that you wouldn't have thought of before.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

https://nosystemd.org/

Sorry, I couldn't resist. /j, obviously.