92 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Running graphical user services with systemd
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date: 2022-03-18
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---
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> This post is day 3 of me taking part in the
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> [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com/) challenge.
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I've recently switched from KDE Plasma to sway as my window manager. I had a problem with the change though: the amazing kdeconnect service weren't working!
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My first attempt at fixing this was to just add a lines into sway config to launch it along with sway.
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```
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exec /usr/lib/kdeconnectd
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```
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Looks simple enough. But for some reason, `kdeconnectd` would just disappear
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after a while. It would appear to run at startup, and then an hour or two later
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I pull up the kdeconnect app on my phone and it would tell me that my computer
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is disconnected.
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The biggest issue here was that I had no way to see why kdeconnect had failed.
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In comes systemd to save the day. Systemd is a service manager, so it will
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actually maintain the logs for these services. That means if kdeconnect is
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crashing, I can check the logs for kdeconnect to see why it crashed. I can also
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configure it to auto-restart after a crash if I want to.
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To launch graphical applications with systemd though, you need to pass the
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appropriate environment variables to it so it knows how to launch new windows.
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I added this line to my sway config to do exactly that.
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```
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# Pass all variables to dbus & systemd to run graphical user services
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exec dbus-update-activation-environment --all --systemd
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```
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Next, we need to write a service files to run the application. This is easier
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than it sounds, here's the service file I wrote for kdeconnect:
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```
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[Unit]
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Description=Run kdeconnectd.
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After=graphical-session.target
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StartLimitIntervalSec=600
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StartLimitBurst=5
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[Service]
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Type=basic
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ExecStart=/usr/lib/kdeconnectd
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Restart=on-failure
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RestartSec=5s
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[Install]
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WantedBy=graphical-session.target
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```
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I saved this as `~/.config/systemd/user/kdeconnectd.service`. Finally, enabled it for my user with `systemctl --user enable kdeconnectd.service` and then restarted.
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The service is configured to automatically restart on failure, but not if it
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failed more than 5 times in the last 10 minutes. Systemd also waits 5 seconds
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before trying to restart the failed service. This way if it crashes for some
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reason, it will restart. But if it keeps crashing rapidly, it won't keep
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trying to restart which could take up too much system resources.
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I can now check how the service is doing with systemd!
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```
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Warning: The unit file, source configuration file or drop-ins of kdeconnectd.service changed on disk. Run 'systemctl --user daemon-reload>
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● kdeconnectd.service - Run kdeconnectd.
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Loaded: loaded (/home/kaan/.config/systemd/user/kdeconnectd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
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Active: active (running) since Thu 2022-03-17 14:18:15 EDT; 1h 46min ago
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Main PID: 2188363 (kdeconnectd)
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Tasks: 6 (limit: 77007)
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Memory: 24.2M
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CPU: 2.440s
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CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/kdeconnectd.service
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└─2188363 /usr/lib/kdeconnectd
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Mar 17 14:20:58 eclipse systemd[817]: /home/kaan/.config/systemd/user/kdeconnectd.service:6: Unknown key name 'type' in section 'Service'>
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Mar 17 15:16:11 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: QObject::connect(KWayland::Client::Registry, Unknown): invalid nullptr parameter
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Mar 17 15:16:11 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: kdeconnect.plugin.battery: No Primary Battery detected on this system. This may be a bug.
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Mar 17 15:16:11 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: kdeconnect.plugin.battery: Total quantity of batteries found: 0
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Mar 17 15:23:26 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: QObject::connect(KWayland::Client::Registry, Unknown): invalid nullptr parameter
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Mar 17 15:23:26 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: kdeconnect.plugin.battery: No Primary Battery detected on this system. This may be a bug.
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Mar 17 15:23:26 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: kdeconnect.plugin.battery: Total quantity of batteries found: 0
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Mar 17 15:23:26 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: QMetaObject::invokeMethod: No such method KIO::StoredTransferJob::slotDataReqFromDevice()
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Mar 17 15:24:35 eclipse kdeconnectd[2188363]: QMetaObject::invokeMethod: No such method KIO::StoredTransferJob::slotDataReqFromDevice()
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Mar 17 15:57:29 eclipse systemd[817]: /home/kaan/.config/systemd/user/kdeconnectd.service:9: Unknown key name 'type' in section 'Service'>
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```
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A bunch of warnings so far, but no crashes yet. But if it does crash again, I'll finally know why.
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