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submitted 2 days ago by rutrum@lm.paradisus.day to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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[-] astra1701@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

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

[-] cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

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

[-] InnerScientist@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours 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

[-] cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago

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

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

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

[-] TCB13@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago

The man pages.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 8 points 2 days ago

The official website has ton of documentation and external links: https://systemd.io/

And here some tutorials:

[-] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 2 days 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.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

I always recommend people learning by doing. But playing around with system tools to see and learn how it works is a bit risky. However in a virtual machine this is probably a good idea to see how things work.

[-] JustMarkov@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

https://nosystemd.org/

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

[-] seaQueue@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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.

this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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