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?
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)
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
supervisedirectory 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.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.
With the systemd approach
What about this makes it “the systemd approach”? runit supports user services too. These are just two different tasks that are needed in different contexts. Sometimes what you need is to “pass a control handle around” to a privileged service. And sometimes you need to actually make a service unprivileged.
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?
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.
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?
I’m on bspwm right now, but I’ve been thinking of switching to wayland (in particular, hyprland). I’ve got nothing against gnome BTW. I have a friend with one of those laptops that turns into a tablet by flipping the keyboard to the back, and he also says Gnome is the only DE that “just works” for touchscreen, even though he uses KDE on his main laptop and desktop.
How are things on wayland by the way? From what I understand, it has partial support for running X11 apps, right? Do you use any X11 apps, or were you able to find wayland-native counterparts for everything?
[void] reminds me of the BSDs for some reason
I’ve heard this comparison a lot, though I don’t know what it means, since I’ve never used BSD haha. Maybe I should give BSD a try sometime.
And the best part about Linux is that we all can make our own choices
Amen to that!
How are things on wayland by the way? From what I understand, it has partial support for running X11 apps, right? Do you use any X11 apps, or were you able to find wayland-native counterparts for everything?
Most of the time, you wouldn’t even notice if an app is using xwayland or native wayland… except for apps written with electron/chromium embedded framework (chromium, steam client, spotify, vscode, etc). They’re pretty glitchy on xwayland so you’ll have to figure out if they accept arguments to use wayland natively, but not all of them support wayland natively yet.
That’s good to hear. I try to avoid electron apps (I just use the website version instead), but thanks for the tip anyway!
Wait, aren’t most desktop environment support switching keyboard layout these days? For example, gnome can do that with super+space or via the language switcher in the top bar. Using a user service to do this seems overkill.
Miryoku isn’t a regular layout. It has things like keys that change what they do depending on whether you tap them or hold them. Maybe it’s theoretically possible to implement it as a standard XKB layout, but it would not be fun. Usually, Miryoku is implemented in your keyboard firmware. But if your keyboard doesn’t support flashing custom firmware (e.g. builtin laptop keyboard), then you have to use a software solution like kmonad, which is a daemon that has to run as root.
As a sidenote, even for some “standard” keyboard layouts there needs to be background process. For example, Chinese and Japanese have too many characters to fit on a keybaord, so they use something called an Input Method Editor. But those usually don’t need root, in contrast to kmonad.
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.
You couldn’t think of to use layers?
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?
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:
- The meme
- u/[email protected] example with sshd
- Distros that use systemd init also seems to prefer using other systemd components as well. So you can get caught in weird situations where one task is spread across two different systems (e.g. systemd timers vs cron, systemd-elogind vs acpid)
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’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
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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
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.
I shan’t.
Don’t bother arguing with systemd bots. They spent time and effort learning the ins and outs of their overcomplicated init system, so naturally when someone suggests that there is a simpler solution, they interpret it as a personal attack.
I’ve personally used more of runit and a bit of openrc. After fucking around for a good year I decided to jump back on systemd cause i was wasting way more time maintaining the system more than actually 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?
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
lol I’ve been pronouncing nginx as “enn-jinx” for so long before I learned that it was “engine-ex”.
Someone is asking the important questions
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
Guys I only used SystemD and I didn’t know you could use anything else lol stop hating I never had any problems!
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
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.
Runit, making systems easily pwnable since 2004 🎉
- Step 1: Make a system service run as root
- Step 2: Give service a runlevel that starts it at boot
- Step 3: Make the file modifiable by a normal user
- Step 4: ???
- Step 5: pwned
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.
What on earth did I do to offend you this much?
Were you not being serious when you were calling people systemd-bots?
I was being serious, but I’m not calling everyone who uses sytemd a bot. It has its merits, I use it on my homeserver (NixOS). When I say “systemd bot” I mean “people who blindly dismiss valid criticism of systemd”. Same as when some people say “russian bot” they mean “troll who is paid to advocate for the actions of russian government”, and not “everyone from russia is a bot”.
Fair enough. Can’t say I know enough to really decide what is or isn’t valid criticism.
Thanks for posting your original comment btw, now that I read over my own comments I do realise that it comes across as very hostile and a little silly, regardless of intention.
No, thank you for being so reasonable.
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.
Does resolve.d let me use DHCP address with a manually set DNS server yet?
netwok and resolve d are cancer
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.
