systemd user service file

[dsalt]

https://bugs.debian.org/933866

It would be wonderful to have Debian ship a systemd user service file for devilspie2. I've searched the internet a bit and know a bit about systemd, but don't know the exact configurations for said service file. My current attempts are failing. If I get it to work, I'll follow-up to this bug report.

It'd be great to be able to:

systemctl --user enable devilspie2 systemctl --user start devilspie2

and have it work out of the box.

Being a Devuan user, I don't use systemd myself, so I'm in no position to add this. (I currently use Xfce4's application autostart to run devilspie2 on login.)

[RainOrigami]

I don't think that using systemd is the correct way to run devilspie2, the main issue being that it should run when you login to your window manager which is not a systemd target. It should have a seperate instance for each session. The corresponding WM's application autostart is the place that make sense to start it with.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/360685

[keypresser1]

Disclaimer: I don't know much systemd

Could extend this feature request to be more implementation-agnostic - "run devilspie2 automatically", to consider other solutions like the autostart suggestion.

---

@Longoon12000 I would think this has got to be a common enough condition for there to be a wm-agnostic set of unit constraints in systemd: "user has logged into an X session". It doesn't have to be just a single systemd .target that expresses this. Also, in your link:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/360685

this example seems to be installed as a root entry (/etc/systemd/system/), not a user entry, per the original request (systemctl --user). I think that changes things. From the README, it sounds like devilspie2 is intended to be run per-user:

If you don't give devilspie2 any folder with --folder, it will read Lua scripts from the folder that it gets from the GLib function g_get_user_config_dir with devilspie2/ added to the end.

So what about a user service After=graphical.target installed to /etc/systemd/user?

---

That said, I did this:

• for gnome
• as the only person using the machine
• never accessing remotely e.g. ssh

$HOME/.local/systemd/user/devilspie2.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/devilspie2 --debug
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=gnome-session-x11-services.target

I could play around with a more generic solution.

[bill-mcgonigle]

I'm using this:

[Unit]
Description=devilspie2 window wrangler
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=exec
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
Environment=XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/%U
ExecStart=/usr/bin/devilspie2 --debug
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
StandardOutput=append:%h/.config/devilspie2/debug
StandardError=append:%h/.config/devilspie2/errors

installed in /etc/systemd/user and it seems to be working OK.

I start it as:

/usr/bin/systemctl --user start devilspie2.service

in .xsessionrc at the moment. I have a few widgets that have an After=devilspie2.service so startup order can be ensured without race conditions.

A few outstanding problems that prevent this from being upstreamed:

• Why is it necessary to set DISPLAY and XDG_RUNTIME_DIR under systemd? Maybe starting it under the wm autostart script would fix that?
• systemd's %t variable doesn't seem to work for XDG_RUNTIME_DIR but docs seem like it should.
• hardcoding the DISPLAY is bogus. Maybe @%i semantics would work?
• putting logs into the config dir is bogus, but systemd won't make parent directories (~/.local/share/devilspie2 should be preferred?).
• Maybe stderr should go into the journal instead of a file.
• None of systemd's extensive security features are being used. Ideally every feasible restriction would be added.

But perhapss this could get some folks going without a perfect service file.

This is on:

ii  systemd        252.6-1      arm64        system and service manager
ii  devilspie2     0.43-5       arm64        Lua-based window matching utility

Without the environment variables I get:

(devilspie2:75947): Gdk-WARNING **: 18:19:43.485: cannot open display: 

[dsalt]

Valid point re. desktop/wm autostart (so, presumably, XDG autostart). I've just pushed a commit which should allow for that.