Who else is using systemd?

[hazel]

Brilliant idea, Atreyu! Here's what I did:

1) Stopped cups (systemctl stop cups.service). I got this message:
Stopping cups.service but it can still be activated by cups.path \NL cups.socket
2) Checked ps ax. No cupsd daemon running.
3) Gave an lpr command and checked again. Cups now running.
4) Stopped and disabled cups.service. Again cupsd disappeared from ps ax.
5) Gave the lpr command. Cups reappeared.

So enabling a service makes the corresponding daemon run by default. It becomes part of one of the boot targets and will be launched automatically. Disabling a service does not prevent the daemon from running when required; it just means that it will not be launched at boot time. I think the docs should make this clearer.

I don't think from my reading that systemd actually switches idle daemons off. After all, how could it tell for sure that something was not needed?

[atreyu]

I don't think from my reading that systemd actually switches idle daemons off. After all, how could it tell for sure that something was not needed?

yeah, i guess that would be pretty impressive. that may be coming down the road, though, once the glitches in the mind-reading software are worked out...

[Siddly]

yeah, i guess that would be pretty impressive. that may be coming down the road, though, once the glitches in the mind-reading software are worked out...

I have read it somewhere but I can't find it now.
If you install systemd-gtk you can run systemadm which gives a nice GUI table of services under headings:-
Load State Active State Unit State Unit
---------------- ------------------ -------------- ----------
loaded active exited fb.service
loaded active running cups.service

etc., so it looks like some services are set to permanently run and others are started and exited as there is no need to have them running.
This was one of the pluses over sysvinit where all started services are in run state even when they do not need to be.

Click on a line and more detail is offered with buttons to Stop, Start, Restart and Reload the service.

[atreyu]

I have read it somewhere but I can't find it now.
If you install systemd-gtk you can run systemadm which gives a nice GUI table of services under headings:

that sounds interesting - will take a look, thanks.

[hazel]

What do you need gtk for? You can list your running services just by typing systemctl and all services that started up, including the exited ones, with systemctl --all. If you're interested in a particular service on the list, use systemctl status foo. Using a gui is overkill.

I think the exited services are mainly startup scripts rather than daemons in the proper sense. It's worth looking at the actual .service files. If the type is "oneshot" then that's something that isn't expected to continue running.

[Siddly]

What do you need gtk for? You can list your running services just by typing systemctl and all services that started up, including the exited ones, with systemctl --all. If you're interested in a particular service on the list, use systemctl status foo. Using a gui is overkill.

I think the exited services are mainly startup scripts rather than daemons in the proper sense. It's worth looking at the actual .service files. If the type is "oneshot" then that's something that isn't expected to continue running.

The answer is basically I don't need a GUI. I've been using the command line for over 42 years in at least 12 different operating systems on systems from the smallest to the largest mainframe and SPARC servers.

When the GUI presents a holistic picture there is no harm in using it and when the command line makes an operation much easier and quicker it is better than most GUI's.

On large and complex systems we have used GUI's for decades to easily manage system resources as it would be quite a protracted operation to do it via command line and to get an overall view of the system.
Sometimes a picture replaces a thousand words.

[atreyu]

What do you need gtk for? You can list your running services just by typing systemctl and all services that started up, including the exited ones, with systemctl --all. If you're interested in a particular service on the list, use systemctl status foo. Using a gui is overkill.

i'm a command line weenie, too, but it never hurts to look at a picture from every angle, at least once.

[oz]

After implementing the package upgrades from yesterday, all 6 of my Arch boxes are now "pure systemd" and no problems to report so far...

[oz]

I read some where that Gnome 3.6 (just released a few days ago) has systemd as a dependency so I guess some users that thought they wouldn't be moving to systemd will be doing so after all if they want to use Gnome 3.6, or later.

[atreyu]

That doesn't surprise me too much, as Poettering (the systemd author) is currently a Red Hat employee, and Red Hat has embraced both systemd and GNOME. I juts hope systemd will become as easy to use as SysVInit always was.