Starting User Services

[inferenceus]

I have recently had a need for the approach of system services to replace what I have been using automatically-running scripts for while logged into an unprivileged user and have decided that OpenRC user services are ideal for my use case due to ease of starting, stopping, and restarting them, and having their statuses shown to me. Upon starting a user service, it fails to start and presents an error which states start-stop-daemon: initgroups (user, 1500), followed by start-stop-daemon: failed to start '/usr/bin/<program>'.

One of the programs I need to run as a service is Firefox, and it has to run in the foreground as a GUI application. The following is my user init script for Firefox, which is located within $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rc/init.d/:

#!/sbin/openrc-run


SERVICE_USER="user"
SERVICE_GROUP="user"
SERVICE_HOME="/home/user"


command_user="${SERVICE_USER}:${SERVICE_GROUP}"
command="/usr/bin/firefox"
command_args="-P 'profile'"
command_background="no"
pidfile="${SERVICE_HOME}/.run/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid

The directories called in the init script have been verified to exist and have the correct permissions. My user's graphical environment is X11 and I have ensured that the $DISPLAY enviroment variable has been set.

Is there something I have failed to set in/add to the init script, or is this a bug?

[navi-desu]

do not use command_user with --user scripts, a user has no permission to call setuid/setgid. user services already run as the user that executes it (or are you attempting to run a system/root service but as your user?)
also command_background=no does nothing

[inferenceus]

do not use command_user with --user scripts, a user has no permission to call setuid/setgid. user services already run as the user that executes it (or are you attempting to run a system/root service but as your user?)

@navi-desu No, I am just attempting to run it as the calling user. Removing command_user allowed the program to open; however, rc-status -U shows it as [ crashed ] despite it still being open. Is there another issue there?

[navi-desu]

however, rc-status -U shows it as [ crashed ] despite it still being open. Is there another issue there?

did firefox write that pidfile? if openrc can't find the pid, it'll say "crashed"

so either get firefox to write the pidfile, or get it to not fork, and use supervisor=supervise-daemon

[inferenceus]

@navi-desu

did firefox write that pidfile? if openrc can't find the pid, it'll say "crashed"

I added that PID-file path to the init script as the location where I wanted it to go.

so either get firefox to write the pidfile

I'm not sure if it's possible to do this without some sort of scripting; I haven't been able to find how to make a typically-non-service process write its own PID-file, unlike processes which are designed to run as services which usually do that on their own.

or get it to not fork, and use supervisor=supervise-daemon

When I do this, Firefox repeatedly opens itself until I manually stop it. I had around 10 identical windows open within seconds.

[navi-desu]

When I do this, Firefox repeatedly opens itself until I manually stop it. I had around 10 identical windows open within seconds.

firefox isn't repeatedly opening itself, but it's probably forking and exiting, which supervise-daemon sees as "the daemon died" and attempts to restart it, you need to get firefox to not do that (if you have a syslog, there's probably messages from supervise-daemon there about it)

if you can't get the service to either write a pidfile (bad but works) or not fork (the right solution), there's nothing openrc can do to track that it's not crashed

[inferenceus]

firefox isn't repeatedly opening itself, but it's probably forking and exiting, which supervise-daemon sees as "the daemon died" and attempts to restart it, you need to get firefox to not do that (if you have a syslog, there's probably messages from supervise-daemon there about it)

@navi-desu Yes, I think that's what's happening, especially given the [ crashed ] issue aforementioned. I'll see if there's any way to make it write a PID-file, or I'll just have to continue using my scripts without it being a service.

Thank you for the clarification and pointing me in the right direction.

[navi-desu]

@inferenceus note that also, if there's already an open firefox window, and a dbus session, firefox will instead talk over dbus to the running instance, and have it open a new window

also, if you can't get it to behave and need to just start it without supervision, you can just do start() { firefox -P profile & } and forgo any sort of process tracking, then rc-status will show started, even if it crashes

[inferenceus]

@inferenceus note that also, if there's already an open firefox window, and a dbus session, firefox will instead talk over dbus to the running instance, and have it open a new window

also, if you can't get it to behave and need to just start it without supervision, you can just do start() { firefox -P profile & } and forgo any sort of process tracking, then rc-status will show started, even if it crashes

@navi-desu Thanks for the additional information. I'll see if I can get this to work.