[systemd-devel] Using systemd as a session manager

[Kay Sievers]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 17:44, Alessandro Delgado <adelgado1313 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to know if anybody knows something on using systemd as a
> session manager. What I mean as a session manager is something responsable
> for having some programs that I'd like to be running under certain
> circumpstances run under those. (e.g. nm-applet,  xfcce4-power-manager,
> gnome-sound-applet etc.)
>
> The solution I use right now is to either put those on my .xinitrc or start
> those using the methods of whichever environment I happen to be using. I
> tend to use minimalistic window managers with many small programs to use as
> envionment, so that means scripting.
>
> It is sub-optimal for several reasons:
>
> a) Sometimes if you restart your window manager you get several instances of
> notification icons
> b) If you plug a new monitor on the computer sometimes the same effect
> happens
> c) If any of the programs halt, they won't restart automatically
> d) They are started as a shell spawn, serially, which can feel extremely
> slow, instead of in parallel
>
> This is also fact with applications that I want to autostart, such as
> Firefox, Liferea, Pidgin, terminal etc.
>
>
> Basically, I would like to know is: If there is a clean way to do this in
> systemd? Is it meant for it in some way or not even considered?
>
> P.S. Of course, I run systemd as my init system; I'm thinking aditionally to
> that.

We have 'systemd --user', which is supposed to run for every logged-in
user, but not for every session. We do not really, and do not plan, to
support running the same stuff twice for the same user.

So far we did not really implement anything advanced for --user, and
did not even thing everything through. It might happen in a few
months, no specific plans so far, we are currently too busy to get the
--system stuff working.

Kay