[systemd-devel] Many user slices created and user managers spawned on boot

[Mantas Mikulėnas]

On Sat, Jan 26, 2019 at 6:36 PM Steve Bergman <steve at sbergman.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a Debian 9 server, fully updated (systemd 240-4) which acts as an
> X2Go desktop server hosting remote X sessions for about 150 users.  I've
> made no special customizations to the systemd configuration.  On boot,
> immediately after systemd-user-sessions.service starts, systemd
> immediately creates slices for most of my users, starts a user manager
> for each, and mounts a run directory for each.  Users which have not
> logged in for a very long time (possibly since before the upgrade from
> Debian 7 with sysvinit to Debian 9 with systemd) are not included.  But
> if I log in as one of these users then, starting with the next reboot,
> those accounts are included, as well.
>
> Is this normal?  This server is certainly acting quite differently than
> any of my others, where the slices and management processes get created
> on login and destroyed on logout.
>

Take a look at /var/lib/systemd/linger. Something, quite possibly X2go
<https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=enable-linger+package%3A%5CQx2goserver%5CE>,
is configuring systemd to start a user@<uid>.service for every user on boot.

This is normally off by default and done by the admin via `loginctl
enable-linger <user>` or `loginctl disable-linger <user>`. (The feature is
there to let certain users start stuff on boot without having to rely on
e.g. cron's @reboot jobs.)

-- 
Mantas Mikulėnas
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