blog post about shepher user services

blog post about shepher user services

[Adriano Peluso]

There's this blog post:

https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2017/running-system-services-in-containers/

I have 2 observations about it

1) it mentions a XDG_CONFIG_DIR environment variable. 
 But on my Ubuntu desktop, I find a XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (note the final S)
variable. 
This could be confusing to someone not knowing well their way around.
Was this a simple slip ? Or is there any more specific reason for this
missing S ?

2) in the end it announces a second post about integrationg Shepherd
with mcron to come up with something that could substitute systemd's
timer funtionality.
It would be interesting to read the second blog post

blog post about shepher user services

[Leo Prikler]

Hi,

the blog post you've linked
  
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2017/running-system-services-in-containers/
seems to neither contain mentions of XDG_CONFIG_DIR, nor mcron.

Did you mean 
  https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/gnu-shepherd-user-services/
instead?

FWIW, $XDG_CONFIG_DIR should be $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, I myself always mix
those up as well.  As far as mcron integration is concerned, it doesn't
look as though this has been done yet and I think work remains to be
done to have mcron running "as a part of shepherd" rather than as its
own daemon.  You can right now already run regular cron-jobs through
mcron just how people did before systemd was a thing.  You just need to
make sure you launch mcron as a user service if you want to go with
this particular configuration style, otherwise mcron as a system
service ought to suffice as well.

Regards,
Leo

Re: blog post about shepher user services

[Adriano Peluso]

Il giorno sab, 22/05/2021 alle 15.49 +0200, Leo Prikler ha scritto:
> Hi,
> 
> the blog post you've linked
>   
> https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2017/running-system-services-in-containers/
> seems to neither contain mentions of XDG_CONFIG_DIR, nor mcron.
> 
> Did you mean 
>   https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/gnu-shepherd-user-services/
> instead?

yes, I pasted the wrong one, sorry


> 
> FWIW, $XDG_CONFIG_DIR should be $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, I myself always mix
> those up as well.  

Good to know

> As far as mcron integration is concerned, it doesn't
> look as though this has been done yet and I think work remains to be
> done to have mcron running "as a part of shepherd" rather than as its
> own daemon.  You can right now already run regular cron-jobs through
> mcron just how people did before systemd was a thing.  You just need
> to
> make sure you launch mcron as a user service if you want to go with
> this particular configuration style, otherwise mcron as a system
> service ought to suffice as well.
> 
> Regards,
> Leo
> 

Ok, thanks