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Introduction

Systemd is a suite of tools for system and user daemon management.

It can be used as an alternative to XDG autostart files to start the git-annex daemon and optionally the webapp, either at startup (system service) or when an user logs in (user service).

Setup

User service

Sample unit file (/etc/systemd/user/git-annex.service):

[Unit]
Description=git-annex assistant daemon

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/git-annex assistant --autostart --foreground
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Commands for enabling and starting the service as the current user:

systemctl --user enable git-annex.service
systemctl --user start git-annex.service

Usually services in default.target start during login. (Note however that they also delay the login process.) However, if you enable "linger" via loginctl, then these services start on boot instead.

System service

If for some reason you cannot use systemd --user, the other option is to have system-wide services:

Sample unit file (/etc/systemd/system/git-annex@.service):

[Unit]
Description=git-annex assistant daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
User=%i
ExecStart=/usr/bin/git-annex assistant --autostart --foreground
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Commands for enabling and starting the service as user u:

systemctl enable git-annex@u.service
systemctl start git-annex@u.service

Considerations

Webapp

The webapp may be started instead of the assistant, by launching the associated command in the unit file. This will run an associated assistant automatically. However, it may also attempt to open a potentially unwanted browser window.

ExecStart=git-annex webapp

TODO: try this.

Encrypted home directory

Users may store their keyring and repositories in their encrypted home directory mounted at login. This may break a system service running at boot.

TODO: try this.

Common daemon

One daemon may be used to sync repositories for multiple users. For this, it might be helpful to make use of ACLs to access other user directories.

References