Understanding Systemd Linger: Process Control and User Sessions
I explore the controversial Systemd feature that kills user processes on logout and the 'linger' option that keeps them running. While many believe linger is required for tools like screen or tmux, my experience shows it is often unnecessary. I discuss how enabling linger can help recover from broken login configurations and improve boot times by starting services like WiFi and Bluetooth before authentication.
Of all the people I have directly supported for Linux desktop use, none of them have had the ability to use screen/tmux and also the cluelessness that makes me want to automatically kill their processes when they logout.
- graemep
This is why i dislike systemd. Things not working the way I expect means I have to do more work to figure something out.
- walrus01
Default Debian Trixie out of the box configuration without changing any systemd config file allows gnu screen to work as it always has. There would have been great uproar and screeching if basic 'screen' detach and resume functionality had broken anywhere between Debian v11, v12 and v13, and it has not.
I'm assuming this is same for tmux but hasn't tested it.
Is there some major distro out there that has the config flag set the opposite of this by default?
- benj111
I'm presumably missing something here. Why does tmux et al not work? Remotely? Ie you're logged in locally and remotely to the same machine, log out locally which kills everything running remotely, but then why would you log in twice like that?
And that being the case can systemd not just only close everything when your logins reach 0?
- shevy-java
Systemd is simply too complex.
- kmbfjr
I never had a problem with systemd init despite its quirky habits like just giving up if a mount is bad in fstab, and I rather like systemd-networkd over the other four or five ways of managing the network. Systemd-timesyncd isn’t bad either.
But this, systemd-logind worrying about stuck processes in userspace is exactly the kind of scope creep that ends up justifying a lot of the hand wringing a decade ago. This thing bit me when it came out in a couple different ways and I am unapologetic in my dislike for it. So much so that it has caused me to drift away from Linux where I can. Even though it is a simple fix, I’ve become fatigued with userspace chaos.
Time to re-evaluate what the bazaar has become. Systemd is a common complaint, but it isn’t the only contributor to the fatigue.