When it first began out, there was plenty of press about systemd and its capacity to hurry up boot time. That function had a mostly-universal attraction (it is much less vital to those that do not reboot), so in some ways, that is the repute it nonetheless has right now. And whereas it is true that systemd is the factor that launches companies in parallel throughout startup, there’s much more to it than that. Here are three issues you could not have realized systemd may do however must be taking benefit. Get extra suggestions from our new downloadable eBook, A pragmatic guide to systemd.
1. Simplify Linux ps
If you’ve got ever used the ps and even simply the high command, then you understand that your pc is working a whole lot of processes at any given second. Sometimes, that is precisely the sort of info you want with a purpose to perceive what your pc, or its customers, are as much as. Other occasions, all you actually need is a basic overview.
The systemd-cgtop command gives a easy view of your pc’s load based mostly on the cgroups (management teams) duties have been organized into. Control groups are vital to fashionable Linux, and are primarily the assist buildings beneath containers and Kubernetes (which in flip are why the cloud scales the best way it does), but additionally they’re helpful constructs on your house PC. For occasion, from the output of systemd-cgtop, you’ll be able to see the load of your person processes versus system processes:
Control Group Proc+ %CPU Memory Input/s Output/s
/ 183 5.0 1.6G 0B 3.0M
person.slice 4 2.8 1.1G 0B 174.7K
person.slice/user-1000.slice 4 2.8 968.2M 0B 174.7K
system.slice 65 2.2 1.5G 0B 2.8M
You may view simply your userspace processes, or simply your userspace processes and kernel threads.
This is not a substitute for high or ps by any means, nevertheless it’s a further view into your system from a special and distinctive angle. And it may be very important when working containers, as a result of containers use cgroups.
2. Linux cron
Cron is a traditional element of Linux. When you need to schedule one thing to occur regularly, you utilize cron. It’s dependable and fairly effectively built-in into your system.
The drawback is, cron does not perceive that some computer systems get shut down. If you’ve a cronjob scheduled for midnight, however you flip your pc off at 23:59 on daily basis, then your cronjob by no means runs. There’s no facility for cron to detect that there was a missed job in a single day.
As a solution to that drawback, there’s the superb anacron, however that is not fairly as built-in as cron. There’s plenty of setup it’s a must to do to get anacron working.
A second different is systemd timers. Like cron, it is already in-built and able to go. You have to write down a unit file, which is certainly extra traces than a one-line crontab entry, nevertheless it’s additionally fairly easy. For occasion, this is a unit file to run an imaginary backup script half-hour after startup, however solely as soon as a day. This ensures that my pc will get backed up, and prevents it from making an attempt to backup greater than as soon as day by day.
[Unit]
Description=Backup
Requires=myBackup.service
[Timer]
OnBootSec=30min
OnUnitActiveSec=1d
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.goal
You can, in fact, intervene and immediate a job to run with . Thanks to the OnUnitActiveSec directive, systemd does not try to run a job you’ve got manually activated.
3. Run Linux containers
Containers make beginning up a fancy service very easy. You can run a Mattermost or Discourse server in mere minutes. The onerous half, in some instances, is managing and monitoring the containers upon getting them working. Podman makes it simple to handle them, however what do use to handle Podman? Well, you can use systemd.
Podman has a built-in command to generate unit recordsdata so your containers might be managed and monitored by systemd:
$ podman generate systemd --new --files --name example_pod
All it’s a must to do then is begin the service:
$ systemctl --user begin pod-example_pod.service
As with every other service in your pc, systemd ensures that your pod runs it doesn’t matter what. It logs issues, which you’ll view with journalctl alongside together with your different important logs, and you may monitor its exercise inside cgroups utilizing systemd-cgtop.
It’s no Kubernetes platform, however for one or two containers that you just simply need to have out there on a dependable and predictable foundation, Podman and systemd are a tremendous pair.
Download the systemd eBook
There’s much more to systemd, and you may study the fundamentals, together with a lot of helpful and pragmatic suggestions, from creator David Both in his new complimentary pragmatic guide to systemd.