user-initscripts

user-initscripts is a user daemon system based on and relying upon the Arch Linux initscripts system.

User daemons

User daemons are similar to the system daemons, except they can be run by unprivileged users. Like system daemons, user daemons are controled by dedicated scripts. user-initscripts is very similar in design to the Arch Linux initscripts.

The following table shows the equivalences between the elements of the two systems.

initscripts	user-initscripts
/etc/rc.conf	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-rc.conf
/etc/rc.d	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-rc.d and /etc/user-rc.d
/etc/rc.d/functions	/etc/user-rc.d/functions
/usr/sbin/rc.d	/usr/sbin/user-rc.d

All the started daemons are properly stopped when the system shuts down.

It is also possible to have daemons automatically started when a user session starts.

Daemon scripts

The daemon scripts search path is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-rc.d:/etc/user-rc.d, so it is suitable for both package-provided scripts and user-provided scripts.

See https://gist.github.com/1960771 for an example.

The files /etc/rc.conf, /etc/rc.d/functions and /etc/user-rc.d/functions must be sourced by the script.

The user-rc.d command

The user-rc.d command has basically the same role and the same syntax as the rc.d command, but with a few differences:

• user-rc.d autostart starts the daemons of the USER_DAEMONS array from the user-rc.conf file,
• user-rc.d stop_all stops all the running daemons,
• The --tag option allows to filter the targeted deamons by tag.

Tagging

One feature introduced in user-initscripts is deamon tagging. Daemons can be tagged by modifying the USER_DAEMON_TAGS associative array in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-rc.conf file. Tagged daemons can be easily autostarted and stopped by user-rc.d. Tags are user-defined.

Autostarting daemons

Automatically started daemons must be put in the USER_DAEMONS array of the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/user-rc.conf file. A template of this file can be found in /usr/share/user-initscripts/examples.

A call of user-rc.d autostart when the user session starts will start these daemons. Because of the wide variety of shells and desktop environnements available, this step is left to the user.

For instance, if you use bash you might want to put /usr/sbin/user-rc.d autostart in your ~/.bash_profile, so that daemons are automatically started when you enter a login shell.

With KDE, you might want to add the following script in $(kde-config --localprefix)/Autostart:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/user-rc.d autostart

You may also want to stop the daemons when you close your session by adding the following script in $(kde-config --localprefix)/shutdown):

#!/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/user-rc.d stop_all

Be careful with that last script because if you have multiple sessions, the daemons will be stopped as soon as the first session is closed.

More advanced code snippets can be found in /usr/share/user-initscripts/examples.