I'm using =guix= on Ubuntu and I have installed the packages =thunar= and =thumbler=. As some of you might know, =thunar= is a file manager and =tumbler= is the daemon which makes it possible for =thunar= to show thumbnails for some files.
#+BEGIN_SRC sh guix package -l | sed -n '/(current)/,$p' #+END_SRC #+RESULTS: #+begin_example Generation 10 Feb 21 2024 20:45:25 (current) + tumbler 4.18.1 out /gnu/store/xk9kwfzpps58i6xvrxda3yqx39c5my34-tumbler-4.18.1 + thunar 4.18.7 out /gnu/store/6x5wax4vd6gj78bigmb1hwi8sx8q7m0q-thunar-4.18.7 #+end_example The package =tumbler= comes with a systemd service for starting the daemon. I assumed that this was how it is intended to be started in Ubuntu. #+BEGIN_SRC sh find ~/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user #+END_SRC #+RESULTS: #+begin_example /home/rodrigo/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user/ /home/rodrigo/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user/tumblerd.service /home/rodrigo/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user/thunar.service #+end_example Upon installation, I executed the following command but the service was not found. #+HEADER: :prologue "exec 2>&1" #+HEADER: :epilogue ":" #+BEGIN_SRC sh systemctl --user start tumblerd.service #+END_SRC #+RESULTS: #+begin_example Failed to start tumblerd.service: Unit tumblerd.service not found. #+end_example I created a symbolic link in =/home/rodrigo/.config/systemd/user/tumblerd.service= that points to =/home/rodrigo/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user/tumblerd.service= and I was able to start the service and see thumbnails within =thunar=. #+BEGIN_SRC sh ln -sf /home/rodrigo/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user/tumblerd.service /home/rodrigo/.config/systemd/user/tumblerd.service systemctl --user start tumblerd.service echo Exit code: $? #+END_SRC #+RESULTS: #+begin_example Exit code: 0 #+end_example As explained before, I needed to create a symbolic link from the directory =~/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user= to =~/.config/systemd/user=, which is the directory that is looked up by =systemd= when searching for user services. This is a manual task that I would rather avoid doing whenever I install a package. I have two questions: 1. Is using systemd user services for packages, that are installed through =guix package -i=, the way how daemons are intended to be started in Ubuntu? 2. Is it possible to make systemd in Ubuntu aware that there might be user services in =~/.guix-profile/lib/systemd/user=? I want to do this in order to avoid the manual task of creating a symbolic link to the directory that is actually ser. Ideally, I want to install a package and just execute =systemctl --user start <<service>>=.
