[MuffinFlavored]

> Systemd on the other hand has most of the things I need, but I found it cumbersome to use

Could you please expand on this? From what I understand, to use systemd to deploy a microservice is basically one file:

    # /etc/systemd/system/myservice.service
    
    [Unit]
    Description=My Microservice
    After=network.target
    
    [Service]
    ExecStart=/path/to/myservice
    Restart=always
    User=myuser
    Group=mygroup
    Environment=VARIABLE=value
    WorkingDirectory=/path/to/service/directory
    StandardOutput=syslog
    StandardError=syslog
    SyslogIdentifier=myservice
    
    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then, to "use" it:

    # reload systemd
    sudo systemctl daemon-reload
    # start service
    sudo systemctl start myservice
    # enable service at boot
    sudo systemctl enable myservice
    # check status
    sudo systemctl status myservice
    # check logs
    journalctl -u myservice

What more advanced stuff were you trying to do that you ran into that made systemd seem cumbersome?

[shardulaeer]

I built the tool simply to improve developer experience. Run `systemctl list-units` and the console is flooded with a wall of services, most of them are not mine. Run `ser status` and I only see the ones that I created. The activity state, CPU and memory usage is displayed so I don't need to run a separate command.

    hp@hp:~$ ser status
    +-----+-------------+----------+----------------+-------+--------+
    | pid | name        | active   | enable on boot | cpu % | memory |
    +-----+-------------+----------+----------------+-------+--------+
    | 0   | hello-world | inactive | false          | 0     | 0      |
    +-----+-------------+----------+----------------+-------+--------+
    | 0   | index.js    | inactive | false          | 0     | 0      |
    +-----+-------------+----------+----------------+-------+--------+

Another UX improvement is the template generation. I found myself googling it everytime. I f there is something more custom (etc sockets) I can use the `ser edit`, this will open nano with a pre-populated template that I can edit.

Finally why limit oneself to systemd? pm2 runs on Mac and windows, I aim to do the same. Same set of commands to create services everywhere, with details abstracted away (easier said than done, need to look into their APIs).

[MuffinFlavored]

> The activity state, CPU and memory usage is displayed so I don't need to run a separate command.

https://github.com/crazy-canux/awesome-monitoring

Check out Netadata + Nagios

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36944388

Check out this as well

    systemctl list-units | grep my-service

[fullstop]

also see systemd-cgtop

[markstos]

As long as remembering a new command is required this also be used:

* systemctl status 'brand-*' That is, custom services could start with the same prefix.

I run a lot of custom services, and usually I want to check on one specifically, or if I want to look at the total service health, I also want to include the services which are "not mine".

[MuffinFlavored]

To do formatting on a message (multilines of code, equivalent to ``` in Markdown), indent everything with 4 spaces

[shardulaeer]

Fixed, thanks for the heads up!

[LoganDark]

The file's pretty cumbersome, honestly, since I usually don't remember the format or the best practices for it.

Plus, sometimes there is no place to put them that isn't conflicting with the package manager, so "best practice" ends up being to make your own package containing the unit file, and ...

I'm not a big fan of "best practices" in general, but it'll turn into a whole rabbithole if you let it. At least with a piece of software like this, you just run a few commands and it remembers, and you get tons of sane defaults.

[markstos]

This was solved from beginning of systemd with different directories for files mananged by package managers (under /lib), and files managed by you (under /etc). This is documented in `man systemd.unit`:

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.uni...

The same doc also describes a "drop-in" file format, where you can override just the details you want from a system file.

[cpach]

FWIW, you can override unit files that are installed by a package manager: https://hsm.tunnel53.net/article/systemd/

[LoganDark]

I think the "issue" isn't the package manager overwriting your custom unit files, but rather just the litter of untracked files in places the package manager is supposed to be in charge of. Since some people want to be able to track those files, and prevent them from making a mess.

In practice I don't think it is a huge issue. I've just left unit files laying around on embedded devices without issue. Hard to find which ones are mine though, if I've lost my mental list of them.

(Also, writing one from scratch without a template is annoying, since I haven't memorized the format.)

[rcxdude]

You can even do this with 'systemctl edit <unit>' and it'll create a file in the right place for the override and show you the original contents for reference

[ripley12]

That's 15 lines of configuration and 3 CLI commands to install a service. I have done this hundreds of times but I still need to keep a template around for unit files, I often forget to run `daemon-reload`, etc.

I like systemd but I can see a lot of value in friendlier tools like this. What I really want is a TUI tool like Lazydocker for managing systemd services.