Andy Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 08:28:47PM +0000, Chris Green wrote: > > So, if I understand correctly, when I do:- > > > > systemctl --user start helmlcd.service > > > > Then, although it has been started by 'chris' (I'm logged in as > > chris), only one copy of the service can be run. > > Only one copy by user chris, yes. It's not a templated service. If you > want multiple of them running as user services of chris then you'd have > to copy the .service file to a new name, making the copy effectively a > completely separate and different service. > > As it's a user service, it's expected that a DIFFERENT user could also > run it. > > > However, when I do:- > > > > systemctl --user start [email protected] > > > > it's quite possible for others to start their own copies of the > > service, though presumably they'd have to have a copy of the service > > file called [email protected]. > > As long as there is a [email protected] template file somewhere in > systemd's search paths (for user units), then if a user does: > > myusername$ systemctl --user start fblcd@foo > > Then they should get their own instance of this service. It may be a > requirement of the service that "foo" is actually the username, or it > might not be, leaving it to just be an arbitrary instance name. As this > is a templated user service there is in principle no reason why a single > user can't run multiple instances of it. There might be some > service-specific reason why each user can only run one. > > The "start" command with an instance name should copy the .service file > from the template. > > > How does the second differ from simply having services called > > chrisfblcd.service, othernamefblcd.service and so on? > > There only has to be one template unit file somewhere called > [email protected] rather than every user having to copy their own one into > place. Also the fact that it's a template indicates that it's expected > that multiple copies of it are in some way catered for. > Thanks Andy, that's brilliant! :-)
-- Chris Green ยท
