If the service is already running it has to be stopped as a system service and run as a user service. In order to ensure that the service inherits all the correct permissions / acls / se linux policies the service needs to be launched from the limited permissions context.

With the systemd approach you’re not just passing a control handle around. You’re ensuring the process is running under an appropriate security context.

If you want to let multiple users manage the user systems service, I would probably go with sudo and systemd user files. You could create a group which has sudo access etc. The important idea is that an unprivileged user controls an unprivileged service.

pretty sure the runnit solution won’t allow this either

I’m no expert, but I think you could make a special group, set the supervise directory to be owned by that group, and add all relevant users to that group? Either way, as I explained in a different reply, running the service as a user vs letting that user control a root service are completely different things, and one is not always a substitute for the other.

A generic stack overflow answer:

Do you REALLY need multiple users to manage that service? Maybe it’s better to have multiple instances of that service and… (This goes on and on)

Hey. There is no reason to feel useless. Everyone has value. And the best part about Linux is that we all can make our own choices. If people hate systemd they don’t have to use it. That’s ok. Void linux I think is actually a pretty cool distro. It reminds me of the BSDs for some reason.

I use systemd because I like how it works and I think it’s well designed. As for desktops I am a huge fan of sway. Gnome isn’t bad on a laptop or tablet though. What do you use?

Your response is “why are you doing X, you should do Y”

Because they’re right, you shouldn’t do X. I know that’s not a satisfying answer for most people to hear, but it’s often one people need to hear.

If the process must run as root, then giving a user direct and unauthenticated control over it is a security vulnerability. You’ve created a quick workaround for your issue, and to be clear it is unlikely to realistically cause you problems individually, but on a larger scale that becomes a massive issue. A better solution is required rather than recommend everybody create a hole in their security like yours in order to do this thing.

If this is something that unprivileged users reasonably want to control, then this control should be possible unprivileged, or at least with limited privilege, not by simply granting permanent total control of a root service.

This is ultimately an upstream issue more than anything else.

and I wanted a way to quickly switch between Miryoku and standard QWERTY. The best way to do this that I could come up with was to bind a special key on my keyboard to toggle kmonad on and off.

You couldn’t think of to use layers?

Wait, aren’t most desktop environment support switching keyboard layout these days? For example, gnome can do that with super+space or via the language switcher in the top bar. Using a user service to do this seems overkill.

he don’t want to log as root, so a root shell isn’t what he want

Ok, just stop complaining. Almost everyone else disagrees and most of the community doesn’t even know that there is a different init system. Systemd was widely accepted 6 years ago and we have moved on.

The good news is that you don’t have to use it. The bad news is pretty much everyone expects you to be using it.

If it’s providing you the functionality you want using an overhead you’re fine with, there’s no reason to change it.

Mint 21.3 is based on Debian Bookworm (via Ubuntu 22.04, not counting LMDE of course). I don’t know what you’re looking at and I also don’t fully know how this works, but what you said doesn’t seem to be the case.