Ian Macdonald via supervision schrob:
> Despite my lack of understanding, s6-supervision seems to have been
> achieved but only for those processes started as part of the 'boot'
> process. The only other 'long running' programs I need are a window
> manager (dwm), terminal (st), dbus, a browser, a mail program and a
> file manager, all started in .xinitrc and all running in the foreground
> (except bdus).
>
> Should they, can they and is there any advantage in them being
> supervised?
Supervision primarily means that the supervisor will try very hard to
ensure that there's always exactly one instance of the supervised
program runnning.
I'd absolutely want to be able to open several terminals, so supervising
st would be silly.
If you really want your Browser/mail/file manager to be always running
in your graphical session (including to automatically pop up again
should you close them), you could. Imho, it's of dubious value, unless
you're setting up an unprivileged "kiosk" pc/account, where you want to
ensure that those programs (and presumably only those) are always
present.
Xserver, window manager and user dbus lend themselves well to being
supervised, provided you handle $DISPLAY correctly.
On the other hand, if any of those crash, restarting them is probably an
insignificant part of the effort to get your state back to working
condition. Thus, imho, supervising them doesn't buy you much either.
> One final question. My service directories are, of course, under /etc,
> with all the other s6 stuff. What makes that the worst possible place
> for them to be!
Not sure which place Laurent recommends, but I can come up with far
worse places. ;)
cheers,
Jan
Received on Tue Feb 24 2026 - 16:23:13 CET