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Should systemd be handling mounting?

Hey guys, this is actually an old problem that I thought I solved but in fact I don't think I really did, should SystemD be mounting things? I could never figure out why drives wouldn't mount but I've figured it out - its systemd-dummy / libsystemd-dummy, that's what is auto-mounting USBs/SD cards/etc, if I remove systemd-dummy then the drives won't mount as they normally should.

Every time I would install Artix on my computers, I'd have to install something that would pull in systemd-dummy...
I've checked out my /etc/group file, I've added adbusers, storage & uucp, made sure my username was in that group, but I've got to be missing something else... But what?

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #1 –
Systemd does not handle the mounting. It is most likely that the software you are using that handles the mounting depends on systemd libs. In my case I use udisks2. Do you have the same software for mounting(udisks2)?
Chris Cromer

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Chris Cromer – on
Systemd does not handle the mounting. It is most likely that the software you are using that handles the mounting depends on systemd libs. In my case I use udisks2. Do you have the same software for mounting(udisks2)?

um... yeah.. but Void Linux doesn't require a systemd-dummy for drive-mounting to work though...
So how do I get mounting to work without systemd? Isn't this kind of improper?

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #3 –
Like Chris said, whatever you are using for mounting probably depends on systemd libs hence why mounting breaks without it. It's not at all necessary though, auto mounting works just fine here without systemd-dummy. In my case, I found that the simplest setup was to launch my xorg or wayland session with dbus-launch (of course, you need elogind, dbus, udev, gvfs, and probably udisks2 for this to work) and then everything mounted properly.

I don't know what your setup is, but you can try a simple ~/.xinitrc and see if your display manager will read it. For example, if you are running xfce then just put this line in there.

Code: [Select]
exec dbus-launch startxfce4

Of course, substitute "startxfce4" with whatever is appropriate for your window manager/desktop environment. If that doesn't seem to do anything for you, try going to tty, killing all xorg sessions, and then manually running startx.

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: kenny_w – on
um... yeah.. but Void Linux doesn't require a systemd-dummy for drive-mounting to work though...
So how do I get mounting to work without systemd? Isn't this kind of improper?
The problem here is arch extra and community repos. Packages that come from those 2 repos are compiled against systemd. Once we have all of arch's packages in our world and galaxy repos then it will be possible to get rid of the systemd-dummy. Until that time, systemd-dummy is required for some packages.
Chris Cromer

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #5 –
But Chris, if I remove systemd-dummy then the USBs will no longer mount...
Is there not something wrong with that? O.o
Shouldn't we be able to auto-mount drives without systemd-dummy?

I have the groups uucp storage & adbusers with my user in the groups... This is how it is on all of my computers.
What does Void Linux use to mount drives? Wouldn't it be the same or similar since its non-systemd? Or is this sort of stuff usually incorporated into the init system? IDK

PS sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread, I've been really busy the past few months, things are finally starting to calm down.

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: kenny_w – on
But Chris, if I remove systemd-dummy then the USBs will no longer mount...
Is there not something wrong with that? O.o
Shouldn't we be able to auto-mount drives without systemd-dummy?

I have the groups uucp storage & adbusers with my user in the groups... This is how it is on all of my computers.
What does Void Linux use to mount drives? Wouldn't it be the same or similar since its non-systemd? Or is this sort of stuff usually incorporated into the init system? IDK

PS sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread, I've been really busy the past few months, things are finally starting to calm down.
That is because of what I already explained. The software that you are using is coming from Arch Linux and is built against the systemd libraries. All Artix software/packages are systemd free(anything in [system], [world], or [galaxy]), but in your pacman.conf you are using [extra] and [community] repos from arch linux and the software that you use to automount came from Arch Linux, not from Artix.

Also it doesn't actually require systemd, what is happening is that your package is built against the systemd libraries. This means that the binary/libraries won't even try to run if systemd libs are not included in the system, it doesn't mean that it is actualy using those libraries, only that it is built against it.

We are in the process of compiling all of arch's packages and putting them into our repos, if it is in our repos, it is clean of systemd, if it's in arch linux's repos, it is polluted with systemd.

You can't compare Artix to void. Void has always been 100% systemd free since it was created, which means that no packages are compiled against the systemd libs. Artix is a fork of Arch Linux, we are taking arch's packages and removing systemd from them. This takes time, Arch Linux has 10,414 packages, we have to recompile and remove systemd from all of those. Right now we are around 1,200 packages in our repos. There are still well over 9,000 packages that need to be built, and volunteers to help in this are welcome. Those 9,000 packages you can still install and use, but they may require systemd-dummy until they are all converted into our repos.
Chris Cromer

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #7 –
Well when I was having this problem months ago nobody ever suggested installing systemd-dummy, still don't understand why USBs aren't automounting without systemd-dummy, that seems odd... I understand systemd-dummy is necessary for a lot of programs but for USB auto-mounting? well I guess I'll have to just wait, thanks for the detailed response but I still don't think it makes any sense.

So USB auto-mounting in pcmanfm requires systemd?
Why doesn't autofs mount the drives, isn't that what it does?

And its not really fair to say I'm comparing Artix to Void, I'm just asking what Void uses to auto-mount USBs.

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #9 –
Oh ok, that explains it then, thank you Artoo. I was really confused about this but now it all makes sense, so we have to make GVFS not require systemd somehow? Surely we must be able to fork the GVFS that Void Linux or another non-systemd distro uses,  no?

I just made my first 3 PKGBUILDs the other day, so hopefully soon I'll be able to help you guys make packages.

If you guys could link me to the list of packages you need converted from Arch to Artix that'd be awesome, maybe there are some small things here & there that I can do & one of you can look over it to make sure it looks right. I know you guys are extremely short-handed & I would love to help once I am more experienced.

Re: Should systemd be handling mounting?

Reply #10 –
If you are that paranoid can't build the package or if you can't  wait Obarun has gvfs and about 100 repackaged systemd free Arch  packages in it obarun repro,  The big problem is Arch they don't always list systemd as a dep  so its best to keep systemd-dummy it has nothing in it any way