Is there a way to see what is DE related in terms of service

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Is there a way to see a list of the DE related services? Or in other words services (such as daemons) that were started but only during or after the launch of my DE? I want to try and do this without having to do this, but if I have to I will simply take xdm out of my runlevel and add it back in to compare. I figured though with the type of process control available in linux I would check to see for an easy solution. So far, I have had no luck by using fuser or lsof, all I get is a list of the process matched to a file that is open. What I would like to know is when the file was open, and possibly in comparison to several other points in time like OpenRC run or other similar events.

Does that seem doable is there a program that analyzes and prints that type of information? It would be a big help to me as I'm still learning how everything in linux is somehow connected and whenever I come across a new topic (right now it is consolekit, which I am stuck with since I am not ready to make the switch to different init system).

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 5:37 am Post subject:

pstree(1) is helpful.

However it will not necessarily tell you all the dbus links as they are not tracked by pstree. Consolekit uses dbus so some of the process connections will not be exactly shown, but consolekit can be useful even without a DE.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Yeah, so that is more or less the problem, with what Im seeing is that there is not enough detail provided. I would like to know if consolekit is needed for the either NIS or LDAP, do you know?

My desktop is something of a dummy server, I just use it for backups, and to test install a bunch of software then if I like it then I usually remove it anyway. Which is why I really don't care about any features like security or anything on this machine. I simply want to have the option to SSH into the machine run some "tests", maybe perform a backup onto one of the drives, with rsync and then be done. Does this situation seem like a better reason for me to make the switch over to systemd perhaps on that machine, rather than to eliminate the use of consolekit? And yes I agree it has been useful for me, because until now I've been using it on my Desktop and Laptop.

But now I want to give this a try and go without it on my desktop.

What if any are the challenges I may be up against, perhaps more specifically in terms of something like coordinating UIDs across machines (with LDAP?) and features such as NFS, authentication modules, sudo or su. Do you know if those all require consolekit or systemd, or is having neither a fairly Ok thing to try if I am prepared to deal with the upkeep and potential security holes

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:14 pm Post subject:

LIsLinuxIsSogood,

I have a perfectly usable desktop without any *kit
However, its by no means mainstream any more and you need a long memory to make it work.

That started as a result of udev being absorbed by systemd and the threat of udev going away.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 2:15 pm Post subject:

Consolekit is really an "unneeded" service, it's there just to tell applications that the user who logged in is on console, and given additional privileges because of this (namely, since the user is at console, they already can muck with the hardware at the console, so just let them have rights to at least reboot, shutdown, suspend, play with removable media, etc. - but if they login remotely they shouldn't be given these rights).

This of course is completely optional and some people say it's a security hole to even have such service. However some desktop environments have problems with this, and things stop working the way one would expect (automounting drives, etc.).

NDIS/LDAP are network authentication services. They are unrelated to consolekit.

As a headless server, the need for consolekit/systemd becomes quite unnecessary, so it's up to you to remove it.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Ok, I get that consolekit is not needed, which was fairly apparent after seeing how outdated is anyways.

Does Gnome desktop work without it? And I am trying to stay within the init with PID 1 (openrc)...

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:25 am Post subject:

A lot of the attraction to a DE like Gnome is that you do have things like automount or click to mount storage devices and ability to shutdown the machine without logging in or sudoing as root. Thus it is quite entrenched into Consolekit/Systemd. It likely will still run without it as it's dbus operated but functionality you take for granted on a CK/Systemd machine would stop working.

I suppose the reason why CK constantly become "outdated" is because most DE's have moved over to using systemd and CK has become an afterthought. However for the most part, I've found consolekit still works just fine for xfce4 and use this with openrc on my servers when console login is needed. You may want to go to the overlay Gnome3 that uses Consolekit (and thus systemd is not necessary).

I'd probably think really hard and perhaps completely do away with Gnome (and kde and xfce and mate and everything else) too if dumping both Consolekit and systemd, and look for some other simpler system that does not have hooks into the services CK/Systemd supply (perhaps a simple window manager like fvwm or something). Oddly enough, I got lazy on one of my servers (a virtual machine that now runs on the aforementioned machine that used to be a physical machine) and kept consolekit going despite it not having a DE installed. It did have X11 installed for firefox in case I really need it to, say, download oracle-jdk, but this machine really doesn't need consolekit as I don't even use the QEMU console as there is no power switch for it nor USB ports; I just ssh in and run vncserver when needed.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 3:02 pm Post subject:

No, I just left it because I was lazy and never know if I'll ever switch it back to a physical machine again. It's installed because there's a USE=consolekit as my make.profile is still pointing to desktop despite being a "server". No dependencies at all other than the USE flag and a side curiosity for consolekit (I have other "machines" (virtual machines, single board computers, etc. that also don't have real "heads" and do not have consolekit installed at all, so that's proof that it it's not necessary.)