Why do this?

Unlike simply launching programs normally, having them as services gives us the advantage of being able to supervise, stop, or restart them independently, without needing to restart the entire session.

If that is the case, you’re probably interested in having user services in Runit. These services work similarly to system services, but with runsvdir running under the user instead of root.

Requirements

Before starting, you need to prepare the following directory hierarchy. They don’t necessarily have to be in this location, but this guide assumes they are created like this:

-> ls ~/.local/share/runit/
├── sv/
└── service/

In sv/, the services will be defined, while in service/, the symbolic links (active services) will be located.

To quickly create the directories, you can use this command:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/runit/{sv,service,log}

Services

Installation

User-level services for Runit can be found in various places.

In my Codeberg repository, I have some that I personally use.

Manual Creation

For creating a service, I’ll use a service that starts pipewire as an example.

The structure of a service should look like this:

-> tree /home/itszariep/.local/share/runit/sv/pipewire
├── log
│   └── run
└── run

The run file contains the command that will be executed. For example:

#!/bin/sh
exec pipewire 2>&1

Meanwhile, log/run specifies where the service log will be stored:

#!/bin/sh
exec svlogd -tt ~/.local/share/runit/log/pipewire

Having a log is not mandatory, but it is recommended to help identify service errors.

Activation

After adding or creating services in ~/.local/share/runit/sv/, you need to activate them. To do this, simply create a symbolic link:

ln -s ~/.local/share/runit/sv/pipewire ~/.local/share/runit/service/

If you created multiple services, you can link them all with a single command:

ln -s ~/.local/share/runit/sv/* ~/.local/share/runit/service/

Result

Assuming there are several services, the structure should look similar to this:

-> tree /home/itszariep/.local/share/runit/
.
├── log
│   ├── mate-polkit
│   ├── pipewire
│   ├── pipewire-pulse
│   └── wireplumber
└── sv
    ├── mate-polkit
    │   ├── log
    │   │   └── run
    │   └── run
    ├── pipewire
    │   ├── log
    │   │   └── run
    │   └── run
    ├── pipewire-pulse
    │   ├── log
    │   │   └── run
    │   └── run
    └── wireplumber
        ├── log
        │   └── run
        └── run

16 directories, 10 files

Starting the Services

To start the supervisor and the services, run the following command:

runsvdir ~/.local/share/runit/service

This command can be added to the autostart of your desktop environment or window manager.

Managing Services

You’ll probably run into this if you try to manage services the usual way:

-> sv status pipewire
fail: pipewire: can't change to service directory: No such file or directory

This happens because sv looks in the system’s default paths. So you need to specify the full path:

sv status ~/.local/share/runit/service/pipewire

You can also use a script like the one in my Codeberg repository, which works the same as sv, but is called usv:

-> usv status pipewire
run: /home/itszariep/.local/share/runit/service/pipewire: (pid 1403) 2124s; run: log: (pid 1402) 2124s

Turnstile

Turnstile allows us to have user services in a similar way, although it requires additional configuration. It can be useful if your services need access to the graphical session, for example.

Personally, I haven’t used Turnstile, but the Void Linux guide can be a good starting point for those who are interested.