Re: [gpsd-users] gpsd always starting in foregound (a systemd solution)

[Moe]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:48:52 -0400
"Jobs, Steve" <address@hidden> wrote:

> The problem turned out to be systemd.  Yay, now I can jump on the 
> bandwagon and rant about how systemd sucks.  Anyways, I would assume 
> anyone who is using a beaglebone black with either debian wheezy or 
> Jessie would be running into the same problem.  As I am using my BBB as 
> a headless server it was simple enough to disable systemd in the 
> Uenv.txt config file.  On reboot everything just works!
> 
> On 5/27/2014 9:12 AM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > Jobs, Steve <address@hidden>:
> >> gpsd is always staring in the foreground (-N) with no additional arguments.
> >
> > That's a weird one.
> >
> > I see from your trace log that clone(2) is getting called but setsid()
> > is not.  So it looks like what's happening is that gpsd is for some
> > reason failing to background itself properly - probably because the
> > fork call is erroring out.
> >
> > First thing to figure out is whether your instance is calling daemon(3)
> > from a system library or from the emulation iin the GPSD distribution.
> > How are your C skills?

I felt I was missing out.  I just tried out a swanky new distribution that uses 
apt-get packages and systemd to handle gpsd, et al.. (Xubuntu 16.04)

As long as works without drama, I don't really care.

But, it didn't work, that is...until I had a discussion with systemd.

As others have noted the -N flag accompanied all gpsd starts regardless of the 
contents of /etc/default/gpsd file.  This was tracked down to:

# cat /lib/systemd/system/gpsd.service
 
[Unit]
Description=GPS (Global Positioning System) Daemon
Requires=gpsd.socket
# Needed with chrony SOCK refclock
After=chronyd.service

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/gpsd
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/gpsd -N $GPSD_OPTIONS $DEVICES   <-----right in there

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Also=gpsd.socket

If the flag is removed, and I reloaded the things that make systemd work, I 
could turn off the gpsd as before, but not restart it...if I rebooted, I get 
nothing.  Sure it said all was honky dory, or spit back a cryptic confession 
something of which I had no clue.

The 'net was of little help.  The spotty trail of tears runs a few years back, 
but with brief exchanges of bad advice and dead ends.

So this is my brief exchange of bad advice.

Add two lines

Type=forking
PIDfile=/var/run/gpsd.pid

so the file now looks like: 
 
[Unit]
Description=GPS (Global Positioning System) Daemon
Requires=gpsd.socket
# Needed with chrony SOCK refclock
After=chronyd.service

[Service]
Type=forking                             
PIDfile=/var/run/gpsd.pid
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/gpsd
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/gpsd $GPSD_OPTIONS $DEVICES

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Also=gpsd.socket

##
gpsd now is controlable via 

service gpsd stop 
service gpsd start
service gpsd restart

There are the irritating pop up authentications, but it works for me, and the 
contents of /etc/default/gpsd are no longer glossed over.


-- 
Moe <address@hidden>