Jun 16, 2012

Proper(-ish) way to start long-running systemd service on udev event (device hotplug)

Update 2015-01-12: There's a follow-up post with a different way to do that, enabled by "systemd-escape" tool available in more recent systemd versions.

I use a smartcard token which requires long-running (while device is plugged) handler process to communicate with the chip.
Basically, udev has to start a daemon process when the device get plugged.
Until recently, udev didn't mind doing that via just RUN+="/path/to/binary ...", but in recent merged systemd-udevd versions this behavior was deprecated:
RUN
...
Starting daemons or other long running processes is not appropriate for
udev; the forked processes, detached or not, will be unconditionally killed
after the event handling has finished.

I think it's for the best - less accumulating cruft and unmanageable pids forked from udevd, but unfortunately it also breaks existing udev rule-files, the ones which use RUN+="..." to do just that.

One of the most obvious breakage for me was the smartcard failing, so decided to fix that. Documentation on the whole migration process is somewhat lacking (hence this post), even though docs on all the individual pieces are there (which are actually awesome).

Main doc here is systemd.device(5) for the reference on the udev attributes which systemd recognizes, and of course udev(7) for a generic syntax reference.
Also, there's this entry on Lennart's blog.

In my case, when device (usb smartcard token) get plugged, ifdhandler process should be started via openct-control (OpenCT sc middleware), which then creates unix socket through which openct libraries (used in turn by OpenSC PKCS#11 or PCSClite) can access the hardware.

So, basically I've had something like this (there are more rules for different hw, of course, but for the sake of clarity...):

SUBSYSTEM!="usb", GOTO="openct_rules_end"
ACTION!="add", GOTO="openct_rules_end"
PROGRAM="/bin/sleep 0.1"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device",\
  ENV{ID_VENDOR_ID}=="0529", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="0600",\
  GROUP="usb",\
  RUN+="/usr/sbin/openct-control attach usb:$env{PRODUCT} usb $env{DEVNAME}"
LABEL="openct_rules_end"

Instead of RUN here, ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS} can be used to start a properly-handled service, but note that some hardware parameters are passed from udev properties and in general systemd unit can't reference these.

I.e. if just ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}="openct-handler.service" (or more generic smartcard.target) is started, it won't know which device to pass to "openct-control attach" command.

One way might be storing these parameters in some dir, where they'll be picked by some path unit, a bit more hacky way would be scanning usb bus in the handler, and yet another one (which I decided to go along with) is to use systemd unit-file templating to pass these parameters.

openct-handler@.service:

[Unit]
Requires=openct.service

[Service]
Type=forking
GuessMainPID=false
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "exec openct-control attach %I"

Note that it requires openct.service, which is basically does "openct-control init" once per boot to setup paths and whatnot:

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/openct-control init
ExecStop=/usr/sbin/openct-control shutdown

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Another thing to note is that "sh" used in the handler.
It's intentional, because just %I will be passed by systemd as a single argument, while it should be three of them after "attach".

Finally, udev rules file for the device:

SUBSYSTEM!="usb", GOTO="openct_rules_end"
ACTION!="add", GOTO="openct_rules_end"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device",\
  ENV{ID_VENDOR_ID}=="0529", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="0600",\
  GROUP="usb", TAG+="systemd",\
  ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}="openct-handler@\
  usb:$env{ID_VENDOR_ID}-$env{ID_MODEL_ID}-$env{ID_REVISION}\
  \x20usb\x20-dev-bus-usb-$env{BUSNUM}-$env{DEVNUM}.service"
LABEL="openct_rules_end"

(I highly doubt newline escaping in ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS} above will work - added them just for readability, so pls strip these in your mind to a single line without spaces)

Systemd escaping in the rule above is described in systemd.unit(5) and produces a name - and start a service - like this one:

openct-handler@usb:0529-0600-0100\x20usb\x20-dev-bus-usb-002-003.service

Which then invokes:

sh -c "exec openct-control attach\
  usb:0529/0600/0100 usb /dev/bus/usb/002/003"

And it forks ifdhandler process, which works with smartcard from then on.

ifdhandler seem to be able to detect unplugging events and exits gracefully, but otherwise BindTo= unit directive can be used to stop the service when udev detects that device is unplugged.

Note that it might be more obvious to just do RUN+="systemctl start whatever.service", but it's a worse way to do it, because you don't bind that service to a device in any way, don't produce the "whatever.device" unit and there are lot of complications due to systemctl being a tool for the user, not the API proper.

posted on 2012-06-16 12:26 YEKT
sysadmin systemd udev