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Careful running emacs as a systemd service. I did this for some time, but then one day when I rebooted the computer, nothing worked - drives weren't mounted properly, services I expected weren't there. I finally found that none of my systemd services had come up (but systemd didn't generate errors or failed messages) and yet later still discovered that it was apparently an error in my .emacs that had somehow caused a domino effect of none of my systemd services starting up.

I've gone back to just having `emacs --daemon` in my .xnitrc.




I've had errors in my .emacs, and had no issues. I don't see your experience as a reason to not to do it this way.

In case you are interested, I followed the instructions here: https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#idm140737316012272

I imagine it is a very common practice for NixOS users to run emacs as a systemd service.


I also had errors in my .emacs many times and had no issues, until one day.

> I don't see your experience as a reason to not to do it this way.

That's fine. I simply offer it as a cautionary tale. It's possible that systemd on Nix handles things more gracefully than systemd on Arch (though it seems unlikely).


It sounds as if the problem was systemd instead of 'emacs --dameon'.


Yes, indeed. That's why I began with "Careful running emacs as a systemd service."


I'm glad I made the switch from Arch to Void. Runit is clean and simple, it does the correct job in a deterministic fashion, if something fails proper errors appear on usual logs.


I've shifted my work desktop and work laptop to Void, partially for similar reasons. Home desktop is on Arch still though, for various reasons.




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