Xfce Forum

xfce_curious

Member

Registered: 2020-02-20

Posts: 12

tumblerd on a custom Arch/i3 install... it remains a 'static' service

Hi all,

I did read through the gazillion posts about Tumbler, but haven't found a solution yet. To explain:

I run Arch, with i3 WM and polybar. I log in from the console with a home rolled .xinitrc. I do this simply because I like a 'minimal' install with no programs I don't need or use.

After years of such, I finally decided to look into why exactly the files in my mounted drive containing a large music library suffer from this curious problem of certain files not having thumbnails. Now, to keep it simple, I'm not asking for help with that (yet). I'm asking for help to ensure I even have tumbler running correctly in the first place. Suffice to say (re music) the files have ALL been checked very, very thoroughly.

The output of

$ systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep tumblerd
app-tumblerd@autostart.service                  generated -
tumblerd.service                                static    -

never varies i.e. it doesn't seem to matter how I try to run a --user instance of tumbler, I never see it enabled and running as a --user instance, only ever 'static'.

I have tried numerous ways to achieve this, including via .xinitrc, inside the i3.conf (which I thought would be similar to the way xfce4-session manager activates it?

If I run

$ systemctl --user start tumblerd.service

it returns without error (or any message). If I run

$ systemctl --user enable tumblerd.service
The unit files have no installation config (WantedBy=, RequiredBy=, UpheldBy=,
Also=, or Alias= settings in the [Install] section, and DefaultInstance= for
template units). This means they are not meant to be enabled or disabled using systemctl.
 
Possible reasons for having these kinds of units are:
• A unit may be statically enabled by being symlinked from another unit's
  .wants/, .requires/, or .upholds/ directory.
• A unit's purpose may be to act as a helper for some other unit which has
  a requirement dependency on it.
• A unit may be started when needed via activation (socket, path, timer,
  D-Bus, udev, scripted systemctl call, ...).
• In case of template units, the unit is meant to be enabled with some
  instance name specified.

If I look at one of the service files, it's true that all it contains is (as one example)

[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1
Exec=/usr/lib/tumbler-1/tumblerd
SystemdService=tumblerd.service

so the terminal output makes sense. But I have no idea how or why I might get tumbler to run 'locally' and, presumably, correctly?