Isn’t it strange what systemd has done with its latest release version 230 regarding user background process and login sessions? Or is it just me who feels so? Anyway in this post I am going to analyse this change[1] in default setting of logind.conf that upstream has released recently. Let me kick off with the following snippet taken from changelog of v230:

>>> systemd-logind will now by default terminate user processes that are part of the user session scope unit (session-XX.scope) when the user logs out. This behavior is controlled by the KillUserProcesses= setting in logind.conf, and the previous default of “no” is now changed to “yes”. This means that user sessions will be properly cleaned up after, but additional steps are necessary to allow intentionally long-running processes to survive logout. <<<

Click here for complete changes with v230 release.

So what does that mean? I can explain the above change citing the example of GNU Screen. For an average GNU/Linux user it is not an Read More »