Systemd unit for kanata [Linux]

[ibnishak]

1. Edit the following as necessary, and save it as ~/.config/systemd/user/kanata.service

[Unit]
Description=Kanata keyboard remapper
Documentation=https://github.com/jtroo/kanata

[Service]
Environment=PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
Environment=HOME=/path/to/home/folder
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/kanata --cfg /path/to/kanata/config/file
Restart=never

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

2. Run systemctl --user start kanata.service to start kanata daemon
3. Run systemctl --user enable kanata.service so it may autostart whenever the current user logs in.
4. Run systemctl --user status kanata.service to check if kanata daemon is running or not.

[roadkell]

Seems like Restart=never should actually be Restart=no: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html#Restart=

[Lewenhaupt]

Unable to get this to work, can't find any devices. Maybe it runs with the wrong user?

[amospalla]

A standard user can not access to raw input devices, thus kanata must be running under root user, or under some user with privileges to read /dev/input/* files.

[Lewenhaupt]

Yeah but I followed the guide to avoid having to run it as sudo. And I can now run it as my own user (the same that runs the daemon) but it doesn't work in the daemon, only when I run it directly.

[YellaGoya]

checked error log

[ERROR] Failed to open the output uinput device. Make sure you've added the user executing kanata to the uinput group

systemd runs as root, so i blindly added root to the input, uinput groups
=> This is a meaningless behavior, root can do anything without being added to a specific permission group.

too early to get uinput?

I wondered if the service was started at an early time when uinput could not be found,
so I used kanata.timer to trigger kanata.service 30 seconds after the laptop booted.
=> At first, it worked, but after a week, it suddenly stopped working, and no matter what user I used,
systemd only showed the error above.

solution

I made the kernel load the uinput module into memory first, and suddenly it worked.
I'm using it in a rocky linux 9.3 environment.
I hope this helps.

add ExecStartPre=/sbin/modprobe uinput at [Service]

[Unit]
Description=Kanata Service

[Service]
ExecStartPre=/sbin/modprobe uinput
ExecStart=/path/to/kanata -c /path/to/kanata.kbd
Restart=no

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[KoshulaDora]

For whoever that gets code 13 premission denied when trying to make systemd service run, consider putting it in etc/systemd/services/system/ instead. For some reason this makes the linux-x11-repeat-delay-rate a bit finicky if not outright unresponsive, you can mitigate that with a xset r rate <delay> <repeat> in your autostart.sh or whatever your wm/de uses.

[Andrew15-5]

I didn't want to fight with permission and all that stuff, so I made a system-wide config (/lib/systemd/system/kanata.service) without the (it looks like) useless Environment entries:

[Unit]
Description=Kanata keyboard remapper
Documentation=https://github.com/jtroo/kanata

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/user/.cargo/bin/kanata --cfg /home/user/.config/kanata/config-name.kbd
Restart=never

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Also did this:

# sudo systemctl daemon-reload # maybe this will be required when changing the service file
sudo systemctl start kanata
sudo systemctl enable kanata