Re: more informative logging for (shepherd) services

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hello Florian,

Florian Dold <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi Guix,
>
> is there a way to obtain more informative logging from services that are
> started directly or indirectly (by GuixSD service) via shepherd?
>
> It seems right now, only what is sent to the syslog is logged.  However,
> it would be immensely helpful if
>
> 1. the actual commands run by the shepherd for a service
> 2. the stdout/stderr of the service
> 3. the exit code of a process when it unexpectedly terminates

I can echo those feature requests :). I find shepherd pretty opaque to
debug (but I do like it :).

> would also be available.  Is there there a way to enable this or plans
> to implement it?

I think it was discussed at some point, have you searched the mailing
list archives?

[...]

> Generally, how do folks debug GuixSD/shepherd services?  I found it
> pretty difficult, as it looks like the Guile code that defines a service
> is minified and somewhere in the store.  Is there a way to ask shepherd
> for the definition of a service?

The indirect way I've been proceeding (based on advice from Ludovic), is
grepping through the requisites of my system profile:

guix gc -R /var/guix/profiles/system | grep yourservice

And then opening that service definition in Emacs with Guix-Emacs
installed. It should reindent the Scheme code to make it readable (it
can be fired manually doing M-x guix-scheme-mode as well).

I hope this helps a bit,

Maxim