Aeon and applications that rely on (their own) services

Hey, I’m checking out Aeon in a vm to see if it’s the right fit for me. From what I understand using Flatpaks and distrobox are the preferred way of installing software. But what would be the right way to install software that brings their own service? In my case this would be onedrive.

I could install this via distrobox and then “distrobox-export --bin …” but I don’t know how I would run the service (to sync in the background) then. Would I have to copy the service files to aeon and run the service from aeon or what would be the right approach? Is this something that would have to be installed via transactional-update? Or is it possible that Aeon is the wrong distro for me if I need to run services?

Thanks for the help.

If you insist on using systemd system service, you would need to install via transactional-update. Service definitions are searched for in fixed locations. After onedrive service template is present in /usr/lib/systemd/system, you can simply enable it for selected users using

systemctl enable onedrive@user.service

I do not use system service at all, I use user service which can simply be copied into your home directory and does not need to be present in (read-only) system location. You still need the binary itself, but it can be anywhere.

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Okay, thank you. Ill check out the home directory approach tomorrow.

OK, probably to clarify - /etc/systemd/system is one of those locations so you can copy unit definition there. /etc is writable. You still need the binary itself available when systemd tries to start your service. It may imply additional dependencies needed to run containers.

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Hey, thanks for trying to help. I finally found time to figure it out. I couldn’t figure it out the way I initially wanted to.

Making a distrobox with an init system and using it inside the distrobox worked as described here. I had to make sure to start the distrobox on boot.