Using Systemd Service Management

Contents

Initial Setup
Managing BRLTTY Instances

Initial Setup

The following steps need to be performed:

Systemd service and path units need to be installed into the /usr/lib/systemd/system directory:
- brltty@.service
- brltty-device@.service
- brltty.path
- brltty@.path
A wrapper script needs to be installed into the /usr/libexec/brltty directory:
- systemd-wrapper
A file defining the non-root user that BRLTTY is to run as, including the supplementary groups that it needs access to, needs to be installed into the /usr/lib/sysusers.d directory:
- sysusers -> brltty.conf
A file defining the files and directories that should exist needs to be installed into the /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d directory:
- tmpfiles -> brltty.conf

A make file has been provided in order to make this easy to do. It can be found within the Autostart/Systemd subdirectory of BRLTTY's build tree. To install all of these files, change to this directory and run the command:

make install

You then need to tell Systemd that the files have been installed. To do this, run the command:

systemctl daemon-reload

That's all you need to do. Your system is now able to manage BRLTTY instances via Systemd.

Managing BRLTTY Instances

Systemd manages BRLTTY instances on your system in a number of ways.

USB Braille Devices

If BRLTTY's Udev rules have also been installed then a BRLTTY instance will be automatically started when a USB braille device is connected, and automatically stopped when it's disconnected. Several braille devices can be managed in this way at the same time. They can be connected and disconnected at any time and in any order.

The default configuration file - /etc/brltty.conf - is used except that any braille-device and braille-driver directives that it specifies are ignored because they're overridden by the Udev rules. It's safe, therefore, to specify a default non-USB braille device within /etc/brltty.conf.

The Default Instance

The default BRLTTY instance is the one that's configured via the file /etc/brltty.conf. It's managed by applying standard Systemd commands to BRLTTY's path unit. For example:

systemctl enable brltty.path
systemctl start brltty.path
systemctl stop brltty.path
systemctl disable brltty.path

Additional Instances

Additional BRLTTY instances can be managed via path instance references. Each of them has its own configuration file.

If, for example, the name of an instance is iname, then its Systemd path name would be brltty@iname, its configuration file would be /etc/brltty_iname.conf, and it'd be managed via Systemd commands like these:

systemctl enable brltty@iname.path
systemctl start brltty@iname.path
systemctl stop brltty@iname.path
systemctl disable brltty@iname.path

Any number of instances may be managed in this way. These instances don't implicitly also read the default configuration file (/etc/brltty.conf). You can, however, explicitly include it from within any instance-specific configuration file:

include /etc/brltty.conf