L Process Manager (lpm)

L Process Manager, or lpm, is a Rust-based project that leverages the power of systemd (in either root or user mode) to create and manage services.

Install

You can install prebuilt binaries from the releases page.

Or using the following command:

wget -qO- "https://github.com/tshelter/lpm/releases/latest/download/lpm-$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar xzvf -
mv lpm /usr/local/bin

Also, you can build and install the project by running the following commands:

cargo install --git https://github.com/tshelter/lpm.git

Setup

To run lpm in user-mode, you need to enable dbus socket to be available anytime by running the following command:

sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER

Usage

$ lpm --help
Usage: lpm <COMMAND>

Commands:
  run      Run a command as a service
  start    Start a service
  status   Get the status of a service
  stop     Stop a service
  restart  Restart a service
  enable   Enable a service
  disable  Disable a service
  reload   Reload a service
  logs     Display logs for a service
  remove   Remove a service
  list     List services
  cat      Print the service file for a service
  help     Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help  Print help

Examples

Creating a simple http server using python3:

lpm run -n http-server 'python3 -m http.server 8000'

Service will execute command in the current directory. Environment won't be inherited.

Instead, if you want to run a service with the current environment, you can use the following command:

lpm run -E -n http-server 'python3 -m http.server 8000'

Also, you can pass environment variables to the service:

lpm run -E -n http-server -e 'PORT=8000' 'python3 -m http.server $PORT'

note, using 'single quotes' is important to prevent shell expansion on $PORT.

You can use -e multiple times to pass multiple environment variables.

Advanced

You can pass additional arguments to the unit file using --unit, --service, and --install options.

$ lpm run --help
Run a command as a service

Usage: lpm run [OPTIONS] --name <NAME> <COMMAND>

Arguments:
  <COMMAND>  The command to run as a service. Wrap 'command in quotes' to pass arguments.

Options:
  -n, --name <NAME>                The name of the service
  -E, --inherit-env                Inherit the current environment to the service. Usually not required.
  -e, --env <ENV>                  List of key=value pairs to pass to the service as environment variables
  -d, --description <DESCRIPTION>  A description of the service [default: ]
  -u, --unit <UNIT>                List of key=value pairs for the [Unit] section of the service file
  -s, --service <SERVICE>          List of key=value pairs for the [Service] section of the service file
  -i, --install <INSTALL>          List of key=value pairs for the [Install] section of the service file
  -h, --help                       Print help

Changing working directory for the service:

lpm run -n http-server -u 'WorkingDirectory=/path/to/working/directory' 'python3 -m http.server 8000'

lpm uses /usr/bin/env to run the command, but you can override it by passing ExecStart option:

lpm run -n http-server -s 'ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 -m http.server 8000' 'this will be ignored, but required argument'