How to debug "autostart.service" (MozillaVPN)

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 11:57

I’m once more lost with all the different services/ways that Linux offers to autostart a program and was hoping you could point me in the right direction. I’m running mozillavpn (from AUR) and the build-in launch on startup feature is not working. Looking through journalctl I found this line:

Nov 28 12:34:12 roedelkiste systemd[1050]: app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service: Skipped due to 'exec-condition'.

And this is where I got lost:

How is a service like this defined?
How can I see what is happening here?
Where can I find and possible edit it?
What could “Skipped due to ‘exec-condition’” mean?

(I know that I could go the easy way and just use the KDE autostart, but this isn’t working properly for the mozillavpn app - and I want to learn something about how my system works )

Mirdarthos · 28 November 2023 12:28

Hi @AllesMeins,

This is because a condition that needs to be met for the service to start isn’t started yet, so the service couldn’t start.

a Service is just a plain text file with the extension .service that systemd can parse. a Service is defined by creating the text file in corrrect directory (either /etc/systemd/system for system-wide services, or somewhere in your home directory that I can’t remember the locatio9n of now, for user specific services.)

You can analyze the output of

systemctl status app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service

and/or:

journalctl -xeu app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service

Depending on wether it’s system-wide or user only;

for system-wide services:

sudo systemctl edit app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service

for user services:

systemctl edit --user app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service

Followed by reloading systemd to apply changes:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

More info:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd

Hope this helps!

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 13:39

Thank you for this detailed answer. I think this will help me a lot!

cscs · 28 November 2023 13:51

you need --user

Mirdarthos · 28 November 2023 13:55

Thank you! Forgot about this…

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 13:57

Hmm, doesn’t seem to be as easy as I thought. None of the commands do work - there doesn’t seem to be such a service - but it still shows up in the bootlog. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

$  journalctl -b | grep mozilla                                                                                                                                                             
Nov 28 14:46:16 roedelkiste systemd[1039]: app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service: Skipped due to 'exec-condition'.

$  systemctl --user status app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service                                                                                                                            
Unit app-mozillavpnx2dstartup@autostart.service could not be found.

$  sudo systemctl status app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service                                                                                                                       
Unit app-mozillavpnx2dstartup@autostart.service could not be found.

$  sudo systemctl edit app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service                                                                                                                  
No files found for app-mozillavpnx2dstartup@autostart.service.

Run 'systemctl edit --force --full app-mozillavpnx2dstartup@autostart.service' to create a new unit.
$ journalctl -xeu app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service                                                                                                                             
~

-- No entries --

$ sudo journalctl -xeu app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service                                                                                                                          
~

-- No entries --

Mirdarthos · 28 November 2023 13:59

Rather do a

sudo systemctl list-units | grep --ignore-case moz

…to find the service name.

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 14:06

Thanks - I figured it out. I needed to escape the \ in the service name. That lead me to a .desktop-file created by mozillavpn which seems to be only written for Gnome, so this probably isn’t the reason why it is not working for me.

Mirdarthos · 28 November 2023 14:08

Yeah, don’t know about that, so not commenting.

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 14:10

Yeah, looks like something I’ve to take to the mozilla-folks and hope that they’ll add proper KDE support at some point in the future. Thank you for all your help!

zbe · 28 November 2023 14:39

Where you got this idea from?

Looks like you’re not configuring something right.

Mirdarthos · 28 November 2023 14:44

I honestly don’'t know about that. BUT I doubt it.

AFAIK Mozilla VPN uses Wireguard, which isn’t developed by Mozilla itself, and is desktop environment-agnostic. In fact, you don’t even need a DE.

How did you get a hold of the .desktop file, what is the contents of it and what makes you say it’s Gnome-only?

Edit:

Because of this, I removed the solution-mark. If a moderator or someone puts it back:

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 16:01

Where you got this idea from?

Because the the .desktop-file the service is based on contains the lines

OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;MATE;
X-GNOME-AutoRestart=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=true

And the service-status also shows that it wasn’t run, because I’m not running gnome:

app-mozillavpn\x2dstartup@autostart.service - MozillaVPN
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/xdg/autostart/mozillavpn-startup.desktop; generated)
     Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exec-condition) since Tue 2023-11-28 14:46:16 CET; 2h 13min ago
  Condition: start condition unmet at Tue 2023-11-28 14:46:16 CET; 2h 13min ago
       Docs: man:systemd-xdg-autostart-generator(8)
    Process: 1335 ExecCondition=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-xdg-autostart-condition GNOME:Unity:MATE  (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 24ms

Edit: the complete .desktop-file (/etc/xdg/autostart/mozillavpn-startup.desktop)

[Desktop Entry]
Name=MozillaVPN
Version=1.5
Exec=/usr/bin/mozillavpn ui -m -s
Comment=A fast, secure and easy to use VPN. Built by the makers of Firefox.
Type=Application
Icon=mozillavpn
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;MATE;
X-GNOME-AutoRestart=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=true

zbe · 28 November 2023 19:53

By the way, how did you install it? What happens if you run Exec line from terminal?

AllesMeins · 28 November 2023 20:33

Via package manager (AUR). First the regular version and since this wasn’t the newest version and autostart wasn’t working I tried the git-package.

If I run the Exec nothing happens, if I remove the -s flag, the client starts minimized.