> for an average unix user a service is a process that is running in the > backgroud, doing stuff mostly without any user interaction. you can > try to argue this away, but i'm afraid that this is the state of > things.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to aim to satisfy some presumed “average unix user”, because such a user would not be familiar with many concepts introduced by Guix (e.g. “guix shell” or “guix system”). The manual defines system services by referencing users’ expectations: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- 11.18.1 Service Composition --------------------------- Here we define a “service” as, broadly, something that extends the functionality of the operating system. Often a service is a process—a “daemon”—started when the system boots: a secure shell server, a Web server, the Guix build daemon, etc. Sometimes a service is a daemon whose execution can be triggered by another daemon—e.g., an FTP server started by ‘inetd’ or a D-Bus service activated by ‘dbus-daemon’. Occasionally, a service does not map to a daemon. For instance, the “account” service collects user accounts and makes sure they exist when the system runs; the “udev” service collects device management rules and makes them available to the eudev daemon; the ‘/etc’ service populates the ‘/etc’ directory of the system. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Shepherd takes care of monitoring daemons and the like, but services provided by the system (in the sense of system facilities) don’t have to be daemons. -- Ricardo
