DH_INSTALLSYSTEMDUSER(1)

📦
version 14.5ubuntu1 · 12 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ DH_INSTALLSYSTEMDUSER(1) ✨

okay bestie, gather round 💖 this is the dh_installsystemduser page from the Debhelper manual, and it's literally the girl who handles your systemd user unit files. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

dh_installsystemduser — she installs systemd unit files. that's the whole job description, she's booked and busy 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

dh_installsystemduser [debhelper options] [--no-enable] [--name=name]
[unit file ...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea, bestie ☕ dh_installsystemduser goes looking for the systemd user instance service files that a package installed, and then she generates preinst, postinst, and prerm code blocks for enabling, disabling, starting, stopping, and restarting the matching systemd user instance services — for when the package gets installed, updated, or removed. those little snippets get added into the maintainer scripts by dh_installdeb(1). iconic delegation, honestly 👑

and the way deb-systemd-helper(1) is the one doing the actual enabling and disabling of the systemd units? that means the machine doesn't even have to be running systemd at package installation time — the enabling happens on all machines regardless. so nobody gets left out, it's giving inclusivity 💖

dh_installsystemduser operates on all user instance unit files installed by a package. but if you only want blocks generated for specific unit files, just pass them as arguments. and if you wanna exclude specific unit files from processing, you use the -X common debhelper(1) option. options on options, she contains multitudes 💅

🌈 FILES 🌈

  • debian/package.user.path
  • debian/package@.user.path
  • debian/package.user.service
  • debian/package@.user.service
  • debian/package.user.socket
  • debian/package@.user.socket
  • debian/package.user.target
  • debian/package@.user.target
  • debian/package.user.timer
  • debian/package@.user.timer

if any of those files exist, they get installed into usr/lib/systemd/user/ in the package build directory — and the .user part of the filename gets stripped off on the way in. cute little glow-up, honestly ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --name=name — install the service file as name.service instead of the default filename package.service. when you use this, dh_installsystemd goes looking for and installs files named debian/package.name.user.service instead of the usual debian/package.user.service. and on top of that, maintainer scripts are only generated for units that match the given name. specific. focused. main character energy 👑
  • --no-enable — disable the service(s) on purge, but do not enable them on install. that's it, that's the option 🎀

💀 NOTES 💀

bestie. listen. this command is not idempotent. 😭

dh_prep(1) should be called between invocations of this command (with the same arguments). otherwise? it may cause multiple instances of the same text to be added to maintainer scripts. yeah. copy-paste city. a mess. don't do it fr fr 🙈

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

💜 AUTHORS 💜

pkg-systemd-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org

okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that 🫶 this was version 14.5ubuntu1, dated 2026-09-21, straight outta the Debhelper manual — go forth and install your user units, periodt 💖✨

📦 where this page comes from