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smoke env: systemd --user unit + Make targets so the dev server outlives shell tool boundaries

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Spent half an evening fighting a smoke server that kept getting SIGTERM'd
mid-iteration. Root cause: backgrounded processes spawned from sandboxed
shell tool calls don't outlive the parent — even with nohup + disown.

Fix: hand the server to user-systemd as a transient unit so its lifecycle
is owned by the user's session, not by whichever bash subprocess started it.
New Make targets:

  make smoke-restart   build server + (re)launch as systemd --user unit
  make smoke-status    show unit status
  make smoke-logs      tail $HOME/smoke/server.log
  make smoke-stop      stop the unit
  make smoke-deploy    full rebuild + restage agent assets + restart

Documents the workflow in CLAUDE.md so the next session doesn't relitigate.
This commit is contained in:
Steve Cliff
2026-05-07 22:55:36 +01:00
parent 51192c3603
commit a28bda2031
2 changed files with 77 additions and 3 deletions
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CLAUDE.md
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@@ -81,8 +81,29 @@ RM_COOKIE_SECURE=false \
./bin/restic-manager-server >> $HOME/smoke/server.log 2>&1 &
```
A `make smoke-deploy` target that bundles all of this would be a
good follow-up.
## Smoke server: use the Make targets, not raw `nohup`
The smoke server runs as a transient `systemd --user` unit named
`restic-manager-smoke.service` so it survives any sandbox or
process-group boundary that would otherwise SIGTERM a backgrounded
process. Use the Make targets:
```
make smoke-restart # rebuild server + (re)launch as systemd --user unit
make smoke-status # systemctl --user status
make smoke-logs # tail $HOME/smoke/server.log
make smoke-stop # stop the unit
make smoke-deploy # full rebuild + restage agent assets + restart
```
`./bin/restic-manager-server &` from inside a Bash tool call gets
reaped when the tool exits — don't do that. If the unit fails to
start: `systemctl --user status restic-manager-smoke` and
`$HOME/smoke/server.log` have the diagnosis.
`smoke-deploy` does NOT touch `/usr/local/bin/restic-manager-agent`
on this dev box; if your change requires the live agent here to
update, run the agent restage block above by hand.
## Migrations: prefer column-level ALTERs over table rebuilds