Sxhkd does not see any other services

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1

I want to map some keymap shortcut to restart some services. For instance, typing in my terminal in NixOs:

systemctl restart --user random-background

Restart random-background service correctly and change the background.

To my surprise the same shortcut in my sxhkd config is ineffective.

"super + b" = "systemctl restart --user random-background";

Playing with other shortcut, my first assemption is that sxhkd does not know who the user is. But adding the following shortcut:

"super + e" = "systemctl --user list-units > /tmp/foo";

Create an empty files, hence suggesting that the service sxhkd does not have any visibility on other running services and cannot restart them. Also:

"super + e" = "whoami > /tmp/foo";

Does not give any output (I was expecting to output my user). Am I misunderstanding something in my analysis or are these services run as “empty” user and can’t see any other services? How can I let sxhkd run as my user and be able to restart other services?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

2

It’s likely that the environment in which sxkhd is executing commands is very minimal. Check comments of the PATH environment variable.

1 Like
3

Thank you gleber for your answer! You were totally right, by default sxhkd only has /home/myuser/.nix-profile/bin in its PATH. Adding the following option in my home.nix:

services.sxhkd.extraPath = "/run/current-system/sw/bin/";

grant visibility to the systemctl command and fixed the issue!
Thanks again!