emberd

emberd is a small CLI for managing systemd units (start/stop/restart/reload/status/logs) and viewing unit logs.

Table of contents

• Prerequisites
• Build
• Install
• Usage
• Running emberd as a systemd service
• Permissions & best practices
• Development
• Repository

Prerequisites

• Go 1.20+ (to build the binary)
• A Linux host using systemd with systemctl and journalctl

Build

Build the binary from the repository root:

go build -o emberd ./...

Install

Copy the built binary to a system path (example):

sudo cp emberd /usr/local/bin/
sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/emberd
sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/emberd

Usage

Common commands:

• Start a unit: emberd start nginx.service
• Stop a unit: emberd stop nginx.service
• Restart: emberd restart nginx.service
• Reload (if supported): emberd reload nginx.service
• Show status: emberd status nginx.service
• Tail logs: emberd logs nginx.service -f
• Show last N lines: emberd logs nginx.service -n 200

You can also pass the unit via flag: emberd start -u nginx.service

Run emberd --help for full command help.

Running emberd as a systemd service

emberd is mainly a CLI for interactive and automated service management. If you need a daemon that tails logs continuously, create a systemd unit that runs emberd logs <unit> -f.

Example unit file (save as /etc/systemd/system/emberd-logs-nginx.service):

[Unit]
Description=emberd log tailer for nginx
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/emberd logs nginx.service -f
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
# Consider running as a non-root user if possible
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start it:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now emberd-logs-nginx.service
sudo journalctl -u emberd-logs-nginx.service -f

Permissions & best practices

• Managing system services requires privileges. Use sudo or run as root for system units.
• For user-scoped units/journals, use systemctl --user and journalctl --user instead.
• Prefer ad-hoc CLI usage or scripted automation over running a privileged long-lived process.
• If non-root operators need to control services, use Polkit rules to grant specific permissions rather than running everything as root.

Development

Helpful make targets are provided in the repository:

make build   # build the binary
make install # copy to /usr/local/bin (Makefile uses `install`)
make fmt     # run gofmt
make vet     # run go vet
make tidy    # go mod tidy