[SOLVED]systemd service doesn't play sound

Question

I have a bash script which play via 'sox' a sound file. Something like this:
play someFile -t alsa -q
I set up a 'systemd --user' timer which calls this script at certain time. The timer is successfully called and the corresponding service is also successfully called and exits with SUCCESS code. The problem is that sound is not heared.
When the service is called manually from the bash with
systemctl start mySoundTimer.service
the sound is played OK.
The service file is as follows:
[Unit]
Description= A sound timer.
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash /path/to/my/script.sh
I tried several other combinations in ExecStart:
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c /path/to/my/script.sh
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash "-c /path/to/my/script.sh"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c "/path/to/my/script.sh"
No one is working. What can be the cause of the problem?
EDIT:
The cause of this is a different timing behaviour of systemd timer as compared to cron which I used before. (It seemingly takes into account the time of the last run and does not run again if it is called in less than the interval between runs specified in the timer file. And I tested the timer by setting the system date to several seconds before the timer's planned times.)
Last edited by nbd (2014-08-05 20:23:39)

Answer 1

msthev wrote:$ man systemd.service
ExecStart=
Note that this setting does not directly support shell command
lines. If shell command lines are to be used they need to be passed
explicitly to a shell implementation of some kind. Example:
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'dmesg | tac'
Thanks, changing ExecStart line to
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c '/bin/echo 100 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness'
solved the issue. Though I can recall seeing ExecStart lines with direct shell commands.
Raynman wrote:
You should look at tmpfiles.d.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … rary_files
I'll do that, thanks!