Lingering

Core Idea

Lingering controls whether user-managed services may keep running after logout.

On the shared course server, this is infrastructure policy. Learners should understand the idea, but they do not run loginctl enable-linger themselves.

Practice Alone

Check service behavior after logout and understand who enables lingering on the shared server.

loginctl show-user "$USER" -p Linger
systemctl --user status site.service

Linger=yes means your user service manager can keep running after you log out. Linger=no means logout may stop user services unless staff changes the course server setting.

Done When

You know why a service can survive your SSH session ending.

Docs Pointers

• Read systemd user services, service, and processes.