I have multiple processes named systemd running simultaneously on my Arch Linux machine. At least one of them is PID 1.
Is this normal?
It has been normal for Arch Linux since October 2012, yes.
systemd
is now your system manager and service manager. It runs as process #1.
The other processes could be per-user instances of systemd
, instances of systemd
in a "container" (if you have containers), ephemeral services that systemd
is right in the middle of spawning, or simply programs such as systemd-journald
where you haven't spotted the double-barrelled nature of the program name. ☺ The world cannot tell you more with what little information you've provided.
systemd
. ArchWiki.systemd
container. ArchWiki.zsh
(which hung on start and thus eliminated my access to TTY and GUI terminals) back to bash
systemd
no longer spawned multiple persistent (I assume hanging) processes. Weird stuff.