systemd, lircd, mceusb, xbmc and Arch Linux

NOTICE!!! This guide may be outdated, please check if your distro has a suitable lircd.service already.

After migrating my Arch based media center to systemd, my IR mceusb remote stopped working with lircd.

I needed to do the following steps in order to make it function again.

1. Copy /usr/lib/systemd/system/lirc.service to /etc/systemd/system/lirc.service (service files in /etc/systemd/system always takes precedence to files located in /usr/lib/systemd/system).
2. Edit /etc/systemd/system/lirc.service accordingly:
   

   [Unit]
   Description=Linux Infrared Remote Control
   [Service]
   EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/lircd.conf
   ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/ln -sf /dev/lirc0 /dev/lirc
   ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/ln -sf /run/lirc/lircd /dev/lircd
   ExecStart=/usr/sbin/lircd --pidfile=/run/lirc/lircd.pid
   Type=forking
   PIDFile=/run/lirc/lircd.pid
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target

   
   

   diff /etc/systemd/system/lirc.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/lirc.service
   5,6d4
   < EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/lircd.conf
   < ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/ln -sf /dev/lirc0 /dev/lirc

   The creation of the symlink to /dev/lirc eliminates lircd errors like this:
   

   could not get file information for /dev/lirc
   default_init(): No such file or directory

   
   There may be more “correct” ways of fixing this, but creating the symlink satifies lircd.
3. Now adjust variables in /etc/conf.d/lircd.conf:

   LIRC_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"
   LIRC_DRIVER="mceusb"
   LIRC_EXTRAOPTS=""
   LIRC_CONFIGFILE="/etc/lirc/lircd.conf"

   Get the mceusb conf here: http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb and copy it to /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
4. Disable lircd conflicting kernel modules by creating a blacklist file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_mce.conf containing:
   

   # Disabling kernel modules for mce
   install ir_rc6_decoder /bin/false
   install rc_rc6_mce /bin/false
   install ir_rc5_decoder /bin/false

   Reboot or remove these modules using modprobe -r.
5. Reenable lirc.service:
   

   systemctl reenable lirc.service
   systemctl start lirc.service
   systemctl status lirc.service