Creating systemd Service Files

Creating systemd Service Files
Learn how to make custom service file to run and manage your custom service. This tutorial uses Ubuntu.
www.devdungeon.com/content/cr...
www.freedesktop.org/software/...
www.devdungeon.com

[@Daweim0]

This has to be one of the highest quality, most professionally produced Linux tutorials I've watched. How does it only have 2k views?

[@hyto]

Amazing video tutorial indeed.

[@camogamingguy2171]

Make that over 10 000 views!

[@wduandy]

Make that over 100 000 views!

[@swibay]

It has 56k now!!!

[@pablobaccelli5154]

i agree, super interesting and well explained

[@ScottPlude]

almost four years later, this video is still PERFECT. Thanks for making a short, info packed video.

[@malcolmw513]

Holy crap, thank you! systemd is so dang cryptic when you're starting from zero.

[@hardmihir]

I have been going through large theory over the internet and blogs but this was to the point and helping me create my first DevOps project.

[@maxor1986]

I rarely comment on anything on KZbin. But I've got to say this is one of the most straight forward, refreshingly short and essential and well made tutorials I've seen. I've Left a subscription there immediately. I hope you have a long and fulfilled life! :) Thanks for sharing your knowledge. -Robert

[@dimitrioschatzidimitriou7546]

That was a really good tutorial! Every single thing you said and showed was useful and to the point. Thank you!

[@AdeptEnglish]

I know I'm late to the party here. But thank you for the best (by a mile!) video setting out a real world use of systemd, having watched a lot of crap before getting here I felt it worth commenting that this video is way above the other crud out there.

[@stephenjames5745]

Very simple, to the point, and informative. Thanks!

[@praveenchandra3327]

I agree, this is how all tech videos need to be produced. Amazing clarity and leaves no questions or doubts. Some people have the great gift of delivery and this has to be a real great example of it. Short but extremely informative and engaging for an important subject! Well done.

[@gonattsagor]

Learning that you could set User fixed my problem - thanks!

[@SlideRSB]

Great tutorial! Please do a deeper dive into Systemd about the different kinds of units. I'm having a lot of trouble grasping timers.

[@bubbleteaichooseyou]

Damn. I didn't expect to get it first try. This video is straight to the point.

[@ade1963]

thank you for the excellent and succinct explanation - you know that you are listening to an expert if they can make it sound easy. head and shoulders above other explanations

[@yannik4960]

Holy shit thank you so much. Ive been looking so long for something like this. And every text tutorial i read was right but i never was sure if what i did was right as i had no knowledge on how to check if my script is actually running on top of the normal uncertainty of doing something the first time. But you showed that and teached me more than 20 text based tutorials could just because you showed me how to verify my stuff so i can fix/debug my stuff :-). I never write comments on KZbin but this video made me do it. Thank you

[@Battle5cars]

I really appreciate your time to make this video, I was having issues understanding this topic and after watchning your video I totally understand it. One suscription more to you channel!

[@Unbekannter0Nutzer]

Great. Your contrast settings and font size make it nice to follow.

[@lucaalberigo6302]

this is some high quality tutorial, to the point and helpful, really nice

[@kamalchan9756]

even the linux+'s course doesn't explain as you do thank you

[@DavodAta]

Thank you very much, short, efficient and very informative video.

[@kamurashev]

Awesome, just the best, comprehensive tutorial.

[@foxyt4066]

exactly what i was looking for! thank you so much!

[@SmashPhysical]

Great info, this is just what I was looking for. Thanks!

[@Yo-yx8wo]

Thank you, your explanation was clear, this was really helpful

[@mfgingerman]

Thank you so much for such a succinct and quick basic overview of how a systemd service can be created. A little late on the comment, but I did want to add one extra note for anybody that is running a modern Fedora or RHEL distribution, or any other distribution that runs SELinux. This will not work if you create the pointless.sh file in your home directory, it will give annoying and hard to solve permission denied commands in systemd. I recommend instead creating and editing the file in somewhere like /usr/local/bin/ as root or else it won't have the right permissions. Or if you make it in your user home directory, after running the chmod command you can also run `chcon -t bin_t pointless.sh` and this will also make it work correctly. Won't get into the complicated explanation, but if you want to learn you can start searching selinux online and there are some great articles that will popup, just wanted to give a quick fix :)

[@alphabanks]

This was an amazing video especially for a Linux newbie like myself.

[@jamsky1558]

Thank you, this was very helpfull. Great for refreshing forgotten knowledge.

[@sma92878]

This is amazing, great content, clear and to the point

[@Aryan21able]

precise, no time wasted on jargons. best clip ever

[@hoolahoop4103]

Excellent video and explanation. Thanks!

[@emilmartinov]

Excellent, to the point, batteries included.

[@phenom_gg]

Thanks a lot for this dude, I have managed to play the cucaracha song on startup haha

[@chromerims]

Very succinct, effective and serving the purpose 👍

[@katamsterdam]

Thanks for the really instructional video. At the end of the file you say you can't create new system files with systemctl; yet you can with. sudo systemctl edit --full --force mynew.service This is the recommended way as you then don't have to worry about file location. SystemD will sort it out for you where the file goes.

[@yousofebneddin7430]

brief and totally useful. thanks a lot.

[@derrechnerraum8664]

This was very straight forward, liked it. 👍

[@abdulrashid6244]

Great video. Especially Systemd created great Documentation

[@Rimtay]

Great video! Helped me a lot. Thank you!

[@MrNickDunbar]

Thank you was a really a big help.

[@TheMachinistCNC]

Huge help! Thanks!

[@arsh772]

Super like. quality content. Thanks

[@mouduge]

Great quick tutorial, thanks

[@mjackstewart]

Very cool! Thank you!

[@cultist7931]

very useful thank you, buddy!

[@metallicafan5447]

The only video i had to watch, cant believe the load of crap out there. Thanks a tonne!

[@pkaramol]

I believe another way of creating the systemd service file is "$root: systemctl edit --force --full pointless.service" The --full flag is to edit directly within the `/etc/systemd/system` directory; without this it would create the `/etc/systemd/system/pointless.service.d/override.conf` The --force flag is to forcefully create the unit file if it does not exist. In order for the above process to start with `vim`, add this to `/root/.bashrc` export SYSTEMD_EDITOR="/usr/bin/vim"

[@darshanparab8480]

Nice explanation. Thank you.

[@harishchavan8580]

perfect dude your just awsm.

[@sahabatbaru9748]

best tutorial on systemd,

[@example101]

It's a lot but systemd in the end is a good system. This is a great quickstart.

[@talanky]

Great summary thank you

[@Udaridamarakula1234]

regard from sri lanka thank you

[@nasirali-fs3fk]

Thank you So very much for this "TO THE POINT" video. Sincerely appreciate your valuable time. God bless you!

[@davelawler695]

Fascinating!

[@sinyoungkim5916]

Super nice!!! thanks!!

[@angledcoathanger]

Great tutorial! Does this work the same on Red Hat?

[@hamidja1537]

Thanks for sharing

[@mesmeridze1]

For me it looks much easy than using sysV where you need to describe each action on start/stop/restart

[@donha475]

WOW. YOU LEGEND!!!!

[@kamalchan9756]

thank you very much bro

[@ricardoabh3242]

Very well explained, do you g=have a video for “-user” option, ie not run by root?

[@Lunolux]

great video, thx

[@Data-oh1nd]

you are the best thanks

[@user-bg4dv4lq5f]

thank you for your video

[@xNiickT]

Thank you!

[@vijaysinghrajput8526]

useful video...!!!

[@ashmeetkaur4067]

How to switch between the terminal bash scripts? Is there any shortcut?

[@themodernscientist]

Thanks man

[@CodeCharmer]

Thanks - This was a great tutorial! I've been tearing my hair out looking for a password option, cause I could not figure out - when adding user= how would the service know what the users password, in order to run as such. I thought there must be a command line option during the enable process. Obviously not, obviously not needed.

[@DevDungeon]

systemd runs as root and doesn't need permission to impersonate a user

[@Jaynext2]

thanks a lot :)

[@jsr7599]

succinct, thanks

[@parris3142]

nice, thanks

[@jaideepsarkar961]

nice vid

[@kamertonaudiophileplayer847]

If I need my service used certain audio card, then how can I do that?

[@Aryan21able]

we need a video with deeper dive in systemd

[@crossbowbeat]

Cool

[@saraa7192]

anyone knows how can I save the file with the changes? what should I press?

[@jirehla-ab1671]

Are there systemd services that can be created & run without sudo?

[@zeroxhunter826]

❤️

[@thedemonlord9232]

pi@raspberry3b:/etc/systemd/system $ sudo systemctl start pointless sudo: unable to resolve host raspberry3b: Name or service not known Can any of you guys explain to me why I am getting this error?

[@alokafernando899]

Is there any resource to refer to make use of such a service to accept input and to provide an output after processing? Ideally another client script to use the service.

[@DevDungeon]

Sounds like you want to use an API. One common way of communicating with a local server is using TCP sockets. You could build your service as a REST API and communicate with it that way.

[@chrissmith6028]

Oh man. Where was this video in 2011 when I tried to learn systemd and my 99 init script brain was fighting every minute of it ?

[@insidetrip101]

I know this video is a year old, but I've been having a hard time trying to get bash scripts to automatically execute. All I'm trying to do is a hello world service at startup. My bash script is a simple echo "hello world." It runs fine when I execute ./hello.sh I create the service file and then run: systemctl enable hello.service It creates the symbolic link and service status says enabled, but then "vendor preset: disabled." My understanding is that the vendor preset is precisely what a need to enable for it to run at startup, but everywhere I look the way to enable the vendor preset is to simply run the above mentioned command. To make matters worse, if I manually start hello.service: systemctl start hello.service I get absolute no output. . . but then if I run: systemctl status hello.service the output is: *hello.service - Startup Message Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/hello.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled) Active: inactive (dead) M D Time Computername systemd[1]: Started Startup Message. M D Time Computername hello.sh[417]: Hello World! M D Time Computername systemd[1]: hello.service: Succeeded. So in addition to the vendor preset being disabled, it doesn't even print out to my current TTY. Is there something I have to add to my bash script, or are these two problems connected? I really can't figure out why such a simple thing is causing me a huge roadblock. Sorry if this isn't the best place for this, but I'm really lost here.

[@mfgingerman]

Hey there, assuming this already got solved, but just in case anyone else hits the same confusion. Don't worry about the vendor preset, that will always display disabled unless the service file is different. What you showed for the output from systemd here actually says 1) the service "/etc/systemd/system/hello.service" is enabled right now to run at startup 2) the normal default for this or the "vendor preset" would be disabled, but you changed it to enabled instead 3) the status of this is now inactive because the script already finished running 4) all of the output from this program is listed there including that it was a success. One of the problems here, making the status say inactive, is that your script only runs the one command and finishes, to have it stay active you have to add a while loop in the script like in the tutorial video above, systemd just runs a process in the background, it doesn't force it to run in a loop or anything. Second misunderstanding is about tty output. it would actually be non-trivial and pretty difficult for a service to find a certain terminal, wait for the terminal to load and then output a message to it, trust me, don't make your life hard for no reason lol. It would be incredibly annoying if every single service you ran on your computer constantly output data to your terminal while you were trying to use it, instead think of that output from systemctl status as the "output to the tty" as it includes the "M D Time Computername hello.sh[417]: Hello World!" which is the actual output from the script. Checking the output of a service is opt-in it doesn't just spill to the terminal. If you want to change the first output to the terminal, try looking up info about changing the MOTD (message of the day) that is stored to be output to the terminal on login. Hope that makes sense or helps someone :)

[@DevDungeon]

You are not seeing any output, because a service runs in the background. Anything printed to STDOUT is going to syslog/journalctl. That's why you see the Hello World output when you do a systemctl status (and also if you did a journalctl). So it is working and working as expected.

[@mertureturk560]

All over the internet, while creating a unit file some say /lib/systemd/system other say /etc/systemd/system. It confuses me. What is the best choice among these two paths for creating and deploying a unit file?

[@DevDungeon]

The lib folder is where a package might install a default config file. Your package might install a default/example systemd in the /usr/lib/systemd folder, make it read-only, and symlink it to /etc/. You could also package an example/default config in /usr/lib and then on initial install copy the default config in to /etc/. Your package may only install a default config in /etc/ upon install with nothing in /usr/lib but I would recommend at least packaging one default config as an example. If you are not creating a package, and are just creating a one-off manually created file, put it in /etc/.

[@chromerims]

@@DevDungeon /lib/systemd vs /etc/systemd --- this explanation is very useful. Thank you.

[@geirha75]

i need to make a python script service. i need to run the .py script with python 3. how would i add that to [Service]?

[@DevDungeon]

Just provide the full path to python and call it like you would any other executable

[@lxw5231]

very good video for me to understand systemd. have a question, there is another way to run pointless every time it boots up. what's the difference between put it in systemd and put it in a auto run script?

[@MagnumCarta]

Usually you'd want to create a service unit if it's intended to be a daemon (never-ending background process) whereas you'd usually want to put it in a script to automatically run if it's only intended to run once per system startup.

[@chromerims]

@@MagnumCarta duly noted, thx 👍

[@drewski2001]

How do you make a python script daemon?

[@ramki0345]

When does a systemd service restarts

[@jeremycheong8036]

Hi do you know how i can gain access to this file while not being a privileged user? i.e exploiting vulnerabilities around this configuration file?

[@DevDungeon]

You will not be able to edit system files without root or admin permission. What you CAN do it set up user-specific systemd-files. I don't have this in the video, but I updated www.devdungeon.com/content/creating-systemd-service-files. E.g. $HOME/.config/systemd/user/my_daemon.service

[@jamesmensah2331]

hello I have tried to use echo The time is ${date} and it only returns The time is with no date. How do I fix? thanks for any help given

[@degametag2969]

the program vim cant be found in the following packets

[@degametag2969]

using ubuntu 16.04

[@fetB]

says unit not found...

[@manasjain7448]

one video was enough 😇

[@ajinzrathod]

I want to start a python script, but that script is inside Virtual Environment. How can I write 2 commands together like source /my/path/to/file/env/bin/activate And then python3 /my/path/to/file/pointless.py

[@DevDungeon]

You don't "activate" a virtual environment in this situation. You just call python directly. replace 'activate' with 'python'

[@ajinzrathod]

@@DevDungeon will surely try that.. thanks ❤️

[@hayattagalawy7738]

I couldn't save and exit service file

[@KingoFQarmatian]

how can i start/stop multiple instance from one scripts

[@DevDungeon]

systemctl start x y z

[@Dfath]

ctrl+windowskey+c

[@aderemiadesada2648]

it keeps giving me this error: System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate. Failed to connect to bus: Host is down

[@parackaantony]

Do you resolved it?

[@parackaantony]

Running the Ubuntu Terminal in WSL 2 in Windows OS

[@aderemiadesada2648]

@@parackaantony i was running it on wsl

[@karthicks439]

It would be great if you can tell me what would be the problem. ubuntu@ip-172-XX-27-82:/etc/systemd/system$ cat dbinsert.service [Service] ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/micro-db-cron/dbinsert.js ubuntu@ip-172-XX-27-82:/etc/systemd/system$ sudo systemctl status dbinsert ● dbinsert.service Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/dbinsert.service; static; vendor preset: enabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2021-05-15 16:56:15 UTC; 8s ago Process: 1122 ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/micro-db-cron/dbinsert.js (code=exited, status=203/EXEC) Main PID: 1122 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC) May 15 16:56:15 ip-172-31-27-82 systemd[1]: Started dbinsert.service. May 15 16:56:15 ip-172-31-27-82 systemd[1122]: dbinsert.service: Failed to execute command: Exec format error May 15 16:56:15 ip-172-31-27-82 systemd[1122]: dbinsert.service: Failed at step EXEC spawning /home/ubuntu/micro-db-cron/dbinsert.js: Exec format error May 15 16:56:15 ip-172-31-27-82 systemd[1]: dbinsert.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC May 15 16:56:15 ip-172-31-27-82 systemd[1]: dbinsert.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

[@AwaisKhan-wg3bn]

With Execstop, can I run the script before shutdown the server?

[@DevDungeon]

Execstop _is_ the command to stop the server, so whatever you want to do, at the end of it, also include the actual call to stop the server.

[@AwaisKhan-wg3bn]

Actually i have a .sh file which i always want to run before the server shutdown. Any suggestions?

[@MagnumCarta]

@@AwaisKhan-wg3bn In the Unit section of the service file, you'll want to use the configuration "Before=shutdown.target restart.target halt.target". Then include the path to the script file in the ExecStop configuration. This will cause your script to run before the system shuts down. See the answer from user John 9631 in this Stack Exchange discussion: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/48973/execute-a-command-before-shutdown

[@nomandevops]

Great video :). I need some help. I need a script to auto-restart Django services upon Rhel8 server reboot at any given time. Can anyone be able to help me? thanks

[@blockchaindevelopersunited9720]

soodoo