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SYSTEMD.SERVICE(5) systemd.service SYSTEMD.SERVICE(5)
NAME
systemd.service - Service unit configuration
SYNOPSIS
service.service
DESCRIPTION
A unit configuration file whose name ends in .service encodes information about a process
controlled and supervised by systemd.
This man page lists the configuration options specific to this unit type. See
systemd.unit(5) for the common options of all unit configuration files. The common
configuration items are configured in the generic "[Unit]" and "[Install]" sections. The
service specific configuration options are configured in the "[Service]" section.
Additional options are listed in systemd.exec(5), which define the execution environment
the commands are executed in, and in systemd.kill(5), which define the way the processes
of the service are terminated, and in systemd.resource-control(5), which configure
resource control settings for the processes of the service.
Unless DefaultDependencies= is set to false, service units will implicitly have
dependencies of type Requires= and After= on basic.target as well as dependencies of type
Conflicts= and Before= on shutdown.target. These ensure that normal service units pull in
basic system initialization, and are terminated cleanly prior to system shutdown. Only
services involved with early boot or late system shutdown should disable this option.
If a service is requested under a certain name but no unit configuration file is found,
systemd looks for a SysV init script by the same name (with the .service suffix removed)
and dynamically creates a service unit from that script. This is useful for compatibility
with SysV. Note that this compatibility is quite comprehensive but not 100%. For details
about the incompatibilities, see the Incompatibilities with SysV[1] document.
OPTIONS
Service files must include a "[Service]" section, which carries information about the
service and the process it supervises. A number of options that may be used in this
section are shared with other unit types. These options are documented in systemd.exec(5)
and systemd.kill(5). The options specific to the "[Service]" section of service units are
the following:
Type=
Configures the process start-up type for this service unit. One of simple, forking,
oneshot, dbus, notify or idle.
If set to simple (the default if neither Type= nor BusName=, but ExecStart= are
specified), it is expected that the process configured with ExecStart= is the main
process of the service. In this mode, if the process offers functionality to other
processes on the system, its communication channels should be installed before the
daemon is started up (e.g. sockets set up by systemd, via socket activation), as
systemd will immediately proceed starting follow-up units.
If set to forking, it is expected that the process configured with ExecStart= will
call fork() as part of its start-up. The parent process is expected to exit when
start-up is complete and all communication channels are set up. The child continues to
run as the main daemon process. This is the behavior of traditional UNIX daemons. If
this setting is used, it is recommended to also use the PIDFile= option, so that
systemd can identify the main process of the daemon. systemd will proceed with
starting follow-up units as soon as the parent process exits.
Behavior of oneshot is similar to simple; however, it is expected that the process has
to exit before systemd starts follow-up units. RemainAfterExit= is particularly
useful for this type of service. This is the implied default if neither Type= or
ExecStart= are specified.
Behavior of dbus is similar to simple; however, it is expected that the daemon
acquires a name on the D-Bus bus, as configured by BusName=. systemd will proceed with
starting follow-up units after the D-Bus bus name has been acquired. Service units
with this option configured implicitly gain dependencies on the dbus.socket unit. This
type is the default if BusName= is specified.
Behavior of notify is similar to simple; however, it is expected that the daemon sends
a notification message via sd_notify(3) or an equivalent call when it has finished
starting up. systemd will proceed with starting follow-up units after this
notification message has been sent. If this option is used, NotifyAccess= (see below)
should be set to open access to the notification socket provided by systemd. If
NotifyAccess= is not set, it will be implicitly set to main. Note that currently
Type=notify will not work if used in combination with PrivateNetwork=yes.
Behavior of idle is very similar to simple; however, actual execution of the service
binary is delayed until all jobs are dispatched. This may be used to avoid
interleaving of output of shell services with the status output on the console.
RemainAfterExit=
Takes a boolean value that specifies whether the service shall be considered active
even when all its processes exited. Defaults to no.
GuessMainPID=
Takes a boolean value that specifies whether systemd should try to guess the main PID
of a service if it cannot be determined reliably. This option is ignored unless
Type=forking is set and PIDFile= is unset because for the other types or with an
explicitly configured PID file, the main PID is always known. The guessing algorithm
might come to incorrect conclusions if a daemon consists of more than one process. If
the main PID cannot be determined, failure detection and automatic restarting of a
service will not work reliably. Defaults to yes.
PIDFile=
Takes an absolute path referring to the PID file of the service. Usage of this option
is recommended for services where Type= is set to forking. The service manager will
read the PID of the main process of the service from this file after start-up of the
service. The service manager will not write to the file configured here, although it
will remove the file after the service has shut down if it still exists. The PID file
does not need to be owned by a privileged user, but if it is owned by an unprivileged
user additional safety restrictions are enforced: the file may not be a symlink to a
file owned by a different user (neither directly nor indirectly), and the PID file
must refer to a process already belonging to the service.
BusName=
Takes a D-Bus bus name that this service is reachable as. This option is mandatory for
services where Type= is set to dbus.
BusPolicy=
If specified, a custom kdbus[2] endpoint will be created and installed as the default
bus node for the service. Such a custom endpoint can hold an own set of policy rules
that are enforced on top of the bus-wide ones. The custom endpoint is named after the
service it was created for, and its node will be bind-mounted over the default bus
node location, so the service can only access the bus through its own endpoint. Note
that custom bus endpoints default to a 'deny all' policy. Hence, if at least one
BusPolicy= directive is given, you have to make sure to add explicit rules for
everything the service should be able to do.
The value of this directive is comprised of two parts; the bus name, and a verb to
specify to granted access, which is one of see, talk, or own. talk implies see, and
own implies both talk and see. If multiple access levels are specified for the same
bus name, the most powerful one takes effect.
Examples:
BusPolicy=org.freedesktop.systemd1 talk
BusPolicy=org.foo.bar see
This option is only available on kdbus enabled systems.
ExecStart=
Commands with their arguments that are executed when this service is started. The
value is split into zero or more command lines is according to the rules described
below (see section "Command Lines" below).
When Type is not oneshot, only one command may and must be given. When Type=oneshot is
used, zero or more commands may be specified. This can be specified by providing
multiple command lines in the same directive, or alternatively, this directive may be
specified more than once with the same effect. If the empty string is assigned to this
option, the list of commands to start is reset, prior assignments of this option will
have no effect. If no ExecStart= is specified, then the service must have
RemainAfterExit=yes set.
For each of the specified commands, the first argument must be an absolute path to an
executable. Optionally, if this file name is prefixed with "@", the second token will
be passed as "argv[0]" to the executed process, followed by the further arguments
specified. If the absolute filename is prefixed with "-", an exit code of the command
normally considered a failure (i.e. non-zero exit status or abnormal exit due to
signal) is ignored and considered success. If both "-" and "@" are used, they can
appear in either order.
If more than one command is specified, the commands are invoked sequentially in the
order they appear in the unit file. If one of the commands fails (and is not prefixed
with "-"), other lines are not executed, and the unit is considered failed.
Unless Type=forking is set, the process started via this command line will be
considered the main process of the daemon.
ExecStartPre=, ExecStartPost=
Additional commands that are executed before or after the command in ExecStart=,
respectively. Syntax is the same as for ExecStart=, except that multiple command lines
are allowed and the commands are executed one after the other, serially.
If any of those commands (not prefixed with "-") fail, the rest are not executed and
the unit is considered failed.
Note that ExecStartPre= may not be used to start long-running processes. All processes
forked off by processes invoked via ExecStartPre= will be killed before the next
service process is run.
ExecReload=
Commands to execute to trigger a configuration reload in the service. This argument
takes multiple command lines, following the same scheme as described for ExecStart=
above. Use of this setting is optional. Specifier and environment variable
substitution is supported here following the same scheme as for ExecStart=.
One additional, special environment variable is set: if known, $MAINPID is set to the
main process of the daemon, and may be used for command lines like the following:
/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
Note however that reloading a daemon by sending a signal (as with the example line
above) is usually not a good choice, because this is an asynchronous operation and
hence not suitable to order reloads of multiple services against each other. It is
strongly recommended to set ExecReload= to a command that not only triggers a
configuration reload of the daemon, but also synchronously waits for it to complete.
ExecStop=
Commands to execute to stop the service started via ExecStart=. This argument takes
multiple command lines, following the same scheme as described for ExecStart= above.
Use of this setting is optional. After the commands configured in this option are run,
all processes remaining for a service are terminated according to the KillMode=
setting (see systemd.kill(5)). If this option is not specified, the process is
terminated immediately when service stop is requested. Specifier and environment
variable substitution is supported (including $MAINPID, see above).
ExecStopPost=
Additional commands that are executed after the service was stopped. This includes
cases where the commands configured in ExecStop= were used, where the service does not
have any ExecStop= defined, or where the service exited unexpectedly. This argument
takes multiple command lines, following the same scheme as described for ExecStart.
Use of these settings is optional. Specifier and environment variable substitution is
supported.
RestartSec=
Configures the time to sleep before restarting a service (as configured with
Restart=). Takes a unit-less value in seconds, or a time span value such as "5min
20s". Defaults to 100ms.
TimeoutStartSec=
Configures the time to wait for start-up. If a daemon service does not signal start-up
completion within the configured time, the service will be considered failed and will
be shut down again. Takes a unit-less value in seconds, or a time span value such as
"5min 20s". Pass "0" to disable the timeout logic. Defaults to DefaultTimeoutStartSec=
from the manager configuration file, except when Type=oneshot is used, in which case
the timeout is disabled by default (see systemd-system.conf(5)).
TimeoutStopSec=
This option serves two purposes. First, it configures the time to wait for each
ExecStop= command. If any of them times out, subsequent ExecStop= commands are skipped
and the service will be terminated by SIGTERM. If no ExecStop= commands are specified,
the service gets the SIGTERM immediately. Second, it configures the time to wait for
the service itself to stop. If it doesn't terminate in the specified time, it will be
forcibly terminated by SIGKILL (see KillMode= in systemd.kill(5)). Takes a unit-less
value in seconds, or a time span value such as "5min 20s". Pass "0" to disable the
timeout logic. Defaults to DefaultTimeoutStopSec= from the manager configuration file
(see systemd-system.conf(5)).
TimeoutSec=
A shorthand for configuring both TimeoutStartSec= and TimeoutStopSec= to the specified
value.
WatchdogSec=
Configures the watchdog timeout for a service. The watchdog is activated when the
start-up is completed. The service must call sd_notify(3) regularly with "WATCHDOG=1"
(i.e. the "keep-alive ping"). If the time between two such calls is larger than the
configured time, then the service is placed in a failed state and it will be
terminated with SIGABRT. By setting Restart= to on-failure or always, the service will
be automatically restarted. The time configured here will be passed to the executed
service process in the WATCHDOG_USEC= environment variable. This allows daemons to
automatically enable the keep-alive pinging logic if watchdog support is enabled for
the service. If this option is used, NotifyAccess= (see below) should be set to open
access to the notification socket provided by systemd. If NotifyAccess= is not set, it
will be implicitly set to main. Defaults to 0, which disables this feature.
Restart=
Configures whether the service shall be restarted when the service process exits, is
killed, or a timeout is reached. The service process may be the main service process,
but it may also be one of the processes specified with ExecStartPre=, ExecStartPost=,
ExecStop=, ExecStopPost=, or ExecReload=. When the death of the process is a result of
systemd operation (e.g. service stop or restart), the service will not be restarted.
Timeouts include missing the watchdog "keep-alive ping" deadline and a service start,
reload, and stop operation timeouts.
Takes one of no, on-success, on-failure, on-abnormal, on-watchdog, on-abort, or
always. If set to no (the default), the service will not be restarted. If set to
on-success, it will be restarted only when the service process exits cleanly. In this
context, a clean exit means an exit code of 0, or one of the signals SIGHUP, SIGINT,
SIGTERM or SIGPIPE, and additionally, exit statuses and signals specified in
SuccessExitStatus=. If set to on-failure, the service will be restarted when the
process exits with a non-zero exit code, is terminated by a signal (including on core
dump, but excluding the aforementiond four signals), when an operation (such as
service reload) times out, and when the configured watchdog timeout is triggered. If
set to on-abnormal, the service will be restarted when the process is terminated by a
signal (including on core dump, excluding the aforementioned four signals), when an
operation times out, or when the watchdog timeout is triggered. If set to on-abort,
the service will be restarted only if the service process exits due to an uncaught
signal not specified as a clean exit status. If set to on-watchdog, the service will
be restarted only if the watchdog timeout for the service expires. If set to always,
the service will be restarted regardless of whether it exited cleanly or not, got
terminated abnormally by a signal, or hit a timeout.
Table 1. Exit causes and the effect of the Restart= settings on them
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
|Restart | no | always | on-success | on-failure | on-abnormal | on-abort | on-watchdog |
|settings/Exit | | | | | | | |
|causes | | | | | | | |
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
|Clean exit | | X | X | | | | |
|code or | | | | | | | |
|signal | | | | | | | |
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
|Unclean exit | | X | | X | | | |
|code | | | | | | | |
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
|Unclean | | X | | X | X | X | |
|signal | | | | | | | |
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
|Timeout | | X | | X | X | | |
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
|Watchdog | | X | | X | X | | X |
+--------------+----+--------+------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------------+
As exceptions to the setting above the service will not be restarted if the exit code
or signal is specified in RestartPreventExitStatus= (see below). Also, the services
will always be restarted if the exit code or signal is specified in
RestartForceExitStatus= (see below).
Setting this to on-failure is the recommended choice for long-running services, in
order to increase reliability by attempting automatic recovery from errors. For
services that shall be able to terminate on their own choice (and avoid immediate
restarting), on-abnormal is an alternative choice.
SuccessExitStatus=
Takes a list of exit status definitions that when returned by the main service process
will be considered successful termination, in addition to the normal successful exit
code 0 and the signals SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGTERM, and SIGPIPE. Exit status definitions
can either be numeric exit codes or termination signal names, separated by spaces. For
example:
SuccessExitStatus=1 2 8
SIGKILL
ensures that exit codes 1, 2, 8 and the termination signal SIGKILL are considered
clean service terminations.
Note that if a process has a signal handler installed and exits by calling _exit(2) in
response to a signal, the information about the signal is lost. Programs should
instead perform cleanup and kill themselves with the same signal instead. See Proper
handling of SIGINT/SIGQUIT -- How to be a proper program[3].
This option may appear more than once, in which case the list of successful exit
statuses is merged. If the empty string is assigned to this option, the list is reset,
all prior assignments of this option will have no effect.
RestartPreventExitStatus=
Takes a list of exit status definitions that when returned by the main service process
will prevent automatic service restarts, regardless of the restart setting configured
with Restart=. Exit status definitions can either be numeric exit codes or termination
signal names, and are separated by spaces. Defaults to the empty list, so that, by
default, no exit status is excluded from the configured restart logic. For example:
RestartPreventExitStatus=1 6
SIGABRT
ensures that exit codes 1 and 6 and the termination signal SIGABRT will not result in
automatic service restarting. This option may appear more than once, in which case the
list of restart-preventing statuses is merged. If the empty string is assigned to this
option, the list is reset and all prior assignments of this option will have no
effect.
RestartForceExitStatus=
Takes a list of exit status definitions that when returned by the main service process
will force automatic service restarts, regardless of the restart setting configured
with Restart=. The argument format is similar to RestartPreventExitStatus=.
PermissionsStartOnly=
Takes a boolean argument. If true, the permission-related execution options, as
configured with User= and similar options (see systemd.exec(5) for more information),
are only applied to the process started with ExecStart=, and not to the various other
ExecStartPre=, ExecStartPost=, ExecReload=, ExecStop=, and ExecStopPost= commands. If
false, the setting is applied to all configured commands the same way. Defaults to
false.
RootDirectoryStartOnly=
Takes a boolean argument. If true, the root directory, as configured with the
RootDirectory= option (see systemd.exec(5) for more information), is only applied to
the process started with ExecStart=, and not to the various other ExecStartPre=,
ExecStartPost=, ExecReload=, ExecStop=, and ExecStopPost= commands. If false, the
setting is applied to all configured commands the same way. Defaults to false.
NonBlocking=
Set the O_NONBLOCK flag for all file descriptors passed via socket-based activation.
If true, all file descriptors >= 3 (i.e. all except stdin, stdout, and stderr) will
have the O_NONBLOCK flag set and hence are in non-blocking mode. This option is only
useful in conjunction with a socket unit, as described in systemd.socket(5). Defaults
to false.
NotifyAccess=
Controls access to the service status notification socket, as accessible via the
sd_notify(3) call. Takes one of none (the default), main or all. If none, no daemon
status updates are accepted from the service processes, all status update messages are
ignored. If main, only service updates sent from the main process of the service are
accepted. If all, all services updates from all members of the service's control group
are accepted. This option should be set to open access to the notification socket when
using Type=notify or WatchdogSec= (see above). If those options are used but
NotifyAccess= is not configured, it will be implicitly set to main.
Sockets=
Specifies the name of the socket units this service shall inherit socket file
descriptors from when the service is started. Normally it should not be necessary to
use this setting as all socket file descriptors whose unit shares the same name as the
service (subject to the different unit name suffix of course) are passed to the
spawned process.
Note that the same socket file descriptors may be passed to multiple processes
simultaneously. Also note that a different service may be activated on incoming socket
traffic than the one which is ultimately configured to inherit the socket file
descriptors. Or in other words: the Service= setting of .socket units does not have to
match the inverse of the Sockets= setting of the .service it refers to.
This option may appear more than once, in which case the list of socket units is
merged. If the empty string is assigned to this option, the list of sockets is reset,
and all prior uses of this setting will have no effect.
StartLimitInterval=, StartLimitBurst=
Configure service start rate limiting. By default, services which are started more
than 5 times within 10 seconds are not permitted to start any more times until the 10
second interval ends. With these two options, this rate limiting may be modified. Use
StartLimitInterval= to configure the checking interval (defaults to
DefaultStartLimitInterval= in manager configuration file, set to 0 to disable any kind
of rate limiting). Use StartLimitBurst= to configure how many starts per interval are
allowed (defaults to DefaultStartLimitBurst= in manager configuration file). These
configuration options are particularly useful in conjunction with Restart=; however,
they apply to all kinds of starts (including manual), not just those triggered by the
Restart= logic. Note that units which are configured for Restart= and which reach the
start limit are not attempted to be restarted anymore; however, they may still be
restarted manually at a later point, from which point on, the restart logic is again
activated. Note that systemctl reset-failed will cause the restart rate counter for a
service to be flushed, which is useful if the administrator wants to manually start a
service and the start limit interferes with that.
StartLimitAction=
Configure the action to take if the rate limit configured with StartLimitInterval= and
StartLimitBurst= is hit. Takes one of none, reboot, reboot-force, reboot-immediate,
poweroff, poweroff-force or poweroff-immediate. If none is set, hitting the rate limit
will trigger no action besides that the start will not be permitted. reboot causes a
reboot following the normal shutdown procedure (i.e. equivalent to systemctl reboot).
reboot-force causes a forced reboot which will terminate all processes forcibly but
should cause no dirty file systems on reboot (i.e. equivalent to systemctl reboot -f)
and reboot-immediate causes immediate execution of the reboot(2) system call, which
might result in data loss. Similar, poweroff, poweroff-force, poweroff-immediate have
the effect of powering down the system with similar semantics. Defaults to none.
FailureAction=
Configure the action to take when the service enters a failed state. Takes the same
values as StartLimitAction= and executes the same actions. Defaults to none.
RebootArgument=
Configure the optional argument for the reboot(2) system call if StartLimitAction= or
FailureAction= is a reboot action. This works just like the optional argument to
systemctl reboot command.
FileDescriptorStoreMax=
Configure how many file descriptors may be stored in the service manager for the
service using sd_pid_notify_with_fds(3)'s "FDSTORE=1" messages. This is useful for
implementing service restart schemes where the state is serialized to /run and the
file descriptors passed to the service manager, to allow restarts without losing
state. Defaults to 0, i.e. no file descriptors may be stored in the service manager by
default. All file descriptors passed to the service manager from a specific service
are passed back to the service's main process on the next service restart. Any file
descriptors passed to the service manager are automatically closed when POLLHUP or
POLLERR is seen on them, or when the service is fully stopped and no job queued or
being executed for it.
Check systemd.exec(5) and systemd.kill(5) for more settings.
COMMAND LINES
This section describes command line parsing and variable and specifier substitions for
ExecStart=, ExecStartPre=, ExecStartPost=, ExecReload=, ExecStop=, and ExecStopPost=
options.
Multiple command lines may be concatenated in a single directive by separating them with
semicolons (these semicolons must be passed as separate words). Lone semicolons may be
escaped as "\;".
Each command line is split on whitespace, with the first item being the command to
execute, and the subsequent items being the arguments. Double quotes ("...") and single
quotes ('...') may be used, in which case everything until the next matching quote becomes
part of the same argument. C-style escapes are also supported, see table below. Quotes
themselves are removed after parsing and escape sequences substituted. In addition, a
trailing backslash ("\") may be used to merge lines.
This syntax is intended to be very similar to shell syntax, but only the meta-characters
and expansions described in the following paragraphs are understood. Specifically,
redirection using "<", "<<", ">", and ">>", pipes using "|", running programs in the
background using "&", and other elements of shell syntax are not supported.
The command to execute must an absolute path name. It may contain spaces, but control
characters are not allowed.
The command line accepts "%" specifiers as described in systemd.unit(5). Note that the
first argument of the command line (i.e. the program to execute) may not include
specifiers.
Basic environment variable substitution is supported. Use "${FOO}" as part of a word, or
as a word of its own, on the command line, in which case it will be replaced by the value
of the environment variable including all whitespace it contains, resulting in a single
argument. Use "$FOO" as a separate word on the command line, in which case it will be
replaced by the value of the environment variable split at whitespace resulting in zero or
more arguments. For this type of expansion, quotes and respected when splitting into
words, and afterwards removed.
Example:
Environment="ONE=one" 'TWO=two two'
ExecStart=/bin/echo $ONE $TWO ${TWO}
This will execute /bin/echo with four arguments: "one", "two", "two", and "two two".
Example:
Environment=ONE='one' "TWO='two two' too" THREE=
ExecStart=/bin/echo ${ONE} ${TWO} ${THREE}
ExecStart=/bin/echo $ONE $TWO $THREE
This results in echo being called twice, the first time with arguments "'one'",
"'two two' too", "", and the second time with arguments "one", "two two", "too".
To pass a literal dollar sign, use "$$". Variables whose value is not known at expansion
time are treated as empty strings. Note that the first argument (i.e. the program to
execute) may not be a variable.
Variables to be used in this fashion may be defined through Environment= and
EnvironmentFile=. In addition, variables listed in the section "Environment variables in
spawned processes" in systemd.exec(5), which are considered "static configuration", may be
used (this includes e.g. $USER, but not $TERM).
Note that shell command lines are not directly supported. 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'
Example:
ExecStart=/bin/echo one ; /bin/echo "two two"
This will execute /bin/echo two times, each time with one argument: "one" and "two two",
respectively. Because two commands are specified, Type=oneshot must be used.
Example:
ExecStart=/bin/echo / >/dev/null & \; \
/bin/ls
This will execute /bin/echo with five arguments: "/", ">/dev/null", "&", ";", and
"/bin/ls".
Table 2. C escapes supported in command lines and environment variables
+--------+-------------------------------+
|Literal | Actual value |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\a" | bell |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\b" | backspace |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\f" | form feed |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\n" | newline |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\r" | carriage return |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\t" | tab |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\v" | vertical tab |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\\" | backslash |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\"" | double quotation mark |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\'" | single quotation mark |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\s" | space |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\xxx" | character number xx in |
| | hexadecimal encoding |
+--------+-------------------------------+
|"\nnn" | character number nnn in octal |
| | encoding |
+--------+-------------------------------+
EXAMPLES
Example 1. Simple service
The following unit file creates a service that will execute /usr/sbin/foo-daemon. Since no
Type= is specified, the default Type=simple will be assumed. systemd will assume the unit
to be started immediately after the program has begun executing.
[Unit]
Description=Foo
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/foo-daemon
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Note that systemd assumes here that the process started by systemd will continue running
until the service terminates. If the program daemonizes itself (i.e. forks), please use
Type=forking instead.
Since no ExecStop= was specified, systemd will send SIGTERM to all processes started from
this service, and after a timeout also SIGKILL. This behavior can be modified, see
systemd.kill(5) for details.
Note that this unit type does not include any type of notification when a service has
completed initialization. For this, you should use other unit types, such as Type=notify
if the service understands systemd's notification protocol, Type=forking if the service
can background itself or Type=dbus if the unit acquires a DBus name once initialization is
complete. See below.
Example 2. Oneshot service
Sometimes units should just execute an action without keeping active processes, such as a
filesystem check or a cleanup action on boot. For this, Type=oneshot exists. Units of this
type will wait until the process specified terminates and then fall back to being
inactive. The following unit will perform a clenaup action:
[Unit]
Description=Cleanup old Foo data
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/foo-cleanup
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Note that systemd will consider the unit to be in the state 'starting' until the program
has terminated, so ordered dependencies will wait for the program to finish before
starting themselves. The unit will revert to the 'inactive' state after the execution is
done, never reaching the 'active' state. That means another request to start the unit will
perform the action again.
Type=oneshot are the only service units that may have more than one ExecStart= specified.
They will be executed in order until either they are all successful or one of them fails.
Example 3. Stoppable oneshot service
Similarly to the oneshot services, there are sometimes units that need to execute a
program to set up something and then execute another to shut it down, but no process
remains active while they are considered 'started'. Network configuration can sometimes
fall into this category. Another use case is if a oneshot service shall not be executed a
each time when they are pulled in as a dependency, but only the first time.
For this, systemd knows the setting RemainAfterExit=yes, which causes systemd to consider
the unit to be active if the start action exited successfully. This directive can be used
with all types, but is most useful with Type=oneshot and Type=simple. With Type=oneshot
systemd waits until the start action has completed before it considers the unit to be
active, so dependencies start only after the start action has succeeded. With Type=simple
dependencies will start immediately after the start action has been dispatched. The
following unit provides an example for a simple static firewall.
[Unit]
Description=Simple firewall
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/simple-firewall-start
ExecStop=/usr/local/sbin/simple-firewall-stop
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Since the unit is considered to be running after the start action has exited, invoking
systemctl start on that unit again will cause no action to be taken.
Example 4. Traditional forking services
Many traditional daemons/services background (i.e. fork, daemonize) themselves when
starting. Set Type=forking in the service's unit file to support this mode of operation.
systemd will consider the service to be in the process of initialization while the
original program is still running. Once it exits successfully and at least a process
remains (and RemainAfterExit=no), the service is considered started.
Often a traditional daemon only consists of one process. Therefore, if only one process is
left after the original process terminates, systemd will consider that process the main
process of the service. In that case, the $MAINPID variable will be available in
ExecReload=, ExecStop=, etc.
In case more than one process remains, systemd will be unable to determine the main
process, so it will not assume there is one. In that case, $MAINPID will not expand to
anything. However, if the process decides to write a traditional PID file, systemd will be
able to read the main PID from there. Please set PIDFile= accordingly. Note that the
daemon should write that file before finishing with its initialization, otherwise systemd
might try to read the file before it exists.
The following example shows a simple daemon that forks and just starts one process in the
background:
[Unit]
Description=Some simple daemon
[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/my-simple-daemon -d
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Please see systemd.kill(5) for details on how you can influence the way systemd terminates
the service.
Example 5. DBus services
For services that acquire a name on the DBus system bus, use Type=dbus and set BusName=
accordingly. The service should not fork (daemonize). systemd will consider the service to
be initialized once the name has been acquired on the system bus. The following example
shows a typical DBus service:
[Unit]
Description=Simple DBus service
[Service]
Type=dbus
BusName=org.example.simple-dbus-service
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/simple-dbus-service
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
For bus-activatable services, don't include a "[Install]" section in the systemd service
file, but use the SystemdService= option in the corresponding DBus service file, for
example (/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.example.simple-dbus-service.service):
[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.example.simple-dbus-service
Exec=/usr/sbin/simple-dbus-service
User=root
SystemdService=simple-dbus-service.service
Please see systemd.kill(5) for details on how you can influence the way systemd terminates
the service.
Example 6. Services that notify systemd about their initialization
Type=simple services are really easy to write, but have the major disadvantage of systemd
not being able to tell when initialization of the given service is complete. For this
reason, systemd supports a simple notification protocol that allows daemons to make
systemd aware that they are done initializing. Use Type=notify for this. A typical service
file for such a daemon would look like this:
[Unit]
Description=Simple notifying service
[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/simple-notifying-service
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Note that the daemon has to support systemd's notification protocol, else systemd will
think the service hasn't started yet and kill it after a timeout. For an example of how to
update daemons to support this protocol transparently, take a look at sd_notify(3).
systemd will consider the unit to be in the 'starting' state until a readiness
notification has arrived.
Please see systemd.kill(5) for details on how you can influence the way systemd terminates
the service.
SEE ALSO
systemd(1), systemctl(1), systemd.unit(5), systemd.exec(5), systemd.resource-control(5),
systemd.kill(5), systemd.directives(7)
NOTES
1. Incompatibilities with SysV
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Incompatibilities
2. kdbus
https://code.google.com/p/d-bus/
3. Proper handling of SIGINT/SIGQUIT -- How to be a proper program
http://www.cons.org/cracauer/sigint.html
systemd 219 SYSTEMD.SERVICE(5)
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