Custom systemd Unit and Unit File

Internal

• systemd Operations
• systemd Concepts

Overview

This article describes the procedure to configure an arbitrary service minecraft to be managed by systemd. It includes the creation of corresponding unit file and systemd configuration to start and stop the service automatically at boot, respectively shutdown.

Create the Unit File

Create the /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service unit file. As root:

touch /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service

For more details on the location of the unit files, see:

systemd Concepts | Unit File Location

Configure the Unit File

Process Started and Stopped by Auxiliary Scripts

This is common for Java programs, /home/minecraft/minecraft-server/minecraft is a wrapper script that starts the JVM and puts in background like this:

java -server -jar ... > $(dirname $0)/logs/stdout-and-sterr.log 2>&1 &

The unit file configuration is similar to:

[Unit]
Description=Minecraft service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/minecraft/minecraft-server/minecraft start
ExecStop=/home/minecraft/minecraft-server/minecraft stop
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Also see:

systemd Concepts | oneshot

Daemon Process that Forks and Creates Its Own PID File

[Unit]
Description=MyService
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/myservice/bin/myservice
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/myservice.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Also see:

Systemd Concepts | forking

Notify systemd of the Existence of the New Unit File

systemctl daemon-reload

Is this really necessary? Why exactly? At this point the file is completely unknown to the system, it as not enabled.

For more details on daemon-reload see:

systemd Concepts | Daemon Reload

Enable at Boot

systemctl enable myservice.service

Exercise the Service

systemctl start myservice
systemctl status hello
systemctl restart hello
systemctl stop hello