systemd.service — Service unit configuration
service.service
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.
If SysV init compat is enabled, systemd automatically creates service units that wrap SysV init
scripts (the service name is the same as the name of the script, with a ".service"
suffix added); see
systemd-sysv-generator(8).
The systemd-run(1)
command allows creating .service and .scope units dynamically
and transiently from the command line.
It is possible for systemd services to take a single argument via the
"service@argument.serviceargument parameter is called a "template". An example could be a
dhcpcd@.service service template which takes a network interface as a
parameter to form an instantiated service. Within the service file, this parameter or "instance
name" can be accessed with %-specifiers. See
systemd.unit(5)
for details.
The following dependencies are implicitly added:
Services with Type=dbus set automatically
acquire dependencies of type Requires= and
After= on
dbus.socket.
Socket activated services are automatically ordered after
their activating .socket units via an
automatic After= dependency.
Services also pull in all .socket units
listed in Sockets= via automatic
Wants= and After= dependencies.
Additional implicit dependencies may be added as result of execution and resource control parameters as documented in systemd.exec(5) and systemd.resource-control(5).
The following dependencies are added unless DefaultDependencies=no is set:
Service units will have dependencies of type Requires= and
After= on sysinit.target, a dependency of type 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.
Instanced service units (i.e. service units with an "@" in their name) are assigned by
default a per-template slice unit (see
systemd.slice(5)), named after the
template unit, containing all instances of the specific template. This slice is normally stopped at shutdown,
together with all template instances. If that is not desired, set DefaultDependencies=no in the
template unit, and either define your own per-template slice unit file that also sets
DefaultDependencies=no, or set Slice=system.slice (or another suitable slice)
in the template unit. Also see
systemd.resource-control(5).
Service unit files may include [Unit] and [Install] sections, which are described in systemd.unit(5).
Service unit 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), systemd.kill(5) and systemd.resource-control(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,
exec, forking, oneshot, dbus,
notify or idle:
If set to simple (the default if ExecStart= is
specified but neither Type= nor BusName= are), the service manager
will consider the unit started immediately after the main service process has been forked off. 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 service is started up (e.g. sockets set up by
systemd, via socket activation), as the service manager will immediately proceed starting follow-up units,
right after creating the main service process, and before executing the service's binary. Note that this
means systemctl start command lines for simple services will report
success even if the service's binary cannot be invoked successfully (for example because the selected
User= doesn't exist, or the service binary is missing).
The exec type is similar to simple, but the service
manager will consider the unit started immediately after the main service binary has been executed. The service
manager will delay starting of follow-up units until that point. (Or in other words:
simple proceeds with further jobs right after fork() returns, while
exec will not proceed before both fork() and
execve() in the service process succeeded.) Note that this means systemctl
start command lines for exec services will report failure when the service's
binary cannot be invoked successfully (for example because the selected User= doesn't
exist, or the service binary is missing).
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 service process, and the service manager will consider the unit started when
the parent process exits. This is the behavior of traditional UNIX services. If this setting is used, it is
recommended to also use the PIDFile= option, so that systemd can reliably identify the
main process of the service. systemd will proceed with starting follow-up units as soon as the parent
process exits.
Behavior of oneshot is similar to simple;
however, the service manager will consider the unit up after the main process exits. It will then
start follow-up units. RemainAfterExit= is particularly useful for this type
of service. Type=oneshot is the implied default if neither
Type= nor ExecStart= are specified. Note that if this
option is used without RemainAfterExit= the service will never enter
"active" unit state, but directly transition from "activating"
to "deactivating" or "dead" since no process is configured that
shall run continuously. In particular this means that after a service of this type ran (and which
has RemainAfterExit= not set) it will not show up as started afterwards, but
as dead.
Behavior of dbus is similar to simple; however,
it is expected that the service 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. A service unit of this type is considered to be in the
activating state until the specified bus name is acquired. It is considered activated while the
bus name is taken. Once the bus name is released the service is considered being no longer
functional which has the effect that the service manager attempts to terminate any remaining
processes belonging to the service. Services that drop their bus name as part of their shutdown
logic thus should be prepared to receive a SIGTERM (or whichever signal is
configured in KillSignal=) as result.
Behavior of notify is similar to exec; however, it is
expected that the service 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 missing or set to none, it will be forcibly set to
main.
Behavior of idle is very similar to simple; however,
actual execution of the service program is delayed until all active jobs are dispatched. This may be used
to avoid interleaving of output of shell services with the status output on the console. Note that this
type is useful only to improve console output, it is not useful as a general unit ordering tool, and the
effect of this service type is subject to a 5s timeout, after which the service program is invoked
anyway.
It is generally recommended to use Type=simple for long-running
services whenever possible, as it is the simplest and fastest option. However, as this service type won't
propagate service start-up failures and doesn't allow ordering of other units against completion of
initialization of the service (which for example is useful if clients need to connect to the service through
some form of IPC, and the IPC channel is only established by the service itself — in contrast to doing this
ahead of time through socket or bus activation or similar), it might not be sufficient for many cases. If so,
notify or dbus (the latter only in case the service provides a D-Bus
interface) are the preferred options as they allow service program code to precisely schedule when to
consider the service started up successfully and when to proceed with follow-up units. The
notify service type requires explicit support in the service codebase (as
sd_notify() or an equivalent API needs to be invoked by the service at the appropriate
time) — if it's not supported, then forking is an alternative: it supports the traditional
UNIX service start-up protocol. Finally, exec might be an option for cases where it is
enough to ensure the service binary is invoked, and where the service binary itself executes no or little
initialization on its own (and its initialization is unlikely to fail). Note that using any type other than
simple possibly delays the boot process, as the service manager needs to wait for service
initialization to complete. It is hence recommended not to needlessly use any types other than
simple. (Also note it is generally not recommended to use idle or
oneshot for long-running services.)
ExitType=¶Specifies when the manager should consider the service to be finished. One of main or
cgroup:
If set to main (the default), the service manager
will consider the unit stopped when the main process, which is determined according to the
Type=, exits. Consequently, it cannot be used with
Type=oneshot.
If set to cgroup, the service will be considered running as long as at
least one process in the cgroup has not exited.
It is generally recommended to use ExitType=main when a service has
a known forking model and a main process can reliably be determined. ExitType=
cgroup is meant for applications whose forking model is not known ahead of time and which
might not have a specific main process. It is well suited for transient or automatically generated services,
such as graphical applications inside of a desktop environment.
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 a path referring to the PID file of the service. Usage of this option is recommended for
services where Type= is set to forking. The path specified typically points
to a file below /run/. If a relative path is specified it is hence prefixed with
/run/. 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.
Note that PID files should be avoided in modern projects. Use Type=notify or
Type=simple where possible, which does not require use of PID files to determine the
main process of a service and avoids needless forking.
BusName=¶Takes a D-Bus destination name that this service shall use. This option is mandatory
for services where Type= is set to dbus. It is recommended to
always set this property if known to make it easy to map the service name to the D-Bus destination.
In particular, systemctl service-log-level/service-log-target verbs make use of
this.
ExecStart=¶Commands with their arguments that are executed when this service is started. The value is split into zero or more command lines according to the rules described below (see section "Command Lines" below).
Unless Type= is oneshot, exactly one command must be given. When
Type=oneshot is used, zero or more commands may be specified. Commands may 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 and at least one
ExecStop= line set. (Services lacking both ExecStart= and
ExecStop= are not valid.)
For each of the specified commands, the first argument must be either an absolute path to an executable or a simple file name without any slashes. Optionally, this filename may be prefixed with a number of special characters:
Table 1. Special executable prefixes
| Prefix | Effect |
|---|---|
"@" | If the executable path is prefixed with "@", the second specified token will be passed as "argv[0]" to the executed process (instead of the actual filename), followed by the further arguments specified. |
"-" | If the executable path 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 recorded, but has no further effect and is considered equivalent to success. |
":" | If the executable path is prefixed with ":", environment variable substitution (as described by the "Command Lines" section below) is not applied. |
"+" | If the executable path is prefixed with "+" then the process is executed with full privileges. In this mode privilege restrictions configured with User=, Group=, CapabilityBoundingSet= or the various file system namespacing options (such as PrivateDevices=, PrivateTmp=) are not applied to the invoked command line (but still affect any other ExecStart=, ExecStop=, … lines). |
"!" | Similar to the "+" character discussed above this permits invoking command lines with elevated privileges. However, unlike "+" the "!" character exclusively alters the effect of User=, Group= and SupplementaryGroups=, i.e. only the stanzas that affect user and group credentials. Note that this setting may be combined with DynamicUser=, in which case a dynamic user/group pair is allocated before the command is invoked, but credential changing is left to the executed process itself. |
"!!" | This prefix is very similar to "!", however it only has an effect on systems lacking support for ambient process capabilities, i.e. without support for AmbientCapabilities=. It's intended to be used for unit files that take benefit of ambient capabilities to run processes with minimal privileges wherever possible while remaining compatible with systems that lack ambient capabilities support. Note that when "!!" is used, and a system lacking ambient capability support is detected any configured SystemCallFilter= and CapabilityBoundingSet= stanzas are implicitly modified, in order to permit spawned processes to drop credentials and capabilities themselves, even if this is configured to not be allowed. Moreover, if this prefix is used and a system lacking ambient capability support is detected AmbientCapabilities= will be skipped and not be applied. On systems supporting ambient capabilities, "!!" has no effect and is redundant. |
"@", "-", ":", and one of
"+"/"!"/"!!" may be used together and they can appear in any
order. However, only one of "+", "!", "!!" may be used at a
time. Note that these prefixes are also supported for the other command line settings,
i.e. ExecStartPre=, ExecStartPost=, ExecReload=,
ExecStop= and ExecStopPost=.
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.
ExecStart= commands are only run after
all ExecStartPre= commands that were not prefixed
with a "-" exit successfully.
ExecStartPost= commands are only run after the commands specified in
ExecStart= have been invoked successfully, as determined by Type=
(i.e. the process has been started for Type=simple or Type=idle, the last
ExecStart= process exited successfully for Type=oneshot, the initial
process exited successfully for Type=forking, "READY=1" is sent for
Type=notify, or the BusName= has been taken for
Type=dbus).
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.
Note that if any of the commands specified in ExecStartPre=,
ExecStart=, or ExecStartPost= fail (and are not prefixed with
"-", see above) or time out before the service is fully up, execution continues with commands
specified in ExecStopPost=, the commands in ExecStop= are skipped.
Note that the execution of ExecStartPost= is taken into account for the purpose of
Before=/After= ordering constraints.
ExecCondition=¶Optional commands that are executed before the command(s) in ExecStartPre=.
Syntax is the same as for ExecStart=, except that multiple command lines are allowed and the
commands are executed one after the other, serially.
The behavior is like an ExecStartPre= and condition check hybrid: when an
ExecCondition= command exits with exit code 1 through 254 (inclusive), the remaining
commands are skipped and the unit is not marked as failed. However, if an
ExecCondition= command exits with 255 or abnormally (e.g. timeout, killed by a
signal, etc.), the unit will be considered failed (and remaining commands will be skipped). Exit code of 0 or
those matching SuccessExitStatus= will continue execution to the next command(s).
The same recommendations about not running long-running processes in ExecStartPre=
also applies to ExecCondition=. ExecCondition= will also run the commands
in ExecStopPost=, as part of stopping the service, in the case of any non-zero or abnormal
exits, like the ones described above.
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:
ExecReload=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. For example,
dbus-broker(1)
uses the following:
ExecReload=busctl call org.freedesktop.DBus \
/org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus \
ReloadConfig
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, it is implied that the service is stopped, and any
processes remaining for it are terminated according to the KillMode= setting (see
systemd.kill(5)).
If this option is not specified, the process is terminated by sending the signal specified in
KillSignal= or RestartKillSignal= when service stop is
requested. Specifier and environment variable substitution is supported (including
$MAINPID, see above).
Note that it is usually not sufficient to specify a command for this setting that only asks the
service to terminate (for example, by sending some form of termination signal to it), but does not
wait for it to do so. Since the remaining processes of the services are killed according to
KillMode= and KillSignal= or
RestartKillSignal= as described above immediately after the command exited, this
may not result in a clean stop. The specified command should hence be a synchronous operation, not an
asynchronous one.
Note that the commands specified in ExecStop= are only executed when the service
started successfully first. They are not invoked if the service was never started at all, or in case its
start-up failed, for example because any of the commands specified in ExecStart=,
ExecStartPre= or ExecStartPost= failed (and weren't prefixed with
"-", see above) or timed out. Use ExecStopPost= to invoke commands when a
service failed to start up correctly and is shut down again. Also note that the stop operation is always
performed if the service started successfully, even if the processes in the service terminated on their
own or were killed. The stop commands must be prepared to deal with that case. $MAINPID
will be unset if systemd knows that the main process exited by the time the stop commands are called.
Service restart requests are implemented as stop operations followed by start operations. This
means that ExecStop= and ExecStopPost= are executed during a
service restart operation.
It is recommended to use this setting for commands that communicate with the service requesting
clean termination. For post-mortem clean-up steps use ExecStopPost= instead.
ExecStopPost=¶Additional commands that are executed after the service is 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. Note that – unlike
ExecStop= – commands specified with this setting are invoked when a service failed to start
up correctly and is shut down again.
It is recommended to use this setting for clean-up operations that shall be executed even when the service failed to start up correctly. Commands configured with this setting need to be able to operate even if the service failed starting up half-way and left incompletely initialized data around. As the service's processes have been terminated already when the commands specified with this setting are executed they should not attempt to communicate with them.
Note that all commands that are configured with this setting are invoked with the result code of the
service, as well as the main process' exit code and status, set in the $SERVICE_RESULT,
$EXIT_CODE and $EXIT_STATUS environment variables, see
systemd.exec(5) for
details.
Note that the execution of ExecStopPost= is taken into account for the purpose of
Before=/After= ordering constraints.
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. The
precise action depends on the TimeoutStartFailureMode= option. Takes a unit-less value in
seconds, or a time span value such as "5min 20s". Pass "infinity" 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)).
If a service of Type=notify sends "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…", this may cause
the start time to be extended beyond TimeoutStartSec=. The first receipt of this message
must occur before TimeoutStartSec= is exceeded, and once the start time has extended beyond
TimeoutStartSec=, the service manager will allow the service to continue to start, provided
the service repeats "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…" within the interval specified until the service
startup status is finished by "READY=1". (see
sd_notify(3)).
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. This default behavior
can be changed by the TimeoutStopFailureMode= option. 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 "infinity" to disable the
timeout logic. Defaults to
DefaultTimeoutStopSec= from the manager
configuration file (see
systemd-system.conf(5)).
If a service of Type=notify sends "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…", this may cause
the stop time to be extended beyond TimeoutStopSec=. The first receipt of this message
must occur before TimeoutStopSec= is exceeded, and once the stop time has extended beyond
TimeoutStopSec=, the service manager will allow the service to continue to stop, provided
the service repeats "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…" within the interval specified, or terminates itself
(see sd_notify(3)).
TimeoutAbortSec=¶This option configures the time to wait for the service to terminate when it was aborted due to a
watchdog timeout (see WatchdogSec=). If the service has a short TimeoutStopSec=
this option can be used to give the system more time to write a core dump of the service. Upon expiration the service
will be forcibly terminated by SIGKILL (see KillMode= in
systemd.kill(5)). The core file will
be truncated in this case. Use TimeoutAbortSec= to set a sensible timeout for the core dumping per
service that is large enough to write all expected data while also being short enough to handle the service failure
in due time.
Takes a unit-less value in seconds, or a time span value such as "5min 20s". Pass an empty value to skip
the dedicated watchdog abort timeout handling and fall back TimeoutStopSec=. Pass
"infinity" to disable the timeout logic. Defaults to DefaultTimeoutAbortSec= from
the manager configuration file (see
systemd-system.conf(5)).
If a service of Type=notify handles SIGABRT itself (instead of relying
on the kernel to write a core dump) it can send "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…" to
extended the abort time beyond TimeoutAbortSec=. The first receipt of this message
must occur before TimeoutAbortSec= is exceeded, and once the abort time has extended beyond
TimeoutAbortSec=, the service manager will allow the service to continue to abort, provided
the service repeats "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…" within the interval specified, or terminates itself
(see sd_notify(3)).
TimeoutSec=¶A shorthand for configuring both
TimeoutStartSec= and
TimeoutStopSec= to the specified value.
TimeoutStartFailureMode=, TimeoutStopFailureMode=¶These options configure the action that is taken in case a daemon service does not signal
start-up within its configured TimeoutStartSec=, respectively if it does not stop within
TimeoutStopSec=. Takes one of terminate, abort and
kill. Both options default to terminate.
If terminate is set the service will be gracefully terminated by sending the signal
specified in KillSignal= (defaults to SIGTERM, see
systemd.kill(5)). If the
service does not terminate the FinalKillSignal= is sent after
TimeoutStopSec=. If abort is set, WatchdogSignal= is sent
instead and TimeoutAbortSec= applies before sending FinalKillSignal=.
This setting may be used to analyze services that fail to start-up or shut-down intermittently.
By using kill the service is immediately terminated by sending
FinalKillSignal= without any further timeout. This setting can be used to expedite the
shutdown of failing services.
RuntimeMaxSec=¶Configures a maximum time for the service to run. If this is used and the service has been
active for longer than the specified time it is terminated and put into a failure state. Note that this setting
does not have any effect on Type=oneshot services, as they terminate immediately after
activation completed. Pass "infinity" (the default) to configure no runtime
limit.
If a service of Type=notify sends "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…", this may cause
the runtime to be extended beyond RuntimeMaxSec=. The first receipt of this message
must occur before RuntimeMaxSec= is exceeded, and once the runtime has extended beyond
RuntimeMaxSec=, the service manager will allow the service to continue to run, provided
the service repeats "EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=…" within the interval specified until the service
shutdown is achieved by "STOPPING=1" (or termination). (see
sd_notify(3)).
RuntimeRandomizedExtraSec=¶This option modifies RuntimeMaxSec= by increasing the maximum runtime by an
evenly distributed duration between 0 and the specified value (in seconds). If RuntimeMaxSec= is
unspecified, then this feature will be disabled.
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 (or the signal specified by
WatchdogSignal=). By setting
Restart= to on-failure,
on-watchdog, on-abnormal 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. The service can
check whether the service manager expects watchdog keep-alive
notifications. See
sd_watchdog_enabled(3)
for details.
sd_event_set_watchdog(3)
may be used to enable automatic watchdog notification support.
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 any of the following:
Type=oneshot, one of the signals
SIGHUP,
SIGINT,
SIGTERM, or
SIGPIPE;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 aforementioned 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 2. Exit causes and the effect of the Restart= settings
| Restart settings/Exit causes | no | always | on-success | on-failure | on-abnormal | on-abort | on-watchdog |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clean exit code or signal | X | X | |||||
| Unclean exit code | X | X | |||||
| Unclean signal | X | X | X | X | |||
| 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) or
the service is stopped with systemctl stop
or an equivalent operation. Also, the services will always be
restarted if the exit code or signal is specified in
RestartForceExitStatus= (see below).
Note that service restart is subject to unit start rate
limiting configured with StartLimitIntervalSec=
and StartLimitBurst=, see
systemd.unit(5)
for details. A restarted service enters the failed state only
after the start limits are reached.
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 status
0 and, except for Type=oneshot, the signals SIGHUP, SIGINT,
SIGTERM, and SIGPIPE. Exit status definitions can be
numeric termination statuses, termination status names, or termination signal names, separated by
spaces. See the Process Exit Codes section in
systemd.exec(5) for
a list of termination status names (for this setting only the part without the
"EXIT_" or "EX_" prefix should be used). See signal(7) for
a list of signal names.
Note that this setting does not change the mapping between numeric exit statuses and their
names, i.e. regardless how this setting is used 0 will still be mapped to "SUCCESS"
(and thus typically shown as "0/SUCCESS" in tool outputs) and 1 to
"FAILURE" (and thus typically shown as "1/FAILURE"), and so on. It
only controls what happens as effect of these exit statuses, and how it propagates to the state of
the service as a whole.
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.
Example 1. A service with the SuccessExitStatus= setting
SuccessExitStatus=TEMPFAIL 250 SIGKILL
Exit status 75 (TEMPFAIL), 250, and the termination signal
SIGKILL are considered clean service terminations.
Note: systemd-analyze exit-status may be used to list exit statuses and translate between numerical status values and names.
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.
Note that this setting has no effect on processes configured via
ExecStartPre=, ExecStartPost=, ExecStop=,
ExecStopPost= or ExecReload=, but only on the main service
process, i.e. either the one invoked by ExecStart= or (depending on
Type=, PIDFile=, …) the otherwise configured main
process.
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=.
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, stderr), excluding those passed
in via the file descriptor storage logic (see FileDescriptorStoreMax= for details), 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) and has no
effect on file descriptors which were previously saved in the file-descriptor store for example. 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, exec 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 exec, only service updates sent from any of the
main or control processes originating from one of the Exec*= commands 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.
Note that sd_notify() notifications may be attributed to units correctly only if
either the sending process is still around at the time PID 1 processes the message, or if the sending process
is explicitly runtime-tracked by the service manager. The latter is the case if the service manager originally
forked off the process, i.e. on all processes that match main or
exec. Conversely, if an auxiliary process of the unit sends an
sd_notify() message and immediately exits, the service manager might not be able to
properly attribute the message to the unit, and thus will ignore it, even if
NotifyAccess=all is set for it.
Hence, to eliminate all race conditions involving lookup of the client's unit and attribution of notifications
to units correctly, sd_notify_barrier() may be used. This call acts as a synchronization point
and ensures all notifications sent before this call have been picked up by the service manager when it returns
successfully. Use of sd_notify_barrier() is needed for clients which are not invoked by the
service manager, otherwise this synchronization mechanism is unnecessary for attribution of notifications to the
unit.
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. Note that once set, clearing the list of sockets again (for example, by assigning the empty string to this option) is not supported.
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 services that can restart
after an explicit request or a crash without losing state. Any open sockets and other file
descriptors which should not be closed during the restart may be stored this way. Application state
can either be serialized to a file in /run/, or better, stored in a
memfd_create(2)
memory file descriptor. Defaults to 0, i.e. no file descriptors may be stored in the service
manager. 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 (see
sd_listen_fds(3) for
details about the precise protocol used and the order in which the file descriptors are passed). 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 is queued or being executed for it. If this option is used,
NotifyAccess= (see above) 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.
USBFunctionDescriptors=¶Configure the location of a file containing
USB
FunctionFS descriptors, for implementation of USB
gadget functions. This is used only in conjunction with a
socket unit with ListenUSBFunction=
configured. The contents of this file are written to the
ep0 file after it is
opened.
USBFunctionStrings=¶Configure the location of a file containing
USB FunctionFS strings. Behavior is similar to
USBFunctionDescriptors=
above.
OOMPolicy=¶Configure the Out-Of-Memory (OOM) killer policy. On Linux, when memory becomes scarce
the kernel might decide to kill a running process in order to free up memory and reduce memory
pressure. This setting takes one of continue, stop or
kill. If set to continue and a process of the service is
killed by the kernel's OOM killer this is logged but the service continues running. If set to
stop the event is logged but the service is terminated cleanly by the service
manager. If set to kill and one of the service's processes is killed by the OOM
killer the kernel is instructed to kill all remaining processes of the service, too. Defaults to the
setting DefaultOOMPolicy= in
systemd-system.conf(5)
is set to, except for services where Delegate= is turned on, where it defaults to
continue.
Use the OOMScoreAdjust= setting to configure whether processes of the unit
shall be considered preferred or less preferred candidates for process termination by the Linux OOM
killer logic. See
systemd.exec(5) for
details.
Check systemd.unit(5), systemd.exec(5), and systemd.kill(5) for more settings.
This section describes command line parsing and
variable and specifier substitutions 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 unquoted using the rules described in "Quoting" section in systemd.syntax(7). The first item becomes the command to execute, and the subsequent items the arguments.
This syntax is inspired by shell syntax, but only the meta-characters and expansions
described in the following paragraphs are understood, and the expansion of variables is
different. 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 may contain spaces, but control characters are not allowed.
The command line accepts "%" specifiers as described in
systemd.unit(5).
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 erased and replaced
by the exact value of the environment variable (if any) including all
whitespace it contains, always resulting in exactly 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 are respected when splitting
into words, and afterwards removed.
If the command is not a full (absolute) path, it will be resolved to a full path using a
fixed search path determined at compilation time. Searched directories include
/usr/local/bin/, /usr/bin/, /bin/
on systems using split /usr/bin/ and /bin/
directories, and their sbin/ counterparts on systems using split
bin/ and sbin/. It is thus safe to use just the
executable name in case of executables located in any of the "standard" directories, and an
absolute path must be used in other cases. Using an absolute path is recommended to avoid
ambiguity. Hint: this search path may be queried using
systemd-path search-binaries-default.
Example:
Environment="ONE=one" 'TWO=two two'
ExecStart=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 $THREEThis results in /bin/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=sh -c 'dmesg | tac'
Example:
ExecStart=echo one ; echo "two two"
This will execute 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=echo / >/dev/null & \; \ ls
This will execute echo
with five arguments: "/",
">/dev/null",
"&", ";", and
"ls".
Example 2. 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 3. 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 cleanup 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. For units with multiple
commands (Type=oneshot), all commands will be run again.
For Type=oneshot, Restart=always
and Restart=on-success are not allowed.
Example 4. 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 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 5. 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 6. 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, do not
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 7. 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 has not 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.