Systemd

Systemd is used to manage automatic services (eg services that should be run on startup and/or restarted when they fail)

Controlling Services

systemctl is used to manage turning services on/off:

• sudo systemctl start <service name>
• sudo systemctl status <service name>

Defining Services

Create a file: /etc/systemd/system/<service name>.service

With the contents:

[Unit]
Description=your description

[Service]
ExecStart=/path/to/command/or/script

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

By default, the service will run as root. To run as a user, add the following under the [Service] section:

User=<username>
Group=<groupname>

Note: to check the group of a user, use $ id <username>