systemd Mastery: Essential Commands and Custom Service Creation

Systemd is a linux service manager. It's what I personally use on my arch config, and it's how I create custom background services.

Basic Commands

? Show System Status

systemctl status        

? List Running Units -

systemctl or systemctl list-units        

? Show System Status

systemctl status        

? Show Process Status -

systemctl status [process]        

? Start A Process -

systemctl start [process]        

? Restart A Process -

systemctl relead [process]        

? Start A Process At Boot -

systemctl enable [process]        

? Disable Start On Boot -

systemctl disable [process]        

? Reload Everything -

systemctl daemon-reload         

Creating Custom Services - Starting A Docker Image

I have a docker image running ArchiveBox on my main workstation as a systemd service. Here's how I did it.

Here's the short bash script I wrote to start my docker image:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/jakeg/archivebox
sudo docker-compose up        

I used chmod +x [file].sh to give systemd execution access to the script. In the systemd directory /etc/systemd/system I wrote the file archivebox.service with the contents:

[Unit]
Description=archivebox service

[Service]
type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/utkarsh/archivebox/run.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
        

References

• "Creating a Linux service with systemd" - Medium.com
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/systemd