Create Your Own Service

As a developer, you may need to wrap a program you’re writing into a service, which can be more easily managed than a manually-run program. Let’s walk through the process:

1. Ensure that you have an executable file copied to a place that is in the default $PATH: /usr/local/bin/yourprogram.
2. Create the following systemd unit file at /etc/systemd/system/yourprogram.service:

[Unit]
Description=Your program description.
After=network-online.target
[Service]
Type=exec
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/yourprogram
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Have systemd re-read its config files to make sure it sees the new service Unit you’ve defined:

$ sudo systemd daemon-reload

Now you can manage this like any other systemd service:

systemctl start yourprogram
systemctl status yourprogram
systemctl stop yourprogram
systemctl enable yourprogram
systemctl disable yourprogram

That’s all you need for an extremely simple service –...