Turning Linux Scripts Into a Service (Daemon)

You can turn any script into a service or daemon via systemctl, w00t! How? See below 😉 You can use this skeletal framework when creating future daemons! Step one = create a file in the following location /etc/systemd/system/name.service and then populate it with the following below.

Service Template

[Unit]
Description=daemon name
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env perl /path/script.pl

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Systemctl Commands

Here are some of systemctl useful commands:

# start service
sudo systemctl start SERVICE

# stop service
sudo systemctl stop SERVICE

# restart service
sudo systemctl restart SERVICE

# start service automatically on system startup
sudo systemctl enable SERVICE

# stop service from automatically starting
sudo systemctl disable SERVICE

# to get a status of all services via STDOUT and no less
sudo systemctl list-units --no-pager --type=service

# check the status of your service
sudo systemctl status SERVICE