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I created service for strelaysvr:

[Unit]
Description=Syncthing Relay Server
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/strelaysrv -keys /srv/strelaysrv/keys
User=strelaysrv

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and placed it into /srv/strelaysvr/strelaysvr.service, which I symlinked into /etc/systemd/system.

Then went on and systemctl enabled it , systemctl started it, and all works, fine, until reboot: after that, it seems to "disappear":

root@here:~# systemctl start strelaysrv
Failed to start strelaysrv.service: Unit strelaysrv.service not found.
root@here:~# ll /etc/systemd/system/strelaysrv.service 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Apr  2 22:59 /etc/systemd/system/strelaysrv.service -> /srv/strelaysrv/strelaysrv.service
root@here:~# ll /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/strelaysrv.service 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Apr  2 23:00 /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/strelaysrv.service -> /srv/strelaysrv/strelaysrv.service
root@here:~# ll /srv/strelaysrv/strelaysrv.service
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 185 Apr  2 22:58 /srv/strelaysrv/strelaysrv.service

But just calling systemctl enable succeeds and I can start it again! What am I doing wrong? Am I hitting a systemd bug?

root@here:~# lsb_release -a |& grep escr
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 9.4 (stretch)
root@here:~# dpkg -s systemd | grep ersion
Version: 232-25+deb9u3
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  • should not there be After=multi-user.target Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 17:21
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    @GAD3R Why? That does not seem like a safe thing to do. Also as I said, I can start the service after I call systemctl enable, so the ownership is right. Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 17:58
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    Is /srv mounted when systemd tries to load the .service file at boot? Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 18:41
  • @MarkStosberg Good quesion. /srv is actually a symlink to under /home, which is mounted as UUID=redacted /home ext4 defaults 0 0 in fstab. (My apache vhosts do rely on /srv, nothing except strelaysrv has unit file there, though.) Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 19:00

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The unit file (in this case strelaysrv.service needs to be in a partition that is already mounted when systemd starts, which is not the case in your example, since in the comments you mentioned /srv is a symlink to under /home which is in its own partition.

This comes up fairly often in systemd bug reports, for a recent one see here.

See also the (recently updated) man page for systemctl which states:

The file system where the linked unit files are located must be accessible when systemd is started (e.g. anything underneath /home or /var is not allowed, unless those directories are located on the root file system).

The recommended solution is for you to create a copy of strelaysrv.service under /etc/systemd/system rather than a symlink. That should fix the issue.

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