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I have created and enabled my custom systemd 253.1 service file on Linux. I ran 'systemctl enable samba-container' successfully and the 'systemctl status' command shows that the service is enabled.

I can successfully manually run 'systemctl start samba-container'. The service starts and works as expected. The problem is that I cannot get the service to startup automatically on bootup. There are not errors or other output I can find, the service is just in an inactive state on power up.

Status:

[root@device ~]$  systemctl status samba-container
* samba-container.service - SAMBA Container
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/samba-container.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)

The contents of the file are below (note that ui-container is running and 'active'):

cat /lib/systemd/system/samba-container.service
[Unit]
Description=SAMBA Container
After=ui-container.service

[Service]
TimeoutStartSec=0
TimeoutStopSec=0
TimeoutSec=0
MemoryAccounting=yes
MemoryHigh=128M
MemoryMax=256M
WorkingDirectory=/data
ExecStartPre=/bin/bash -c "sleep 10"
ExecStart=/data/samba.sh
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop samba

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The samba.sh script file is shown here:

#!/bin/bash

docker kill samba 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
docker rm samba 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p udp --dport 137 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p udp --dport 138 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 139 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 445 -j ACCEPT

mkdir -p /data/samba
mkdir -p /data/data

docker run --network host --privileged -v "/data/data:/data" -v "/data/samba:/samba"  --name samba crazymax/samba

UPDATE:

[root@machine log]$  cat /lib/systemd/system/samba-container.service
[Unit]
Description=SAMBA Container
After=startup.service network-online.target

[Service]
TimeoutStartSec=0
TimeoutStopSec=0
TimeoutSec=0
MemoryAccounting=yes
MemoryHigh=128M
MemoryMax=256M
WorkingDirectory=/data
ExecStartPre=/bin/bash -c "sleep 10"
ExecStart=/data/samba.sh
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop samba

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

Online service:

[root@machine log]$  systemctl status network-online.target
* network-online.target - Network is Online
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/network-online.target; static)
     Active: active since Wed 2024-10-09 13:49:06 UTC; 1min 55s ago
       Docs: man:systemd.special(7)
             https://systemd.io/NETWORK_ONLINE

Oct 09 13:49:06 machine systemd[1]: Reached target Network is Online.

Startup service:

[root@machine log]$  systemctl status startup

* startup.service - Startup Service
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/startup.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2024-10-09 13:48:36 UTC; 2min 33s ago
   Main PID: 516 (startup.sh)
     Status: "Startup completed ..."
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 4148)
     Memory: 7.5M
     CGroup: /system.slice/startup.service
             |-516 /bin/bash /usr/bin/startup.sh
             `-601 sleep infinity

Logs:

[root@machine log]$  cat messages
Oct  9 13:48:35 machine syslog.info syslogd started: BusyBox v1.35.0
Oct  9 13:48:35 machine daemon.info dbus-daemon[459]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='de.pengutronix.rauc' unit='rauc.service' requested by ':1.5' (uid=0 pid=467 comm="/usr/bin/rauc status mark-good")
Oct  9 13:48:36 machine daemon.info dbus-daemon[459]: [system] Successfully activated service 'de.pengutronix.rauc'
Oct  9 13:48:37 machine daemon.info bluetoothd[579]: Bluetooth daemon 5.65
Oct  9 13:48:37 machine daemon.info bluetoothd[579]: Starting SDP server
Oct  9 13:48:37 machine daemon.err bluetoothd[579]: ../bluez-5.65/src/rfkill.c:rfkill_init() Failed to open RFKILL control device
Oct  9 13:48:37 machine daemon.info bluetoothd[579]: Bluetooth management interface 1.21 initialized
Oct  9 13:48:37 machine daemon.info dbus-daemon[459]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service' requested by ':1.7' (uid=0 pid=579 comm="/usr/libexec/bluetooth/bluetoothd")
Oct  9 13:48:37 machine daemon.info dbus-daemon[459]: [system] Activation via systemd failed for unit 'dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service': Unit dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service not found.
Oct  9 13:48:41 machine authpriv.info login[545]: pam_unix(login:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by LOGIN(uid=0)
Oct  9 13:48:41 machine authpriv.notice (systemd): pam_warn(systemd-user:setcred): function=[pam_sm_setcred] flags=0x8002 service=[systemd-user] terminal=[<unknown>] user=[root] ruser=[<unknown>] rhost=[<unknown>]
Oct  9 13:48:42 machine authpriv.notice login[758]: ROOT LOGIN  on '/dev/ttymxc1'
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  • Adding a delay in the startup file is not a good idea. This will just make race conditions less predictable. Instead you should figure out what it needs to be waiting for. Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 14:23

2 Answers 2

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You did not mention what Linux distribution you are running.

My experience was this problem was not a thing in RHEL-7, as it was a bug or oversight with selinux not working as expected. They tightened that up in RHEL-8 to where the EexecStart= needs to have a valid selinux label otherwise selinux will block it from executing.

I suspect the same might be the case for what ExecStop= points to.

I asked on here a while back what a good selinux label would be for such a thing when doing your own systemd service stuff, never really came to what is good convention and if going through all the overhead of generating a unique selinux label is worth it. So I settled on using bin_t, as that is the label used on many other systemd files.

Here is syntax to apply such a selinux label in your case

ls -ldZ /data/samba.sh

semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t "/data/samba.sh"
restorecon /data/samba.sh

# validate by seeing the bin_t label

And of course you could put selinux into either permissive or disabled mode in /etc/selinux/config and then reboot; disabled is frowned upon unless you really know what you are doing.

--------------------

for reference this works for me; consider trying this and when working then slowly modify into yours to see where your problem is.

simple /etc/systemd/system/administration.service

#!/bin/bash

[Unit]
Description=administration
After=default.target

[Service]
Type=idle
ExecStart=/root/scripts/administration.sh
TimeoutStartSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Simple ExecStart= script

#!/bin/bash

touch /hello.txt

Permissions for each:

chown root.root  /etc/systemd/system/administration.service
chmod 644        /etc/systemd/system/administration.service

chown root.root  /root/scripts/administration.sh
chmmod 700       /root/scripts/administration.sh

For selinux :

semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t /root/scripts/administration.sh
restorecon /root/scripts/administration.sh

ls -ldZ /root/scripts/administration.sh
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  • IF selinux is the cause of startup failure, it might show as a permission denied in the samba logs, but it certainly would show up in the selinux audit logs, so that is worth investigating. However, I would expect restarting with systemctl to also fail rather than working, so while selinux could cause this, I don't think it's the case this time. Good to include this answer anyway in case someone else stumbles on this that does have selinux issues. Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 13:47
  • the easy thing to do when system is running is setenforce 0 and then have your samba.sh do a simple touch /hello.txt and do service samba-container restart and see if hello.txt shows up. If it does, but does not with setenforce 1 then you know. Yes, you can find the selinux denial in audit.log. Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 13:57
  • Good advice. Doesn't apply to a issue with not starting on reboot when manual restart works. But this is exactly the right procedure to test for this problem. Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 13:59
  • the systemd service thing is fairly easy, and if service samba-container status -l shows all green then odds are it is something to do with whatever ExecStart= is pointing to. I have also discovered if you do not have #!/bin/bash as the first line in that it will fail to run Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 13:59
  • I would also edit your service file and strip it down to bare bones to ensure it will execute. I'll add what I use in my answer as a reference Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 14:02
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The service must have failed after starting. Possibly some other service it needed wasn't ready and it exited. You could find out why by checking log files in /var/log .

However, since starting the service later manually works, likely you just need to delay starting the service. I suggest adding network-online.target to the After line already in your [unit] section.

Looking at your startup script, you are using docker and iptables. If there are docker services on your system that start, you need to add them to the After= line. Also, if there are firewall or iptables services (frequently there are not), those should also be on the After= line.

If adding docker to After helps, you probably need to add additional lines so that this service also automatically restarts after docker is updated.

If that doesn't fix it, you will need to examine logs and find the real error that causes it to exit after start up. If you don't understand the error, you can add it to your question here.

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  • Hi - thanks for the suggestions. I did try adding the network-online.target dependency as well as checking /var/logs. I've updated my post above. Unfortunately, there is no indication there why the service still does not start. Commented Oct 9, 2024 at 13:56
  • messages apparently is not helpful. Wrong errors. Need to look in the samba logs next. Commented Oct 9, 2024 at 14:47
  • It might help if you added your linux distro and version to your question. This would help identify where the log files are that you should be looking at. Also, since you are starting this in docker, the relevant log files might be inside the docker container. Commented Oct 10, 2024 at 14:29

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