Creating a systemd service for a regular user using a systemd timer

A regular user’s systemd service files will be located in the ~/.config/systemd/user directory, which may not exist already (so you’ll have to create it with mkdir)

Assuming you’ll want this service to start after all other default services have started, you’ll want to find out what your system’s default target is with:

1sudo systemctl get-default

My system returns graphical.target. If you’re curious, you can see this target’s dependencies with:

sudo systemctl list-dependencies graphical.target

Create the service file

Now, create a file in the previously mentioned dir with the file extension of .service

1# publish-notes.service
2[Unit]
3Description="Publish notes to website"
4After=graphical.target
5
6[Service]
7Type=oneshot
8ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash /var/home/josh/.scripts/publish-notes.sh

The After=graphical.target entry is where we specify that this service should run after all other default services have started/ran.

In the service section, Type=oneshot is defined in the docs here:

“Sometimes, units should just execute an action without keeping active processes, such as a filesystem check or a cleanup action on boot. For this, Type=``oneshot exists. Units of this type will wait until the process specified terminates and then fall back to being inactive.”

This appears to be the best option for running a script that doesn’t have any persisting processes. In the case of my publish-notes script, I’m copying some files and committing to a git repo, then exiting. So, oneshot seems to be most appropriate.

Create the timer file

To use a systemd timer, you’ll need to create a corresponding .timer file in the same directory (with the same name as the service file).

 1# publish-notes.timer
 2[Unit]
 3Description="Run publish-notes.sh at regular interval"
 4
 5[Timer]
 6OnBootSec=5min
 7OnUnitActiveSec=24h
 8OnCalendar=Mon..Fri *-*-* 10:00:*
 9Unit=publish-notes.service
10
11[Install]
12WantedBy=graphical.target

Here we have several options in the Timer section. **You only don’t need all of these, they’re here for illustrative purposes:

OnBootSec=5min

This example defines a timer which triggers 5 minutes after the system boots

OnUnitActiveSec=24h

This defines a timer which triggers 24 hours after a service has been actived (ie. once per day)

OnCalendar

This defines a timer which triggers at fixed points in time, with similar syntax to cron

Unit

Here we define the service that is triggered by the timer (the one we created earlier)

In the Install section, we have a WantedBy entry. This defines the target after which the timer is actived. In my case, after my system’s default target (effectively, after the system is ‘warmed up’).

Enabling the service and timer

When creating a systemd service, you need to issue the command systemctl daemon reload to tell your system to read newly created service files. Because we set up the service as a regular user, we need to issue it with the --user flag:

systemctl --user daemon-reload

Then, enable the service (still using the --user flag):

systemctl --user enable publish-notes.service

Do the same for the timer:

systemctl --user enable publish-notes.timer