Tag: debian

Create A Python Service on Debian 9

If you have a Python script that you need to run automatically, one great solution is to create a systemd service. This way lets you manage your script using the service command just like any other daemon. Creating your own service on Debian 9 only requires creating one .service file and registering it with systemd. Easy!

System service files are located in /lib/systemd/system/. You can also create user services and those are stored in /usr/lib/systemd/system/. These files specify all the details that systemd needs to start and control the services. There are a lot of options that can be included, however, in its most basic form we only need a few basic things. The example below shows the minimum requirements. Let’s say we put this in a new file at /lib/systemd/system/python-example.service

[Unit]
Description=My Python Example Service
After=default.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /home/me/example.py
Restart=on-abort

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

To enable the service with systemd, simply tell systemd to enable it as shown below.

# Enable the new service we just created
systemctl enable python-example.service

# Manually start and check its status
service python-example start
service python-example status

That’s all you need to run a Python script as a service! At some point I may throw together an example script and add it to this article, but for now this should get you going.

Further Reading