Book Image

Linux Service Management Made Easy with systemd

4 (1)
Book Image

Linux Service Management Made Easy with systemd

4 (1)

Overview of this book

Linux Service Management Made Easy with systemd will provide you with an in-depth understanding of systemd, so that you can set up your servers securely and efficiently.This is a comprehensive guide for Linux administrators that will help you get the best of systemd, starting with an explanation of the fundamentals of systemd management.You’ll also learn how to edit and create your own systemd units, which will be particularly helpful if you need to create custom services or timers and add features or security to an existing service. Next, you'll find out how to analyze and fix boot-up challenges and set system parameters. An overview of cgroups that'll help you control system resource usage for both processes and users will also be covered, alongside a practical demonstration on how cgroups are structured, spotting the differences between cgroups Version 1 and 2, and how to set resource limits on both. Finally, you'll learn about the systemd way of performing time-keeping, networking, logging, and login management. You'll discover how to configure servers accurately and gather system information to analyze system security and performance. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to efficiently manage all aspects of a server running the systemd init system.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1: Using systemd
12
Section 2: Understanding cgroups
16
Section 3: Logging, Timekeeping, Networking, and Booting

Understanding the systemd unit files

Instead of using a set of complex Bash shell scripts, the systemd init system controls system and service operations with various types of unit files. Each unit file has a filename with a filename extension that describes which type of unit it is. Before we look at these files, let's see where they live.

The /lib/systemd/system/ directory is the default location for unit files that either come with the operating system or come with any packages that you might install. There might be times when you'll either need to modify some of these unit files or even create your own, but you won't do that in this directory. Instead, you'll do that in the /etc/systemd/system/ directory. Any unit files in this directory that have the same name as unit files in /lib/systemd/system/ take precedence.

Tip

You can read about unit files by typing the following: man systemd.unit.

At the bottom of this man page, you'll see where it...