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Apologies if I am missing details, I may not be aware of all the areas on systemd I am trying to make my phosphor-watchdog service start automatically after another service, I cannot understand why it is by default disabled.

> /lib/systemd/system# ls |grep phosphor-watchdog
>
> [email protected]
>
> [email protected]

/lib/systemd/system# systemctl status [email protected]
● [email protected] - Phosphor poweron watchdog
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/[email protected]; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/[email protected]
             └─poweron.conf
     Active: inactive (dead)

this is the service file for phosphor-watchdog service :

[Unit]
Description=Phosphor %I watchdog
[email protected]
After=pwr-monitor.service

[Service]
Restart=always
EnvironmentFile={envfiledir}/obmc/watchdog/%I
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env phosphor-watchdog --continue --service=${{SERVICE}} --path=${{DEVPATH}} --target=${{TARGET}}
SyslogIdentifier=phosphor-watchdog

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and for [email protected]/poweron.conf:

[Unit]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

I am wondering why is my service always disabled despite the presence of "WantedBy=multi-user.target"

FYI: with systemctl enable everything works fine, but I want it to be enabled by default.

please let me know if I need to give further information. Thank you.

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Per man systemd.unit:

[Install] is not interpreted by systemd(1) during runtime; it is used by the enable and disable commands of the systemctl(1) tool during installation of a unit.

Therefore anything appearing in the [Install] section will have no effect unless you use systemctl enable.

FYI: with systemctl enable everything works fine,

This is the intended behaviour. systemctl enable will add a persistent symbolic link so every boot between now, and when it is disabled will cause the unit to trigger.

but I want it to be enabled by default.

Installation is more than copying a file. Typically a package will:

  1. Install the service to /lib/systemd/system/
  2. systemctl enable the service
  3. systemctl start the service

So part of your installation should be the systemctl enable.

I recall in systemd's early days, there were lots of people who didn't want services to be enabled by default. Arch packages, for example, did not enable/start services by default.

In Debian, there is a helper called deb-systemd-helper which is used by packages instead of calling systemctl enable directly. It does things like decide whether to enable a unit based on the vendor preset (yours is enabled) while respecting your decisions if you explicitly disabled/masked it before an upgrade. It also does some other handy things like reset/reload units when they get updated, or stop units before uninstalling them.

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