The goal of this project is to get familiar with systemd; creating and enabling a service, checking the status, keeping an eye on the logs, starting and stopping the service, etc.

Prepare the environment with terraform:

Prerequisites:

• Clone the repo
• API token
• SSH key uploaded and configured on DigitalOcean
• File terraform.tfvars with these variables set: ssh-key-name, home-path

 export DO_PAT="dop_v1_ ..." # Export your DigitalOcean API key

# Initialize Terraform and create resources
terraform init
terraform apply -var "do_token=${DO_PAT}"

Connect to the remote server using command that was returned in terraform output in the terminal

Create and test the systemd Service

1. Copy the script and grant it execute permissions:

   sudo cp dummy.sh /usr/local/bin/dummy.sh && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/dummy.sh

2. Create a new service configuration file:

   cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/dummy.service > /dev/null
   [Unit]
   Description=Dummy service that writes to the log every 10 seconds
   
   [Service]
   User=root
   Group=root
   WorkingDirectory=/root
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/dummy.sh
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=3
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   EOF

3. Reload the service files to recognize the newly created service:

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload

4. Test the service by interacting with it and checking its logs:

   # Start and stop the service
   sudo systemctl start dummy
   sudo systemctl stop dummy
   
   # Enable and disable the service
   sudo systemctl enable dummy
   sudo systemctl disable dummy
   
   # Check the service status
   sudo systemctl status dummy
   
   # Check the logs
   sudo journalctl -u dummy -f

Challenge url: https://roadmap.sh/projects/dummy-systemd-service