A free-form string describing the unit. This is intended for use in UIs to show descriptive information along with the unit name. The description should contain a name that means something to the end user. "Apache2 Web Server" is a good example. Bad examples are "high-performance light-weight HTTP server" (too generic) or "Apache2" (too specific and meaningless for people who do not know Apache).

A space-separated list of URIs referencing documentation for this unit or its configuration. Accepted are only URIs of the types "http://", "https://", "file:", "info:", "man:". For more information about the syntax of these URIs, see uri(7). The URIs should be listed in order of relevance, starting with the most relevant. It is a good idea to first reference documentation that explains what the unit's purpose is, followed by how it is configured, followed by any other related documentation. This option may be specified more than once, in which case the specified list of URIs is merged. If the empty string is assigned to this option, the list is reset and all prior assignments will have no effect.

Configures requirement dependencies on other units. If this unit gets activated, the units listed here will be activated as well. If one of the other units fails to activate, and an ordering dependency After= on the failing unit is set, this unit will not be started. Besides, with or without specifying After=, this unit will be stopped if one of the other units is explicitly stopped. This option may be specified more than once or multiple space-separated units may be specified in one option in which case requirement dependencies for all listed names will be created. Note that requirement dependencies do not influence the order in which services are started or stopped. This has to be configured independently with the After= or Before= options. If a unit foo.service requires a unit bar.service as configured with Requires= and no ordering is configured with After= or Before=, then both units will be started simultaneously and without any delay between them if foo.service is activated. Often, it is a better choice to use Wants= instead of Requires= in order to achieve a system that is more robust when dealing with failing services.

Note that this dependency type does not imply that the other unit always has to be in active state when this unit is running. Specifically: failing condition checks (such as ConditionPathExists=, ConditionPathIsSymbolicLink=, … — see below) do not cause the start job of a unit with a Requires= dependency on it to fail. Also, some unit types may deactivate on their own (for example, a service process may decide to exit cleanly, or a device may be unplugged by the user), which is not propagated to units having a Requires= dependency. Use the BindsTo= dependency type together with After= to ensure that a unit may never be in active state without a specific other unit also in active state (see below).

Note that dependencies of this type may also be configured outside of the unit configuration file by adding a symlink to a .requires/ directory accompanying the unit file. For details, see above.

Similar to Requires=. However, if the units listed here are not started already, they will not be started and the starting of this unit will fail immediately. Requisite= does not imply an ordering dependency, even if both units are started in the same transaction. Hence this setting should usually be combined with After=, to ensure this unit is not started before the other unit.

When Requisite=b.service is used on a.service, this dependency will show as RequisiteOf=a.service in property listing of b.service. RequisiteOf= dependency cannot be specified directly.

A weaker version of Requires=. Units listed in this option will be started if the configuring unit is. However, if the listed units fail to start or cannot be added to the transaction, this has no impact on the validity of the transaction as a whole. This is the recommended way to hook start-up of one unit to the start-up of another unit.

Note that dependencies of this type may also be configured outside of the unit configuration file by adding symlinks to a .wants/ directory accompanying the unit file. For details, see above.

Configures requirement dependencies, very similar in style to Requires=. However, this dependency type is stronger: in addition to the effect of Requires= it declares that if the unit bound to is stopped, this unit will be stopped too. This means a unit bound to another unit that suddenly enters inactive state will be stopped too. Units can suddenly, unexpectedly enter inactive state for different reasons: the main process of a service unit might terminate on its own choice, the backing device of a device unit might be unplugged or the mount point of a mount unit might be unmounted without involvement of the system and service manager.

When used in conjunction with After= on the same unit the behaviour of BindsTo= is even stronger. In this case, the unit bound to strictly has to be in active state for this unit to also be in active state. This not only means a unit bound to another unit that suddenly enters inactive state, but also one that is bound to another unit that gets skipped due to a failed condition check (such as ConditionPathExists=, ConditionPathIsSymbolicLink=, … — see below) will be stopped, should it be running. Hence, in many cases it is best to combine BindsTo= with After=.

When BindsTo=b.service is used on a.service, this dependency will show as BoundBy=a.service in property listing of b.service. BoundBy= dependency cannot be specified directly.

Configures dependencies similar to Requires=, but limited to stopping and restarting of units. When systemd stops or restarts the units listed here, the action is propagated to this unit. Note that this is a one-way dependency — changes to this unit do not affect the listed units.

When PartOf=b.service is used on a.service, this dependency will show as ConsistsOf=a.service in property listing of b.service. ConsistsOf= dependency cannot be specified directly.

A space-separated list of unit names. Configures negative requirement dependencies. If a unit has a Conflicts= setting on another unit, starting the former will stop the latter and vice versa. Note that this setting is independent of and orthogonal to the After= and Before= ordering dependencies.

If a unit A that conflicts with a unit B is scheduled to be started at the same time as B, the transaction will either fail (in case both are required part of the transaction) or be modified to be fixed (in case one or both jobs are not a required part of the transaction). In the latter case, the job that is not the required will be removed, or in case both are not required, the unit that conflicts will be started and the unit that is conflicted is stopped.

These two settings expect a space-separated list of unit names. They configure ordering dependencies between units. If a unit foo.service contains a setting Before=bar.service and both units are being started, bar.service's start-up is delayed until foo.service has finished starting up. Note that this setting is independent of and orthogonal to the requirement dependencies as configured by Requires=, Wants= or BindsTo=. It is a common pattern to include a unit name in both the After= and Requires= options, in which case the unit listed will be started before the unit that is configured with these options. This option may be specified more than once, in which case ordering dependencies for all listed names are created. After= is the inverse of Before=, i.e. while After= ensures that the configured unit is started after the listed unit finished starting up, Before= ensures the opposite, that the configured unit is fully started up before the listed unit is started. Note that when two units with an ordering dependency between them are shut down, the inverse of the start-up order is applied. i.e. if a unit is configured with After= on another unit, the former is stopped before the latter if both are shut down. Given two units with any ordering dependency between them, if one unit is shut down and the other is started up, the shutdown is ordered before the start-up. It doesn't matter if the ordering dependency is After= or Before=, in this case. It also doesn't matter which of the two is shut down, as long as one is shut down and the other is started up. The shutdown is ordered before the start-up in all cases. If two units have no ordering dependencies between them, they are shut down or started up simultaneously, and no ordering takes place. It depends on the unit type when precisely a unit has finished starting up. Most importantly, for service units start-up is considered completed for the purpose of Before=/After= when all its configured start-up commands have been invoked and they either failed or reported start-up success.

A space-separated list of one or more units that are activated when this unit enters the "failed" state. A service unit using Restart= enters the failed state only after the start limits are reached.

A space-separated list of one or more units where reload requests on this unit will be propagated to, or reload requests on the other unit will be propagated to this unit, respectively. Issuing a reload request on a unit will automatically also enqueue a reload request on all units that the reload request shall be propagated to via these two settings.

For units that start processes (such as service units), lists one or more other units whose network and/or temporary file namespace to join. This only applies to unit types which support the PrivateNetwork= and PrivateTmp= directives (see systemd.exec(5) for details). If a unit that has this setting set is started, its processes will see the same /tmp, /var/tmp and network namespace as one listed unit that is started. If multiple listed units are already started, it is not defined which namespace is joined. Note that this setting only has an effect if PrivateNetwork= and/or PrivateTmp= is enabled for both the unit that joins the namespace and the unit whose namespace is joined.

Takes a space-separated list of absolute paths. Automatically adds dependencies of type Requires= and After= for all mount units required to access the specified path.

Mount points marked with noauto are not mounted automatically through local-fs.target, but are still honored for the purposes of this option, i.e. they will be pulled in by this unit.

Takes a value of "fail", "replace", "replace-irreversibly", "isolate", "flush", "ignore-dependencies" or "ignore-requirements". Defaults to "replace". Specifies how the units listed in OnFailure= will be enqueued. See systemctl(1)'s --job-mode= option for details on the possible values. If this is set to "isolate", only a single unit may be listed in OnFailure=..

Takes a boolean argument. If true, this unit will not be stopped when isolating another unit. Defaults to false for service, target, socket, busname, timer, and path units, and true for slice, scope, device, swap, mount, and automount units.

Takes a boolean argument. If true, this unit will be stopped when it is no longer used. Note that, in order to minimize the work to be executed, systemd will not stop units by default unless they are conflicting with other units, or the user explicitly requested their shut down. If this option is set, a unit will be automatically cleaned up if no other active unit requires it. Defaults to false.

Takes a boolean argument. If true, this unit can only be activated or deactivated indirectly. In this case, explicit start-up or termination requested by the user is denied, however if it is started or stopped as a dependency of another unit, start-up or termination will succeed. This is mostly a safety feature to ensure that the user does not accidentally activate units that are not intended to be activated explicitly, and not accidentally deactivate units that are not intended to be deactivated. These options default to false.

Takes a boolean argument. If true, this unit may be used with the systemctl isolate command. Otherwise, this will be refused. It probably is a good idea to leave this disabled except for target units that shall be used similar to runlevels in SysV init systems, just as a precaution to avoid unusable system states. This option defaults to false.

Takes a boolean argument. If true, (the default), a few default dependencies will implicitly be created for the unit. The actual dependencies created depend on the unit type. For example, for service units, these dependencies ensure that the service is started only after basic system initialization is completed and is properly terminated on system shutdown. See the respective man pages for details. Generally, only services involved with early boot or late shutdown should set this option to false. It is highly recommended to leave this option enabled for the majority of common units. If set to false, this option does not disable all implicit dependencies, just non-essential ones.

Tweaks the "garbage collection" algorithm for this unit. Takes one of inactive or inactive-or-failed. If set to inactive the unit will be unloaded if it is in the inactive state and is not referenced by clients, jobs or other units — however it is not unloaded if it is in the failed state. In failed mode, failed units are not unloaded until the user invoked systemctl reset-failed on them to reset the failed state, or an equivalent command. This behaviour is altered if this option is set to inactive-or-failed: in this case the unit is unloaded even if the unit is in a failed state, and thus an explicitly resetting of the failed state is not necessary. Note that if this mode is used unit results (such as exit codes, exit signals, consumed resources, …) are flushed out immediately after the unit completed, except for what is stored in the logging subsystem. Defaults to inactive.

Configure the action to take when the unit stops and enters a failed state or inactive state. Takes one of none, reboot, reboot-force, reboot-immediate, poweroff, poweroff-force, poweroff-immediate, exit, and exit-force. In system mode, all options are allowed. In user mode, only none, exit, and exit-force are allowed. Both options default to none.

If none is set, no action will be triggered. reboot causes a reboot following the normal shutdown procedure (i.e. equivalent to systemctl reboot). reboot-force causes a forced reboot which will terminate all processes forcibly but should cause no dirty file systems on reboot (i.e. equivalent to systemctl reboot -f) and reboot-immediate causes immediate execution of the reboot(2) system call, which might result in data loss. Similarly, poweroff, poweroff-force, poweroff-immediate have the effect of powering down the system with similar semantics. exit causes the manager to exit following the normal shutdown procedure, and exit-force causes it terminate without shutting down services.

When a job for this unit is queued, a time-out JobTimeoutSec= may be configured. Similarly, JobRunningTimeoutSec= starts counting when the queued job is actually started. If either time limit is reached, the job will be cancelled, the unit however will not change state or even enter the "failed" mode. This value defaults to "infinity" (job timeouts disabled), except for device units (JobRunningTimeoutSec= defaults to DefaultTimeoutStartSec=). NB: this timeout is independent from any unit-specific timeout (for example, the timeout set with TimeoutStartSec= in service units) as the job timeout has no effect on the unit itself, only on the job that might be pending for it. Or in other words: unit-specific timeouts are useful to abort unit state changes, and revert them. The job timeout set with this option however is useful to abort only the job waiting for the unit state to change.

JobTimeoutAction= optionally configures an additional action to take when the time-out is hit. It takes the same values as StartLimitAction=. Defaults to none. JobTimeoutRebootArgument= configures an optional reboot string to pass to the reboot(2) system call.

Configure unit start rate limiting. Units which are started more than burst times within an interval time interval are not permitted to start any more. Use StartLimitIntervalSec= to configure the checking interval (defaults to DefaultStartLimitIntervalSec= in manager configuration file, set it to 0 to disable any kind of rate limiting). Use StartLimitBurst= to configure how many starts per interval are allowed (defaults to DefaultStartLimitBurst= in manager configuration file). These configuration options are particularly useful in conjunction with the service setting Restart= (see systemd.service(5)); however, they apply to all kinds of starts (including manual), not just those triggered by the Restart= logic. Note that units which are configured for Restart= and which reach the start limit are not attempted to be restarted anymore; however, they may still be restarted manually at a later point, after the interval has passed. From this point on, the restart logic is activated again. Note that systemctl reset-failed will cause the restart rate counter for a service to be flushed, which is useful if the administrator wants to manually start a unit and the start limit interferes with that. Note that this rate-limiting is enforced after any unit condition checks are executed, and hence unit activations with failing conditions do not count towards this rate limit. This setting does not apply to slice, target, device, and scope units, since they are unit types whose activation may either never fail, or may succeed only a single time.

When a unit is unloaded due to the garbage collection logic (see above) its rate limit counters are flushed out too. This means that configuring start rate limiting for a unit that is not referenced continuously has no effect.

Configure an additional action to take if the rate limit configured with StartLimitIntervalSec= and StartLimitBurst= is hit. Takes the same values as the setting FailureAction=/SuccessAction= settings and executes the same actions. If none is set, hitting the rate limit will trigger no action besides that the start will not be permitted. Defaults to none.

Configure the optional argument for the reboot(2) system call if StartLimitAction= or FailureAction= is a reboot action. This works just like the optional argument to systemctl reboot command.

Before starting a unit, verify that the specified condition is true. If it is not true, the starting of the unit will be (mostly silently) skipped, however all ordering dependencies of it are still respected. A failing condition will not result in the unit being moved into a failure state. The condition is checked at the time the queued start job is to be executed. Use condition expressions in order to silently skip units that do not apply to the local running system, for example because the kernel or runtime environment doesn't require its functionality. Use the various AssertArchitecture=, AssertVirtualization=, … options for a similar mechanism that puts the unit in a failure state and logs about the failed check (see below).

ConditionArchitecture= may be used to check whether the system is running on a specific architecture. Takes one of x86, x86-64, ppc, ppc-le, ppc64, ppc64-le, ia64, parisc, parisc64, s390, s390x, sparc, sparc64, mips, mips-le, mips64, mips64-le, alpha, arm, arm-be, arm64, arm64-be, sh, sh64, m68k, tilegx, cris, arc, arc-be to test against a specific architecture. The architecture is determined from the information returned by uname(2) and is thus subject to personality(2). Note that a Personality= setting in the same unit file has no effect on this condition. A special architecture name native is mapped to the architecture the system manager itself is compiled for. The test may be negated by prepending an exclamation mark.

ConditionVirtualization= may be used to check whether the system is executed in a virtualized environment and optionally test whether it is a specific implementation. Takes either boolean value to check if being executed in any virtualized environment, or one of vm and container to test against a generic type of virtualization solution, or one of qemu, kvm, "amazon", zvm, vmware, microsoft, oracle, xen, bochs, uml, bhyve, qnx, openvz, lxc, lxc-libvirt, systemd-nspawn, docker, rkt to test against a specific implementation, or private-users to check whether we are running in a user namespace. See systemd-detect-virt(1) for a full list of known virtualization technologies and their identifiers. If multiple virtualization technologies are nested, only the innermost is considered. The test may be negated by prepending an exclamation mark.

ConditionHost= may be used to match against the hostname or machine ID of the host. This either takes a hostname string (optionally with shell style globs) which is tested against the locally set hostname as returned by gethostname(2), or a machine ID formatted as string (see machine-id(5)). The test may be negated by prepending an exclamation mark.

ConditionKernelCommandLine= may be used to check whether a specific kernel command line option is set (or if prefixed with the exclamation mark unset). The argument must either be a single word, or an assignment (i.e. two words, separated "="). In the former case the kernel command line is searched for the word appearing as is, or as left hand side of an assignment. In the latter case, the exact assignment is looked for with right and left hand side matching.

ConditionKernelVersion= may be used to check whether the kernel version (as reported by uname -r) matches a certain expression (or if prefixed with the exclamation mark does not match it). The argument must be a single string. If the string starts with one of "<", "<=", "=", ">=", ">" a relative version comparison is done, otherwise the specified string is matched with shell-style globs.

Note that using the kernel version string is an unreliable way to determine which features are supported by a kernel, because of the widespread practice of backporting drivers, features, and fixes from newer upstream kernels into older versions provided by distributions. Hence, this check is inherently unportable and should not be used for units which may be used on different distributions.

ConditionSecurity= may be used to check whether the given security technology is enabled on the system. Currently, the recognized values are selinux, apparmor, tomoyo, ima, smack, audit and uefi-secureboot. The test may be negated by prepending an exclamation mark.

ConditionCapability= may be used to check whether the given capability exists in the capability bounding set of the service manager (i.e. this does not check whether capability is actually available in the permitted or effective sets, see capabilities(7) for details). Pass a capability name such as "CAP_MKNOD", possibly prefixed with an exclamation mark to negate the check.

ConditionACPower= may be used to check whether the system has AC power, or is exclusively battery powered at the time of activation of the unit. This takes a boolean argument. If set to true, the condition will hold only if at least one AC connector of the system is connected to a power source, or if no AC connectors are known. Conversely, if set to false, the condition will hold only if there is at least one AC connector known and all AC connectors are disconnected from a power source.

ConditionNeedsUpdate= takes one of /var or /etc as argument, possibly prefixed with a "!" (for inverting the condition). This condition may be used to conditionalize units on whether the specified directory requires an update because /usr's modification time is newer than the stamp file .updated in the specified directory. This is useful to implement offline updates of the vendor operating system resources in /usr that require updating of /etc or /var on the next following boot. Units making use of this condition should order themselves before systemd-update-done.service(8), to make sure they run before the stamp file's modification time gets reset indicating a completed update.

ConditionFirstBoot= takes a boolean argument. This condition may be used to conditionalize units on whether the system is booting up with an unpopulated /etc directory (specifically: an /etc with no /etc/machine-id). This may be used to populate /etc on the first boot after factory reset, or when a new system instance boots up for the first time.

With ConditionPathExists= a file existence condition is checked before a unit is started. If the specified absolute path name does not exist, the condition will fail. If the absolute path name passed to ConditionPathExists= is prefixed with an exclamation mark ("!"), the test is negated, and the unit is only started if the path does not exist.

ConditionPathExistsGlob= is similar to ConditionPathExists=, but checks for the existence of at least one file or directory matching the specified globbing pattern.

ConditionPathIsDirectory= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether a certain path exists and is a directory.

ConditionPathIsSymbolicLink= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether a certain path exists and is a symbolic link.

ConditionPathIsMountPoint= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether a certain path exists and is a mount point.

ConditionPathIsReadWrite= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether the underlying file system is readable and writable (i.e. not mounted read-only).

ConditionDirectoryNotEmpty= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether a certain path exists and is a non-empty directory.

ConditionFileNotEmpty= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether a certain path exists and refers to a regular file with a non-zero size.

ConditionFileIsExecutable= is similar to ConditionPathExists= but verifies whether a certain path exists, is a regular file and marked executable.

ConditionUser= takes a numeric "UID", a UNIX user name, or the special value "@system". This condition may be used to check whether the service manager is running as the given user. The special value "@system" can be used to check if the user id is within the system user range. This option is not useful for system services, as the system manager exclusively runs as the root user, and thus the test result is constant.

ConditionGroup= is similar to ConditionUser= but verifies that the service manager's real or effective group, or any of its auxiliary groups match the specified group or GID. This setting does not have a special value "@system".

ConditionControlGroupController= takes a cgroup controller name (eg. cpu), verifying that it is available for use on the system. For example, a particular controller may not be available if it was disabled on the kernel command line with "cgroup_disable="controller. Multiple controllers may be passed with a space separating them; in this case the condition will only pass if all listed controllers are available for use. Controllers unknown to systemd are ignored. Valid controllers are cpu, cpuacct, io, blkio, memory, devices, and pids.

If multiple conditions are specified, the unit will be executed if all of them apply (i.e. a logical AND is applied). Condition checks can be prefixed with a pipe symbol (|) in which case a condition becomes a triggering condition. If at least one triggering condition is defined for a unit, then the unit will be executed if at least one of the triggering conditions apply and all of the non-triggering conditions. If you prefix an argument with the pipe symbol and an exclamation mark, the pipe symbol must be passed first, the exclamation second. Except for ConditionPathIsSymbolicLink=, all path checks follow symlinks. If any of these options is assigned the empty string, the list of conditions is reset completely, all previous condition settings (of any kind) will have no effect.

Similar to the ConditionArchitecture=, ConditionVirtualization=, …, condition settings described above, these settings add assertion checks to the start-up of the unit. However, unlike the conditions settings, any assertion setting that is not met results in failure of the start job (which means this is logged loudly). Use assertion expressions for units that cannot operate when specific requirements are not met, and when this is something the administrator or user should look into.

A path to a configuration file this unit has been generated from. This is primarily useful for implementation of generator tools that convert configuration from an external configuration file format into native unit files. This functionality should not be used in normal units.

A space-separated list of additional names this unit shall be installed under. The names listed here must have the same suffix (i.e. type) as the unit filename. This option may be specified more than once, in which case all listed names are used. At installation time, systemctl enable will create symlinks from these names to the unit filename. Note that not all unit types support such alias names, and this setting is not supported for them. Specifically, mount, slice, swap, and automount units do not support aliasing.

This option may be used more than once, or a space-separated list of unit names may be given. A symbolic link is created in the .wants/ or .requires/ directory of each of the listed units when this unit is installed by systemctl enable. This has the effect that a dependency of type Wants= or Requires= is added from the listed unit to the current unit. The primary result is that the current unit will be started when the listed unit is started. See the description of Wants= and Requires= in the [Unit] section for details.

WantedBy=foo.service in a service bar.service is mostly equivalent to Alias=foo.service.wants/bar.service in the same file. In case of template units, systemctl enable must be called with an instance name, and this instance will be added to the .wants/ or .requires/ list of the listed unit. E.g. WantedBy=getty.target in a service getty@.service will result in systemctl enable getty@tty2.service creating a getty.target.wants/getty@tty2.service link to getty@.service.

Additional units to install/deinstall when this unit is installed/deinstalled. If the user requests installation/deinstallation of a unit with this option configured, systemctl enable and systemctl disable will automatically install/uninstall units listed in this option as well.

This option may be used more than once, or a space-separated list of unit names may be given.

In template unit files, this specifies for which instance the unit shall be enabled if the template is enabled without any explicitly set instance. This option has no effect in non-template unit files. The specified string must be usable as instance identifier.