Setting up Redis to run as a daemon under systemd

gistfile1.md

This can be used to daemonize anything that would normally run in the foreground; I picked Redis. Put this in /etc/systemd/system/redis.service:

[Unit]
Description=Redis
After=syslog.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf
RestartSec=5s
Restart=on-success

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Make sure that redis.conf has demonize no (the default; systemd will take care of 'daemonizing'). The Restart=on-success in the service file means that the daemon will be auto-restarted only when it exited cleanly (so that 'bad' problems are not masked; see doc). Then run:

sudo systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/redis.service
sudo systemctl start redis.service

Links:

• intro (coreos)
• more (digitalocean)
• manpage

@mkocikowski,

As @jee1mr said, there is a typo. The setting in redis.conf is:

By default Redis does not run as a daemon. Use 'yes' if you need it. # Note that Redis will write a pid file in /var/run/redis.pid when daemonized. daemonize no

and not:

demonize no

Find here (at Step 3) a somehow detailled way to achieve this task.

I was so glad I found this "redis.service" script as the official documentation is still giving instructions to start redis with "init.d"
But after I kept on getting errors when I started the service (status=203/EXEC).
When I started redis-server manually with the command it worked...

Now the problem was the given path in the startup command in the script above:

• In my case it was NOT: ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf
• But the correct path is: ExecStart=/usr/sbin/redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf

note redis version 7 is shipped with redis-server.service, which is enabled during install