I am trying to redirect o/p of a systemd service to a file but it doesn't seem to work. I am doing it as follows:
[Unit] Description=customprocess After=network.target [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/binary1 agent -config-dir /etc/sample.d/server StandardOutput=/var/log1.log StandardError=/var/log2.log Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target Please suggest the correct approach to redirect o/p to a file
I think there's a more elegant way to solve the problem: send the stdout/stderr to syslog with an identifier and instruct your syslog manager to split its output by programname.
Use the following properties in your systemd service unit file:
StandardOutput=syslog StandardError=syslog SyslogIdentifier= # without any quote Then, assuming your distribution is using rsyslog to manage syslogs, create a file in /etc/rsyslog.d/ with the following content:
if $programname == '' then /path/to/log/file.log if $programname == '' then ~ restart rsyslog (sudo systemctl restart rsyslog) and enjoy! Your program stdout/stderr will still be available through journalctl (sudo journalctl -u ) but they will also be available in your file of choice.
Source: http://wiki.rsyslog.com/index.php/Filtering_by_program_name
You possibly get this error:
Failed to parse output specifier, ignoring: /var/log1.log From the systemd.exec(5) man page:
StandardOutput=Controls where file descriptor 1 (STDOUT) of the executed processes is connected to. Takes one of
inherit,null,tty,journal,syslog,kmsg,journal+console,syslog+console,kmsg+consoleorsocket.
The systemd.exec(5) man page explains other options related to logging. See also the systemd.service(5) and systemd.unit(5) man pages.
Or maybe you can try things like this (all on one line):
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c '/usr/local/bin/binary1 agent -config-dir /etc/sample.d/server 2>&1 > /var/log.log' If for a some reason can't use rsyslog, this will do: ExecStart=/bin/bash -ce "exec /usr/local/bin/binary1 agent -config-dir /etc/sample.d/server >> /var/log/agent.log 2>&1"
If you have a newer distro with a newer systemd (systemd version 236 or newer), you can set the values of StandardOutput or StandardError to file:YOUR_ABSPATH_FILENAME.
Long story:
In newer versions of systemd there is a relatively new option (the github request is from 2016 ish and the enhancement is merged/closed 2017 ish) where you can set the values of StandardOutput or StandardError to file:YOUR_ABSPATH_FILENAME. The file:path option is documented in the most recent systemd.exec man page.
This new feature is relatively new and so is not available for older distros like centos-7 (or any centos before that).