How to make sure an application keeps running on Linux

Question

I\'m trying to ensure a script remains running on a development server. It collates stats and provides a web service so it\'s supposed to persist, yet a few times a day, it

Answer 1

If you are using a systemd-based distro such as Fedora and recent Ubuntu releases, you can use systemd's "Restart" capability for services. It can be setup as a system service or as a user service if it needs to be managed by, and run as, a particular user, which is more likely the case in OP's particular situation.

The Restart option takes one of no, on-success, on-failure, on-abnormal, on-watchdog, on-abort, or always.

To run it as a user, simply place a file like the following into ~/.config/systemd/user/something.service:

[Unit]
Description=Something

[Service]
ExecStart=/path/to/something
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

then:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user [status|start|stop|restart] something

No root privilege / modification of system files needed, no cron jobs needed, nothing to install, flexible as hell (see all the related service options in the documentation).

See also https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User for more information about using the per-user systemd instance.