Note: Briefly formulated question can be found at the bottom.
I have a script which makes a backup of my files onto an external USB drive. Executing it can take a while, depending on the amount of new data I've created. I want to run it automatically on every shutdown of the system.
I'm using fedora 23 with latest updates (systemd).
I tried to achieve this in several ways, but I couldn't get it to work.
Long running process with StopExec
autobackup.service:
[Unit]
Description=Slow backup script
Requires=local-fs.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/true
ExecStop=/etc/systemd/system/do_backup.sh
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
[Install]
WantedBy=multiuser.target
I activated it with systemctl enable autobackup.service
and started it with systemctl start autobackup.service
.
Part of my boot log (journalctl -b-1
):
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost systemd[1]: Unmounted /mnt/BACKUP.
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost do_backup.sh[4296]: At subvol /home/BACKUP.2015_12_22-17_45_25
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost do_backup.sh[4296]: ERROR: parent subvol is not reachable from inside the root subvol.
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost do_backup.sh[4296]: At snapshot BACKUP.2015_12_22-17_45_25
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost do_backup.sh[4296]: ERROR: failed to dump stream. Broken pipe
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost systemd[1]: autobackup.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost systemd[1]: Stopped Slow backup script.
Dez 22 17:45:27 localhost systemd[1]: autobackup.service: Unit entered failed state.
Note that I didn't shorten anything in between, it really unmounted /mnt/BACKUP just before the script started, funny coincidence..
Before shutdown.target
autobackup.service:
[Unit]
Description=Slow backup script
DefaultDependencies=no
Before=shutdown.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/etc/systemd/system/do_backup.sh
Type=oneshot
systemctl edit shutdown.target
[Unit]
Requires=autobackup.service
Output is basically the same.
The Problem
I think the problem is that systemd starts my script in parallel with all the other shutdown scripts in both cases, which unmount BACKUP and deactivate the pipe infrastructure (another error I sometimes got, when the unmount wasn't fast enough).
The Question
How can I teach systemd to start my script first on shutdown, wait until it exits and then start the rest of the shutdown scripts/targets/units/whatever?
Best Answer
No need to create or edit service files. Simply drop your script in
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-halt.service.html
I use it to simply beep the PC speaker.