Start a systemd user service at boot

Question

I am trying to start a systemd service for a specific user (service name/goal is not relevant). I do that because I need to have a per user process of an application running at startup.

Here is what I achieved so far:

• I create a unit file in /etc/systemd/user/

• And then did the following:

  ~ $ systemctl --user enable custom.service

• Then as said in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Automatic_start-up_of_systemd_user_instances enabled lingering to have said service running even with no user session running.

  ~ $ loginctl enable-linger $USER

But when I reboot the service does not seem to start and there is nothing to be seen in journalctl for said service. But the status said that the service is enabled:

~ $ systemctl --user status transmission-daemon

● custom.service - Custom Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/user/custom.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)

Active: inactive (dead)

Also I can run it manually with no issue by running

~ $ systemctl --user start custom.service

As anyone any idea what I did wrong?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I dont know if this is your case but i could solve it with the answer of https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/251211/why-doesnt-my-systemd-user-unit-start-at-boot The problem was i had WantedBy=multi-user.target and had to change it to WantedBy=default.target and it worked.

Another thing, i have my service file in ~/.config/systemd/user