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Joachim Breitner
Asked: 2015-05-19 06:56:46 +0800 CST

Find the location of a systemd unit file service

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There are many different places where systemd unit files may be placed. Is there a quick and easy way to ask systemd where it read a service’s declaration from, given just the service name?

systemd

2 Answers

  1. For units that are defined in actual, static files, this can be seen in systemctl status:

    $ systemctl status halt-local.service
● halt-local.service - /usr/sbin/halt.local Compatibility
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/halt-local.service; static)
   Active: inactive (dead)

    But there are units that are not defined by files, e.g. with systemd-cron installed. These have no useful location listed with status:

    $ systemctl status cron-jojo-0.timer
● cron-jojo-0.timer - [Cron] "*/10 * * * * ..."
   Loaded: loaded (/var/spool/cron/crontabs/jojo)
   Active: active (waiting) since Mon 2015-05-18 14:53:01 UTC; 9min ago

    In either case, though, the FragmentPath field is educating:

    $ systemctl show -P FragmentPath cron-daily.service
/lib/systemd/system/cron-daily.service
$ systemctl show -P FragmentPath cron-jojo-0.service
/run/systemd/generator/cron-jojo-0.service
$ systemctl show -P FragmentPath halt-local.service
/lib/systemd/system/halt-local.service
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  2. You could cat the systemd unit. This shows the file location as comments. Bonus: It also shows overrides.

    systemctl cat sssd
# /lib/systemd/system/sssd.service
[Unit]
...

# /etc/systemd/system/sssd.service.d/override.conf
[Unit]
...
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