Openfire not starting on boot using systemd

Question

I manually start openfire using the following command:

sudo -u openfire /opt/openfire/bin/openfire start

Under Ubuntu 14.04, I eventually figured out I could start it automatically on boot using the following upstart file openfire.conf:

description "Openfire launch on boot"
start on startup
task
exec start-stop-daemon --start --quiet -c openfire --exec /opt/openfire/bin/openfire -- start

I have now rebuilt my server on Ubuntu 16.04 and would like to achieve the same thing using systemd. I created unit file /lib/systemd/system/openfire.service:

[Unit]
Description=OpenFire Start on Boot

[Service]
User=openfire
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "/opt/openfire/bin/openfire start"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This does not work. After saving the unit file and activating it with sudo systemctl enable openfire.service and rebooting, I check the status with sudo -u openfire /opt/openfire/bin/openfire status and get the result openfire is stopped.

To debug I tried setting LogLevel=debug in /etc/systemd/system.conf, rebooted again, then tried journalctl -u openfire which returned the following single line:

Feb 19 11:51:19 DK-Openfire-B systemd[1]: Started OpenFire Start on Boot.

Which really didn't help me. I suspect the issue is with my ExecStart statement. Any tips on what I am doing wrong or how to get further debug info?

Answer 1

I figured it out. I just had to add 'Type=forking' to the [Service] section of the unit file. The following unit file works as desired:

[Unit]
Description=OpenFire Start on Boot

[Service]
Type=forking
User=openfire
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "/opt/openfire/bin/openfire start"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target