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I am creating a Debian package for a software application which gets executed from a service script and could like to know the best way to do this.

My current thoughts are for the package to copy the executable to /usr/bin, and the service to /etc/systemd/system/, and have a postinst script to execute

systemctl enable myapp.service

Is this the correct approach or is there a more 'standard' procedure for handling services within Debian package management?

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What I do is create a .../debian folder in my projects and create a .service file for the daemon. I also add one command line option like so in the .../debian/rules file:

%:
    dh $@ --with systemd --parallel

That option tells the system to use systemd to handle the .service file (otherwise it falls back on SYS-V).

The one other thing to remember to do is add the #DEBHELPER# in your post/pre inst/rm scripts. These are very important since that's what actually makes it all work.

For example, here is a configuration in a postinst script:

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$1" = "configure" ]
then
     # Turn on IP forwarding
     echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
fi

#DEBHELPER#

The position in your script will depend on what you do in your script. i.e. if you want to run a command after the service was started, then place the #DEBHELPER# before. If you need to finish up configuration that your service is going to use, then place the #DEBHELPER# after that configuration.

I have example in my Snap! project.

Note: if you have a project with more than one daemon, you can use the .../debian folder trick for one of them. The other, you have to install by hand (on your own).

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