Fixing a systemd service 203/EXEC failure (no such file or directory)
BashSystemdBash Problem Overview
I'm trying to set up a simple systemd timer to run a bash script every day at midnight.
systemctl --user status backup.service fails and logs the following:
backup.service: Failed at step EXEC spawning /home/user/.scripts/backup.sh: No such file or directory.
backup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC
Failed to start backup.
backup.service: Unit entered failed state.
backup.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
I'm lost, since the files and directories exist. The script is executable and, just to check, I've even set permissions to 777.
Some background:
The backup.timer and backup.service unit files are located in /home/user/.config/systemd/user.
backup.timer is loaded and active, and currently waiting for midnight.
Here's what it looks like:
[Unit]
Description=Runs backup at 0000
[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
Unit=backup.service
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Here's backup.service:
[Unit]
Description=backup
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/user/.scripts/backup.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
And lastly, this is a paraphrase of backup.sh:
#!/usr/env/bin bash
rsync -a --delete --quiet /home/user/directory/ /mnt/drive/directory-backup/
The script runs fine if I execute it myself.
Not sure if it matters, but I use fish as my shell (started from .bashrc).
I'm happy to post the full script if that's helpful.
Bash Solutions
Solution 1 - Bash
I think I found the answer:
In the .service file, I needed to add /bin/bash before the path to the script.
For example, for backup.service:
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/user/.scripts/backup.sh
As opposed to:
ExecStart=/home/user/.scripts/backup.sh
I'm not sure why. Perhaps fish. On the other hand, I have another script running for my email, and the service file seems to run fine without /bin/bash. It does use default.target instead multi-user.target, though.
Most of the tutorials I came across don't prepend /bin/bash, but I then saw this SO answer which had it, and figured it was worth a try.
The service file executes the script, and the timer is listed in systemctl --user list-timers, so hopefully this will work.
Update: I can confirm that everything is working now.
Solution 2 - Bash
To simplify, make sure to add a hash bang to the top of your ExecStart script, i.e.
#!/bin/bash
python -u alwayson.py
Solution 3 - Bash
When this happened to me it was because my script had DOS line endings, which always messes up the shebang line at the top of the script. I changed it to Unix line endings and it worked.
Solution 4 - Bash
I ran across a Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC today as well and my bug was that I forgot to add the executable bit to the file.
Solution 5 - Bash
If that is a copy/paste from your script, you've permuted this line:
#!/usr/env/bin bash
There's no #!/usr/env/bin, you meant #!/usr/bin/env.
Solution 6 - Bash
try running:
systemctl daemon-reload
and then again run
service <yourservice> status
Solution 7 - Bash
I faced a similar issue, changed the permission and added executable permission
use chmod +x /etc/systemd/system/<service-filename>
This worked for me
Solution 8 - Bash
I actually used the answer from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4018154/how-do-i-run-a-node-js-app-as-a-background-service combined with what dwrz said above. In my case, I was creating a Discord bot that needed to be able to run when I was not around.
With this service in place, I initially got the same error that the initial poster did, which brought me here. I was missing the #!/usr/bin/env node at the top of my executed node.js script.
Since then, no problems, although I intend to see what else can be extended to the service itself.