systemd: How to start service B after service A runs to completion?

I need to emulate the Upstart "start on stopped" behavior, in which service B is started after service A runs to completion, but in systemd. How do I do that?

I've seen references to the "After=" and "Before=" clauses in the [Unit] section of the *.service file, but they appear to cause service B to start after service A has been started. Again, I need to wait until service A has run to completion before starting service B.

I put together a trivial example to play with the behavior. I put my *.service files in /etc/systemd/system, enabled the two services and then rebooted. I expected to see first.sh's "...and we're out" before second.sh's "sleep for 2 seconds," but I didn't get that result, as you'll see below.

I appreciate your guidance.

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Here are my service files, the scripts they invoke, and the journalctl output.

Here's "first.service":

[Unit]
Description=First of two services

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/steve/play/systemd/oneAfterTheOther/first.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Here's "first.sh":

#!/usr/bin/env bash
nsec=10
echo "sleep for ${nsec} seconds"
sleep ${nsec}
echo "...and we're out"

Here's "second.service":

[Unit]
Description=Second of two services
After=first.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/steve/play/systemd/oneAfterTheOther/second.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Here's "second.sh":

#!/usr/bin/env bash
nsec=2
echo "sleep for ${nsec} seconds"
sleep ${nsec}
echo "...and we're out"

And here, finally, is the journalctl output:

$ journalctl -u first -u second
-- Logs begin at Tue 2018-09-04 17:50:19 CDT, end at Tue 2018-09-04 17:56:37 CDT
Sep 04 17:50:38 sk-xenial-vm systemd[1]: Started First of two services.
Sep 04 17:50:38 sk-xenial-vm systemd[1]: Started Second of two services.
Sep 04 17:50:40 sk-xenial-vm first.sh[900]: sleep for 10 seconds
Sep 04 17:50:40 sk-xenial-vm second.sh[924]: sleep for 2 seconds
Sep 04 17:50:43 sk-xenial-vm second.sh[924]: ...and we're out
Sep 04 17:50:51 sk-xenial-vm first.sh[900]: ...and we're out

Solution 1:

I've come upon an answer to my own question.

I read in the systemd.service man page about the "Type=" clause, and I see that when I add "Type=oneshot" to the [Service] section of my *.service files, systemd does what I wanted.

I expect I could use other Type= settings and get results to my liking, and I also expect that I probably don't actually need to make second.service oneshot to get what I want; first.service is the one I need to see finish. But I have a path to success now.

So, for the record, here are the working *.service files and the journalctl output to prove it.

Onward!

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First.service:

[Unit]
Description=First of two services

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/steve/play/systemd/oneAfterTheOther/first.sh
Type=oneshot

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Second.service:

[Unit]
Description=Second of two services
After=first.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/steve/play/systemd/oneAfterTheOther/second.sh
Type=oneshot

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Journalctl output:

$ journalctl -u first -u second
-- Logs begin at Wed 2018-09-05 11:46:04 CDT, end at Wed 2018-09-05 11:51:54 CDT
Sep 05 11:46:21 sk-xenial-vm systemd[1]: Starting First of two services...
Sep 05 11:46:22 sk-xenial-vm first.sh[868]: sleep for 10 seconds
Sep 05 11:46:32 sk-xenial-vm first.sh[868]: ...and we're out
Sep 05 11:46:32 sk-xenial-vm systemd[1]: Started First of two services.
Sep 05 11:46:32 sk-xenial-vm systemd[1]: Starting Second of two services...
Sep 05 11:46:32 sk-xenial-vm second.sh[1104]: sleep for 2 seconds
Sep 05 11:46:34 sk-xenial-vm second.sh[1104]: ...and we're out
Sep 05 11:46:34 sk-xenial-vm systemd[1]: Started Second of two services.

Solution 2:

You could use the classic double ampersand:

first.sh && second.sh

In this example, second.sh will only execute, if first.sh was executed successfully (i.e. without errors).