Question

Problem with a Golang webapp and system service

Posted on September 29, 2022
Go Nginx UNIX/Linux System Tools DigitalOcean
Asked by Edmund Rotimi

Hi, I am trying to create a Golang server using the gin framework on ubuntu. It works fine when it is executed in the terminal after building it with go build and equally works well locally.

Systemd Description=goapp

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=5s
ExecStart=/home/.../goapp/main


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I got this error

goapp.service - rediate
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/goapp.service; disabled; 
vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Thu 
2022-09-29 08:14:10 UTC; 66ms ago
   Process: 21628 
ExecStart=/home/.../go/goapp/main (code=exited, status=2)
Main PID: 21628 (code=exited, status=2)
    CPU: 9ms

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• October 2, 2022

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

If you run go run . inside /home/.../goapp/ does it work as expected?

If this works, what I could suggest is updating the unit file to:

[Unit]
Description=Your Go App
ConditionPathExists=/home/.../goapp
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=burn
Group=burn

WorkingDirectory=/home/.../goapp
ExecStart=/usr/local/go/bin/go run .

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=appgoservice

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If this still fails, you should be able to see some output in the syslog. Feel free to share the errors here so I could try to advise you further!

Best,

Bobby