Important commands around systemctl and journalctl when executed by a user

systemd can be used for a user session and many scripts can be leveraged this way. Typically, it’s possible to replace CRON with systemd when setting timers. But the point here is to know a few commands that can be helpful when managing systemctl and journalctl to view how the unit services are behaving

In the examples below, I’m setting restic-backup.service but it can be any unit service file.

basic stop/start and enablers

systemctl --user start restic-backup.service

this will execute the ExecStart part of the restic-backup service

systemctl --user stop restic-backup.service

same thing but for halting.

To make sure it’s executed on user session start, you can enable the service :

systemctl --user enable restic-backup.service
systemctl --user disable restice-backup.service # to not have it no longer executed at start

To verify if a service that are currently enabled :

systemctl --user is-enabled restic-backup.service

logs of a service

to view the logs of systemctl execution for a particular service

journalctl --user -u restic-backup.service

to get a more detailed output and add colors you can add the -x (also known as --catalog) :

journalctl --user -xu restic-backup.service