creating a shutdown execution with systemd only for a specific user

A proper way to execute particular scripts during shutdown for a specific user is to have it done by systemd and using the systemctl --user command.

example unit service

in the ~/.config/systemd/user directory, add your service. Here is an example of the quartz-logout.service implemented :

[Unit]
Description=Run Quartz Sync on session exit
After=graphical-session.target
 
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -lc 'cd /home/gdo/path/to/quartz && npx quartz sync'
 
[Install]
WantedBy=exit.target

next we reload the systemd daemon for the user and enable the service :

systemctl --user daemon-reexec
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable quartz-logout.service

After the enable command, this should create a directory in ~/.config/systemd/user called exit.target.wants and should contain an symlink to the quartz-logout.service file

testing

We can test by restarting the service and then execute the stop instruction for systemd and check in the logs with journalctl :

systemctl --user restart quartz-logout.service
systemctl --user stop quartz-logout.service
journactl --user -u quartz-logout.service