General, Ubuntu

Certain Linux distributions that use SystemD such as Ubuntu 20.04 may not allow you to run /etc/rc.local when the system is booting. In this tutorial we will go through how to enable /etc/rc.local with systemd during system boot on Ubuntu 20.04.

Procedure to setup /etc/rc.local with systemd on Ubuntu 20.04

Check the current status of rc-local service

sudo systemctl status rc-local

Enable rc.local service

Enable /etc/rc.local to run on system boot using the command

sudo systemctl enable rc-local

As you may have already read, it is not possible to enable rc.local at startup using SystemD on Ubuntu 20.04. Therefore we have to do this another way.

Manually create a systemd service

We will need to manually create a SystemD service which will start at system boot.

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service

Now enter the following text, save and close the file.

[Unit]
 Description=/etc/rc.local Compatibility
 ConditionPathExists=/etc/rc.local

[Service]
 Type=forking
 ExecStart=/etc/rc.local start
 TimeoutSec=0
 StandardOutput=tty
 RemainAfterExit=yes
 SysVStartPriority=99

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

Create and Edit rc.local file

Now we will need to edit the /etc/rc.local file. Issue the following command and press Enter

sudo vi /etc/rc.local

Paste in the following, this ensures that the script is bash executable, all bash scripts shoul have this at the top

#!/bin/bash

save and close the file.

We will now need to append permissions to make the newly created file executable. Issue the following command and press Enter

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local

Enable the service on boot (enable rc.local with systemd on Ubuntu 20.04)

After that, enable the service on system boot

sudo systemctl enable rc-local

Now let’s reboot the system and check if the rc-local SystemD service is working.

When your system has booted up again, issue the following command

sudo systemctl status rc-local

Enabling /etc/rc.local with systemd is completed on Ubuntu 20.04 startup.

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