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linuxcronsystemdsystemctl

How to run an executable file in Debian 10?

I have an executable file say myserver. I always run it by appending ./ infront of file name in debian 10 terminal. e.g. ./myserver. I am wondering if there are other ways to execute/run this file apart from using ./.

Note: file commands shows the following information about my file.

file myserver
myserver: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, Go BuildID=82wr8_Xx7EP7lh6rXfs4/w6MXLU_08grWoInEvoEg/im3xy25cSUGiNkWCWC6M/1IjwBIGip3ebxtcXy09u, stripped

I want to run this file automatically at boot since i am tired of typing ./myserver in the terminal every times my machine reboots. Since it is binary file and not a service, so i setup a system service using systemd with the following contents.

[Unit]
Description=myserver
After=network-online.target

[Service]
ExecStart=./myserver
WorkingDirectory=/home/sahar
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=sahar

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

However i am getting the following error.

● myserver.service - myserver
     Loaded: bad-setting (Reason: Unit myserver.service has a bad unit file setting.)
     Active: inactive (dead)

systemd[1]: /etc/systemd/system/myserver.service:6: Neither a valid executable name nor an absolute path: ./myserver
systemd[1]: myserver.service: Unit configuration has fatal error, unit will not be started.

Does this error means I can not execute the file now using ./? I have tried it with bash myserver and sh myserver but no luck.

Any solution is appreciated.

Regards, Sahar

Solution

  • In Linux . refers to the current directory you are working in. ./name_of_some_program gives the relative path to that program. You can check your current/present working directory with pwd command.

    If your current working directory is /home/machine and you have a file in that directory you wanna execute. Let the name of that file be A. You give the path of that file to shell. You can either do ./A or /home/machine/A. The latter is called absolute path.

    So, in systemd service file you need to mention absolute path not relative. Give the value of absolute path to Execstart key.