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I run a Next.js frontend on a VM using systemd. My workflow for making systemd services is usually:

  1. Make the application work from the user shell (ec2-user in this case)
  2. Write a unit file which does the same, and uses the same user

However, the service did not work as expected, due to differences in $PATH.

Indeed, .bash_profile and .bashrc contain code that extends $PATH. This configuration has been done automatically by tools like pyenv.

So I ended up making an ugly unit file to match the same $PATH that I have in my user shell:

[Unit]
Description=Web App Frontend
After=network.target

[Service]
User=ec2-user
Group=ec2-user
Environment="PATH=/home/ec2-user/.pyenv/shims:/home/ec2-user/.pyenv/bin:/home/ec2-user/.nvm/versions/node/v20.11.0/bin:/home/ec2-user/.local/bin:/home/ec2-user/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin"
WorkingDirectory=/home/ec2-user/web-app-frontend
ExecStart=/home/ec2-user/.nvm/versions/node/v20.11.0/bin/yarn start

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Is there a cleaner way to solve this?

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1 Answer 1

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Answer was provided by user Sienna Dragon on SO. I'm copying their answer below:

It seems that you want your systemd service to have the same environment as when you open a termina. You can achieve this using PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) to load the user's environment. Just add PAMName=login to your .service file. Like this :

[Service]
PAMName=login
Type=simple
ExecStart=/path/to/your/command

This will enables your systemd load envirment using PAM login module.

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