Systemd vboxweb.service mod when needing to start as non-root user

Question

Hi,
Don't know if this will help anyone, but here goes,
I wanted the systemd service unit to run using my local account but to get this to work, I had to do the following:
1. Create a file called vboxweb_mod.conf in /etc/tmpfiles.d with the below inside it (replace <user> <group> with your username and group you want vboxweb started with.)
D /run/vboxweb 0755 <user> <group>
2. Create /etc/systemd/system/vboxweb_mod.service to look like this: (replace <user> <group> with your username and group you want vboxweb started with.)
[Unit]
Description=VirtualBox Web Service
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/vboxweb/vboxweb.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vboxwebsrv --pidfile /run/vboxweb/vboxweb.pid --background
User=<user>
Group=<group>
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
3. Issue command
#systemctl enable vboxweb_mod.service
4. Either reboot or issue command
#systemctl start vboxweb_mod.service
Hope this helps someone out. (I had to do something similar to get sabnzbd running correctly as a systemd service. :-))

Answer 1

Thanks, you helped me. I had gotten hung up on '--user = <vboxuser>' in the ExecStart line, which works for one of my other services, but not this one.