Homebrew: How to Make a Service Auto-Start on System Boot

Introduction

Homebrew, also referred to as ‘brew’, is a powerful package manager for macOS and Linux systems that simplifies the process of installing, updating, and managing software. Despite its ease of use for handling software packages, managing system services and making them run on startup might not be immediately clear. Understanding how to control these services is fundamental for system administrators, developers, and even power users who want to ensure certain applications always start when their system boots.

In this tutorial, we’ll dive into how to use Homebrew to make a service auto-start on system boot, an essential task for maintaining background applications and services for your workflows on macOS and Linux.

Prerequisites

• macOS or Linux operating system
• Homebrew installed
• Basic familiarity with using terminal or command line

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Installing a Service with Homebrew

Before making a service auto-start, you should first ensure that the service is actually installed. In Homebrew, this is often done with the brew install command.

$ brew install [service-name]

For example, to install the MariaDB database server, you would run:

$ brew install mariadb

Step 2: Understanding Homebrew Services

Homebrew provides a command brew services to manage services. This command reveals running services, allows starting and stopping services, and configures them to start on boot.

Step 3: Starting a Service with Homebrew

To start a service with Homebrew, run:

$ brew services start [service-name]

Starting the MariaDB service from our earlier example would look like this:

$ brew services start mariadb

Step 4: Setting a Service to Auto-Start on Boot

To configure a service to start automatically on boot is easy. The command you used to start the service does this by default. When executed, the service is set up to start on boot using the proper system daemon manager (like systemd or launchctl).

If you need to verify that a service is set to auto-start, you can inspect the list of Homebrew services:

$ brew services list

This command will reveal a table of services, their status, user, and whether they are started on boot (marked as ‘started’ under the Status column).

Step 5: Customizing Startup Options

Some services require or support passing custom options on startup. To include custom options when a service starts on boot, you’ll need to edit the .plist file associated with the service for macOS, or the .service file for Linux.

Advanced Usage: Creating Custom plists

For macOS, you can create a custom .plist file which can be saved at either ~/Library/LaunchAgents or /Library/LaunchDaemons.

This example demonstrates how to create a basic custom plist file to auto-start a fictional service with additional arguments:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.example.service</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/service</string>
    <string>--option-one</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

After creating this file, make sure to load it:

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.service.plist

For Linux, you would typically manage auto-start services using systemd. Creating custom unit files in /etc/systemd/system/ can grant you more control over the service’s behavior on boot.

This simple systemd service file example auto-starts a network service:

[Unit]
Description=A simple example network service
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 -m http.server
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

And enabling it on boot:

$ sudo systemctl enable example.service

Managing Services

Here are several commands used to manage services:

Managing services is effectively done through these Homebrew commands or by manually editing launch scripts.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Homebrew provides a simple and efficient way to make services auto-start on boot on macOS and Linux systems. With just a few commands or by editing configuration files, you can ensure that essential services are always running and available when you start your system.