systemd on Ubuntu 16.04 has wrong WorkingDirectory

[gavbaa]

With current master, upon installing the service, I get a config file like the following:

[Unit]
Description=xxx
ConditionFileIsExecutable=/var/www/xxx/xxx

[Service]
StartLimitInterval=5
StartLimitBurst=10
ExecStart=/var/www/xxx/xxx
RootDirectory="/var/www/xxx"
WorkingDirectory="/var/www/xxx"



Restart=always
RestartSec=120

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

However, the application gets a working directory of / . syslog from the install shows:

Jun  3 20:59:18 xxx systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jun  3 20:59:18 xxx systemd[1]: [/etc/systemd/system/xxx.service:9] Not an absolute path, ignoring: "/var/www/xxx"
Jun  3 20:59:18 traininglocker systemd[1]: [/etc/systemd/system/xxx.service:10] Working directory path '"/var/www/xxx"' is not absolute, ignoring.
Jun  3 20:59:18 xxx systemd[1]: apt-daily.timer: Adding 10h 2min 11.830881s random time.
Jun  3 20:59:18 xxx systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jun  3 20:59:18 xxx systemd[1]: [/etc/systemd/system/xxx.service:9] Not an absolute path, ignoring: "/var/www/xxx"
Jun  3 20:59:18 xxx systemd[1]: [/etc/systemd/system/xxx.service:10] Working directory path '"/var/www/xxx"' is not absolute, ignoring.

When I removed the quotes around the WorkingDirectory item (but not RootDirectory), and ran systemctl daemon-reload, the service started as expected, with the correct working directory.

As a side note, if I removed quotes from the RootDirectory item, the service wouldn't start, it complained about the application name.

[corneldamian]

Had the same problem and i didn't had RootDirectory. Without RootDirectory i had the same problem with the working dir, even if i've removed the "

[kardianos]

Thanks for the report. I need to look into systemd unit files more, again.

[tsharma14]

Hi,
Can you please let me know the progress on this bug, as I am facing the same issue. I am setting some value in working directory alone but it is not reflecting. Can you please share the alternative way to set the PWD value in systemd service file.

Thanks

[kardianos]

I have not yet looked into this. Thanks for the ping. I'll research this later this week hopefully.

[tsharma14]

Can you please provide some alternative approach for this. As my service is not running properly due to this. I need to change the current working directory to some other dir in service file. which will enable my server to pick the correct path using PWD.

[dach384]

Any update on this?

[corford]

I don't know for RootDirectory but WorkingDirectory doesn't support double quotes (at least with the version of systemd that's present on Ubuntu 16.04). The solution is to escape the path with systemd-escape --path and prepend a leading '/' to the result.

WorkingDirectory="/var/path with spaces in it/bin" [ DOES NOT work ]

WorkingDirectory=/var-path\x20with\x20spaces\x20in\x20it-bin [ DOES work ]

More info here:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-escape.html
https://serverfault.com/a/792831/173055
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/242028