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Here is how to set up a website to auto-launch and restart on failure on Ubuntu using systemd. I’m using a simple site written in Go and compiled into an executable called gosite – I got sample Go code from Jeffrey Bolle’s page.

Simple golang website code

package main

import(
    "net/http"
    "log"
    "os"
)

const resp = `Simple Web App
Hello World!`

func handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    w.Write([]byte(resp))
}

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", handler)
    err := http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)

    if err != nil {
        log.Println(err)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
}

Setting up systemd

Once the code is ready and tested, lets move on to setting up systemd.

Create and open a file in the /lib/systemd/system folder:

 vim /lib/systemd/system/gosite.service

Edit the file with your parameters to match the contents below:

[Unit]
Description=A simple go website
ConditionPathExists=/home/user/bin/gosite

[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
ExecStart=/home/user/bin/gosite

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the service using systemctl:

root@hostname:/home/user# systemctl enable gosite.service
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/gosite.service to /lib/systemd/system/gosite.service.

Start the service:

service gosite start

Observe the service is running:

root@hostname:/home/user# ps aux | grep gosite
root 27413 0.0 0.2 827776 5012 ? Ssl 15:50 0:00 /home/user/bin/gosite