Systemd service unit file as user

Question

I'm new to the concept of systemd unit files in Centos 7 but need to start up the MATLAB license manager at boot. MATLAB doesn't offer a specific solution on how to do this, and the following seems to work but asks for a password when typing systemctl start license-manager and systemctl stop license-manager. Is that expected?

Note this does need to run as a specific user and not as root.

Here is my /etc/systemd/system/license-manager.servicefile:

[Unit]
Description=MATLAB FlexLM license manager

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016a/etc/lmstart
ExecStop=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016a/etc/lmdown
KillMode=none
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=90
User=lmlicenseuser

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Answer 1

You can try Crontab

bash$ crontab -e

then add the following line

@reboot /usr/local/MATLAB/R201Xx/etc/lmstart

This should resolve your issue.

Answer 2

Traditionally it is always expected for non-root users to be asked for a password when running commands as other users, yes.

However, because you have specified that it is a dependency of multi-user.target, it should always be started automatically whenever you reboot in future, so you shouldn't need to enter the password in future.

If for some reason you do still need to control it manually in future, you can use sudo and edit /etc/sudoers to allow those two particular commands to be run without a password, using NOPASSWD.