Installing Boundary under Systemd
This section covers how to install Boundary under the systemd init system on modern Linux distributions. In this section, we'll cover an example of breaking out the controller and worker servers onto separate instances, though you can opt to run both on a single server.
Filesystem Configuration
TYPE below can be either worker or controller if you want to run them independently, e.g. for high availability. If you want to run combined nodes, modify as desired.
/etc/boundary-${TYPE}.hcl: Configuration file for the boundary service./usr/local/bin/boundary: The Boundary binary, which can be built from the source or downloaded from our release page./etc/systemd/system/boundary-${TYPE}.service: Systemd unit file for the Boundary service.
User & Group Configuration
We recommend running Boundary as a non-root user and using this user to manage the Boundary process running under systemd. The example init files here do exactly that. Our example install script below creates a user and group on Ubuntu or Debian-like systems.
Systemd Unit file
[Unit]Description=${NAME} ${TYPE} [Service]ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/${NAME} server -config /etc/${NAME}-${TYPE}.hclUser=boundaryGroup=boundaryLimitMEMLOCK=infinityCapabilities=CAP_IPC_LOCK+epCapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_SYSLOG CAP_IPC_LOCK [Install]WantedBy=multi-user.targetSystemd All-in-One Installation Script
Here's a simple install script that creates the boundary group and user, installs the
systemd unit file, and enables it at startup:
#!/bin/bash# Installs the boundary as a service for systemd on linux# Usage: ./install.sh <worker|controller> TYPE=$1NAME=boundary sudo cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/${NAME}-${TYPE}.service[Unit]Description=${NAME} ${TYPE} [Service]ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/${NAME} server -config /etc/${NAME}-${TYPE}.hclUser=boundaryGroup=boundaryLimitMEMLOCK=infinityCapabilities=CAP_IPC_LOCK+epCapabilityBoundingSet=CAP_SYSLOG CAP_IPC_LOCK [Install]WantedBy=multi-user.targetEOF # Add the boundary system user and group to ensure we have a no-login# user capable of owning and running Boundarysudo adduser --system --group boundary || truesudo chown boundary:boundary /etc/${NAME}-${TYPE}.hclsudo chown boundary:boundary /usr/local/bin/boundary # Make sure to initialize the DB before starting the service. This will result in# a database already initialized warning if another controller or worker has done this# already, making it a lazy, best effort initializationif [ "${TYPE}" = "controller" ]; then sudo /usr/local/bin/boundary database init -config /etc/${NAME}-${TYPE}.hcl || truefi sudo chmod 664 /etc/systemd/system/${NAME}-${TYPE}.servicesudo systemctl daemon-reloadsudo systemctl enable ${NAME}-${TYPE}sudo systemctl start ${NAME}-${TYPE}