Ditch Manual Starts: Automate Docker-Compose with Systemd

Intro

I finally got tired of having to SSH into one of my service virtual machines to start the Docker-Compose file after every reboot. This frustration led me down a rabbit hole of researching the best methods to automate this. Along the way, I discovered a lot controversy over the best method to launch and manage services at system initialization.. A lot of developers seem to have issue with `systemd` over other methods, and even if you should use a task scheduler like `cron` or not. While I don't have an answer to settle that debate for you, I can share what ended up working for me.

Background

I ventured down this path because I've been developing an open-source artifact gathering tool and I needed to automate more of my services to help testing. I've found a ton of uses for redcloud, modified Portainer instance for red teaming. It allows easily spinning up redteam tools in a container. I found this useful because I have been frequently restarting hosts in my homelab while testing my artifact tool.

Creating the Systemd Service File

To automate the startup of my Docker-Compose services, I created a systemd service file. Here’s how I did it:

1. Create the service file:

   sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/redcloud.service

2. Contents of the service file:

   [Unit]
   Description=Redcloud Docker Compose Service
   Requires=docker.service
   After=docker.service
   BindsTo=docker.service
   ReloadPropagatedFrom=docker.service
   
   [Service]
   Type=oneshot
   RemainAfterExit=yes
   ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "docker-compose -f /path/to/compose/redcloud/redteam-compose.yml up -d --build"
   ExecStop=/bin/bash -c "docker-compose -f /path/to/compose/redcloud/redteam-compose.yml down"
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   RequiredBy=network.target
   Also=docker.service

   I won't claim this is the best way to do it, and I welcome any recommendations. However, this configuration worked for me quickly after a couple of other attempts.

Enabling and Testing the Service

Here we enable the service and then just quickly test it worked.

1. Reload the systemd daemon:

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload

2. Start the service:

   sudo systemctl start redcloud

3. Check the service status:

   sudo systemctl status redcloud

4. Reboot host:

   sudo reboot

5. Confirm the service ran and container is running:

   sudo systemctl status redcloud
   sudo docker ps

Conclusion

That's it! Setting up the service was pretty straightforward. While there may be different or better ways to automate Docker-Compose startups, this method worked reliably for my needs. If you have any suggestions or improvements, I'd love to hear them!