I recently encountered a frustrating issue when trying to start a new systemd service. After adding logging to the service, I discovered that the service was failing to start. Upon further investigation, I realized that the systemd service file needed to specify a user. This was crucial, as the service required specific permissions to access certain files and directories.

Additionally, I implemented log rotation using logrotate to manage the growing log files. This ensured that the logs didn’t consume excessive disk space and allowed for easier analysis.

By addressing these two issues, I was able to successfully start the service and maintain efficient log management.