Create and Manage services in Termux

In this post, I will show you how to create and manage services in Termux.

Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment app
that works directly with no rooting or setup required.

Termux uses runit as its init system.

“runit is a cross-platform Unix init scheme with service supervision,
a replacement for sysvinit, and other init schemes.”

pkg install termux-services

Then restart Termux so that the service-daemon is started.

Now let’s create a service,

I am going create a service for gogs (a git service).

All termux services are located at $PREFIX/var/service ($PREFIX=$HOME/../usr).

Create a folder for the service and name it as the application name. In my case that is gogs.

mkdir $PREFIX/var/service/gogs

Then create a symbolic link with termux-logger.

mkdir $PREFIX/var/service/gogs/log

ln -sf $PREFIX/share/termux-services/svlogger $PREFIX/service/gogs/log/run

Now write the service file for the application with the below content,

touch $PREFIX/var/service/gogs/run

# Gogs service for termux
#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/sh
exec gogs web 2>&1

You can get help to write runit service here.

make it executable,

chmod +x $PREFIX/var/service/gogs/run

Now restart Termux and run,

sv up gogs

It will work smoothly.

Here are some useful commands about termux services,

To enable service to start at boot,

sv-enable <service>

To disable from starting at boot,

sv-disable <service>

To start a service,

sv up <service>

To stop a service,

sv down <service>

Bonus Topic: Manage proot(s) in Termux

You can install multiple Linux based distributions using proot-distro ,

Lists supported distributions and their installation status,

proot-distro list

To install a distribution,

proot-distro install <distro name>

To login into a distribution,

proot-distro login <distro name>

Delete a distribution from Termux,

proot-distro remove <distro name>

To reinstall a specified distribution,

proot-distro reset <distro name>

To backup a distribution,

proot-distro backup <distro name>

To restore a distribution from backup,

proot-distro restore <distro name>

This post also published on Medium.