Listen to Podcast of the post

There are many ways to run a python program as a background service on your raspberry pi at startup. We will use the systemd method.

• Create a .service file for your service as below:

 sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/helloworld.service

• Add the below text:

 [Unit]
 Description=Hello World Service
 After=multi-user.target

 [Service]
 Type=idle  
 ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /home/pi/helloworld.py  
 User=pi  

 [Install]  
 WantedBy=multi-user.target 

• Save and exit the nano editor (by pressing Ctrl+X).
• The permission on the unit file needs to be set to 644 :

 sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/helloworld.service

• Reload the system manager configuration by using the following command:

 sudo systemctl daemon-reload

• Start the service using the following command:

 sudo systemctl start helloworld.service

• Stop the service using the following command:

 sudo systemctl stop helloworld.service

• You can enable the service to start at boot as below:

 sudo systemctl enable helloworld.service