Triggering regular tasks with Systemd
You might want to use your Linux system to automatically create a backup every evening and rotate the log files at regular intervals. In most distributions, time-controlled tasks are handled by the Cron daemon. But Systemd is an interesting alternative to Cron. Systemd controls the startup process of most distributions, and it can also trigger time-controlled and recurring tasks.
Service Providers
The first task is to tell Systemd which task to perform. To do this, you create a configuration file, the Service Unit. Listing 1 shows an example.
A service unit is a text file divided into several sections. The [Service] section is required. ExecStart= is followed by the command to be executed by the system. In Listing 1, Systemd would simply run a script that backs up the system to the /mnt directory. The [Unit] section adds some metadata. In the simplest case, Description= is followed by a description of the task.
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