# How to run Houdini as a Service on Ubuntu 18

**URL:** <https://solero.me/t/how-to-run-houdini-as-a-service-on-ubuntu-18/290>\
**Category:** Tutorials\
**Created:** [March 1, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://solero.me/t/how-to-run-houdini-as-a-service-on-ubuntu-18/290 "2020-03-01T18:49:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![daniel](https://solero.me/user_avatar/solero.me/daniel/32/668_2.png) [@daniel](https://solero.me/u/daniel)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://solero.me/t/how-to-run-houdini-as-a-service-on-ubuntu-18/290/1 "2020-03-01T18:49:48Z")

</div>

Hi!  
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to run Houdini as a Service on Ubuntu 18.

# Why?

Having houdini as a service makes it easier to start, stop, and restart it. It also lets you autostart it when your server starts up.

# Prerequisites & Notes

- You’ve already installed Houdini Legacy on Ubuntu following [the official tutorial](https://solero.github.io/tutorial/legacy/ubuntu).
- You are following the tutorial on a non-root user account with sudo privileges. [Click here to learn how to make one](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-sudo-user-on-ubuntu-quickstart)
- Houdini is accessing the database using a MySQL/MariaDB account _other than root_. To make one, you can enter the MySQL commandline `sudo mysql` and run the following queries:
  - `CREATE USER 'Houdini'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD_HERE';` (Replace PASSWORD\_HERE with a password. You can use [this site](https://randomkeygen.com) to generate a password. Use a “Fort Knox” password and make sure it doesn’t have any `'`s or `;`s.
  - `GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON '*'.'Houdini' TO 'Houdini'@'localhost';`

- In this tutorial, I use `vim` as my text editor. You can use whatever editor you want.
  - Basic tutorial how to use vim:
    - When you open `vim`, press `I` to go into insert mode (contrary to the name, this is the normal mode where you can write stuff, erase stuff, etc like in notepad).
    - To save and exit, press `ESC` then write `:x` and press `Enter`

# The Tutorial

## Installation

1. Create a user account that will run the Houdini service.

- `adduser houdini --disabled-password`

1. Move your Houdini installation to the new account’s home folder.

- `mkdir /home/houdini/h`
- `mv ~/houdini/* /home/houdini/h`

1. Navigate to the new location and make a new folder called `service`, then navigate into it.

- `cd /home/houdini/h`
- `mkdir service`
- `cd service`

1. Make a new script called `start.sh`

- `vim start.sh`

1. and paste the following code into it

```bash
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/h
python Login.py &
python World.py

```

1. If you have more than one server, for example `World.py` and `Marshmallow.py`, add lines to the script above but replace `World.py` with the other filename. Make sure every python line except the last one has a `&` at the end, or else it won’t work. Like this:

```bash
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/h
python Login.py &
python World.py &
python Marshmallow.py

```

1. Save and exit, then make the file executable

- `sudo chmod +x start.sh`

1. Navigate to `/etc/systemd/system` and make a file called `houdini.service`:

- `cd /etc/systemd/system`
- `sudo vim houdini.service`

1. Then paste the following code into it

```auto
[Unit]
Description=Club Penguin AS2 server written in Python.
Wants=mysqld.service
[Service]
User=houdini

WorkingDirectory=/home/houdini/h
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/houdini/h/service/start.sh

Type=simple

```

- Save and exit.

1. Now that we’re done, go back into `cd /home/houdini/h` then run these commands to give it ownership of the files.

- `sudo chown -R houdini:houdini /home/houdini/h`
- `sudo chmod -R u=rw,g=rw,o=rw /home/houdini/h` Optional: Change permissions on the houdini folder so that other users can edit files too. This is so that you can change stuff without having to `sudo su houdini`.

1. Reload the systemctl daemon

- `systemctl daemon-reload`

1. Optionally, enable automatically starting the houdini service when the VPS/server starts

- `systemctl enable houdini.service`

1. Start Houdini to see if it works. `service houdini start`

## Usage

- To start Houdini, run `service houdini start`
- To stop Houdini, run `service houdini stop`
- To restart Houdini, run `service houdini restart`
- To enable automatically starting when the server starts, run `systemctl enable houdini.service`
- To disable automatically starting when the server starts, run `systemctl disable houdini.service`

## The End

If you need help or think I forgot something, PM me on discord at [daniel11420#0069](https://discordapp.com/users/243472272264921088) or reply to this thread. Hope this helps someone. Thanks for reading.