Posted on

Setting Up Keycloak as a Systemd Service

Running Keycloak as a systemd service allows you to manage its lifecycle effectively, ensuring that it starts automatically on boot and can be easily started, stopped, or restarted using systemd commands. This guide will show you how to configure Keycloak as a systemd service for both traditional and Docker-based deployments.

1. Prerequisites

Before configuring Keycloak as a systemd service, make sure you have the following:

  • A working Keycloak installation (either standalone or Docker-based).
  • Systemd installed and running on your server (most modern Linux distributions include systemd by default).
  • Root or sudo privileges to manage systemd services.

2. Setting Up Keycloak as a Systemd Service (Traditional Installation)

If you have a standalone Keycloak installation (non-Docker), follow these steps to configure Keycloak as a systemd service:

  1. Navigate to the Keycloak installation directory, where the Keycloak executable resides (e.g., /opt/keycloak).
  2. Create a new systemd service file for Keycloak:
  3. Paste the following configuration into the service file:
  4. Save and close the file (Ctrl + X, Y, Enter).
  5. Reload the systemd configuration to apply the new service:
  6. Enable the Keycloak service to start automatically at boot:
  7. Start the Keycloak service:
  8. Check the status of the Keycloak service to ensure it is running:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/keycloak.service

[Unit]
Description=Keycloak
After=network.target

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/opt/keycloak/bin/standalone.sh -b 0.0.0.0
or
ExecStart=/opt/keycloak/bin/kc.sh start

ExecStop=/opt/keycloak/bin/jboss-cli.sh --connect command=:shutdown
or 

ExecStop=/opt/keycloak/bin/kc.sh stop

Restart=always
LimitNOFILE=1024

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This configuration does the following:

  • ExecStart: Specifies the command to start Keycloak.
  • ExecStop: Specifies the command to stop Keycloak.
  • Restart: Ensures Keycloak restarts automatically if it crashes.
  • LimitNOFILE: Increases the number of open files allowed for Keycloak (useful for production environments).
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable keycloak.service
sudo systemctl start keycloak.service
sudo systemctl status keycloak.service

3. Setting Up Keycloak as a Docker-based Systemd Service

If you’re running Keycloak in Docker, you can still manage it using systemd. Here’s how to set up a systemd service for Docker-based Keycloak:

  1. Create a new systemd service file for Docker-based Keycloak:
  2. Paste the following configuration into the service file:
  3. Save and close the file (Ctrl + X, Y, Enter).
  4. Reload the systemd configuration to apply the new service:
  5. Enable the Docker-based Keycloak service to start automatically at boot:
  6. Start the Keycloak Docker service:
  7. Check the status of the Docker-based Keycloak service:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/keycloak-docker.service

[Unit]
Description=Keycloak Docker Container
After=docker.service
Requires=docker.service

[Service]
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run --rm --name keycloak -p 8080:8080 -e KEYCLOAK_USER=admin -e KEYCLOAK_PASSWORD=admin jboss/keycloak
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop keycloak

[Insta