Create and manage services in Termux (Linux-based Android Terminal)

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

Today, I will show you how to create and manage services in termux.

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.”

First, To use Termux services, you need to install the service package.

pkg install termux-services

then restart termux so that the service daemon is started.

Now let's create a service,

I am going to 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 as the application name. In my case that is gogs .

mkdir $PREFIX/var/service/gogs

then link the 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

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>