Q100566: Creating a Flix service in Red Hat/CentOS 7 or Rocky 9

Ivo

Updated: September 30, 2026 22:44

Created: March 05, 2020 01:42

SUMMARY

This article describes how to set up a Flix service to start with the system.

MORE INFORMATION

If you are not using network-attached storage for Flix, you can skip the first step.

1. Find the service name responsible for mounting the volume where the flix_server executable lives and/or the Flix asset directory resides. You can do that by running the following command:

systemctl | grep mounted

It will print a list of mounted volumes and how the system calls them. You will need to find the one where the flix_server executable lives and/or the asset directory resides. Take note of the service name/s, as you will need it in step 3. For example:

systemctl | grep mounted
mnt-foundry.mount              loaded active mounted   /mnt/foundry

The mounted directory is /mnt/foundry and mnt-foundry.mount is the service name.

2. Create a file called flix_server.service and place it under /etc/systemd/system/
3. Add the following lines to the file you just created:

[Unit]
Description=Flix-Service
After=FLIXMOUNTSERVICE.mount

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/PATH/TO/flix_server

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Where FLIXMOUNTSERVICE is the service you looked up in Step 1. If you don’t use network-attached storage for the Flix software or assets, you can skip this line.

You can run the flix_server with different CLI options. For example, if you have a config file that doesn't live in the flix_server directory, you can specify it by changing the flix_server line to look like this:

ExecStart=/PATH/TO/flix_server -config-file /PATH/TO/config.yml

Since Flix 6.3.0, a prompt will appear upon starting the Flix Server, asking whether or not you would like to migrate assets. To bypass this, we strongly recommend adding the -skip-migration flag to your service file.

To get the full list of CLI arguments, you can run:

./flix_server --help

After you have created the flix_server.service file, run the following command:

systemctl enable flix_server

Then you can restart the machine to make sure the flix_server starts automatically after the reboot. 

TROUBLESHOOTING

In some instances, the service might start successfully, but eventually time out. You can try to replace the following line:

Type=forking

with

Type=simple

If you run the MySQL server on the same system, please make sure the Flix service is waiting for it to start by adding the following line

After=mysqld.service

FURTHER READING

If you have a problem with your Flix service, please open a Foundry Support ticket, send us your service file, and any errors you see during the system startup in the /var/log/messages.

You can read about our recommended Flix setup in the Q100593: Optimum Flix servers setup article.
For information on how to open a support ticket, please refer to the Q100064: How to raise a support ticket article.