Running airflow within a conda environment and with systemd fails to launch

Question

I would like to install airflow via conda and use systemd to control airflow on Ubuntu. I've been able to successfully install airflow into a conda environment with the following steps, but I have not been able to correctly configure systemd to work with airflow.

Details:

Ubuntu 18.04
Python 3.7.4
Airflow 1.10.4

I've seen SO #52310217, but the question remains unresolved.

Here are the steps that I've taken to install and run airflow from the command line:

$ conda create --name airflow -c conda-forge airflow
$ conda activate airflow
$ export AIRFLOW_HOME=~/airflow
$ airflow initdb

$ airflow scheduler
$ airflow webserver

From here, I've created the following files in /etc/systemd/system/:

# /etc/systemd/system/airflow-scheduler.service
[Unit]
Description=Airflow scheduler daemon
After=network.target postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service
Wants=postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service

[Service]
Environment="PATH=/home/ubuntu/python/envs/airflow/bin"
User=airflow
Group=airflow
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin/airflow scheduler
Restart=always
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# /etc/systemd/system/airflow-webserver.service
[Unit]
Description=Airflow webserver daemon
After=network.target postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service
Wants=postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service

[Service]
Environment="PATH=/home/ubuntu/python/envs/airflow/bin"
User=airflow
Group=airflow
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin/airflow webserver -p 8085 --pid /home/curtis/airflow/airflow-webserver.pid
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

After creating the above files, I issued the following commands, but nothing happened.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable airflow-scheduler
sudo systemctl start airflow-scheduler
sudo systemctl enable airflow-webserver
sudo systemctl start airflow-webserver

If I enter the ExecStart command directly in the terminal window, airflow scheduler and airflow webserver start as expected. For this reason, I don't think it's a problem with airflow, but rather something that I'm missing from the systemd configuration.

I'm not sure what to take away from this, but here is the status of airflow-scheduler and airflow-webserver.

[curtis:~/airflow/logs/scheduler] [airflow] 4 $ sudo systemctl status airflow-scheduler
● airflow-scheduler.service - Airflow scheduler daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/airflow-scheduler.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2019-08-19 22:36:35 PDT; 3s ago
  Process: 5623 ExecStart=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin/airflow scheduler (code=exited, status=217/USER)
 Main PID: 5623 (code=exited, status=217/USER)

[curtis:~/airflow/logs/scheduler] [airflow] 3 $ sudo systemctl status airflow-webserver
● airflow-webserver.service - Airflow webserver daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/airflow-webserver.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2019-08-19 22:36:46 PDT; 895ms ago
  Process: 5805 ExecStart=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin/airflow webserver -p 8085 --pid /home/curtis/airflow/airflow-webserver
 Main PID: 5805 (code=exited, status=217/USER)

CurtLH CurtLH · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-23T05:25:05

I figured out the issue and wanted to post this here for anyone else that comes across this same issue.

The User should be your current username, or the username in which Airflow is installed. In my case that was "curtis"
The Group should be your current group, or the group of the user in which Airflow is installed. In my case that was "curtis"
The Environment is the path to your conda environment. In my case, that was PATH=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin

I've included my corrected systemd files for your reference.

# /etc/systemd/system/airflow-scheduler.service
[Unit]
Description=Airflow scheduler daemon
After=network.target postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service
Wants=postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service

[Service]
Environment="PATH=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin"
User=curtis
Group=curtis
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin/airflow scheduler
Restart=always
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# /etc/systemd/system/airflow-webserver.service
[Unit]
Description=Airflow webserver daemon
After=network.target postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service
Wants=postgresql.service mysql.service redis.service rabbitmq-server.service

[Service]
Environment="PATH=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin"
User=curtis
Group=curtis
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/curtis/miniconda3/envs/airflow/bin/airflow webserver -p 8085 --pid /home/curtis/airflow/airflow-webserver.pid
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Running airflow within a conda environment and with systemd fails to launch

1 Answers