Get command return in systemd service file as in Shell script

Times change and so do best practices.

The current best way to do this is to run systemctl edit myservice, which will create an override file for you or let you edit an existing one.

In normal installations this will create a directory /etc/systemd/system/myservice.service.d, and inside that directory create a file whose name ends in .conf (typically, override.conf), and in this file you can add to or override any part of the unit shipped by the distribution.

For instance, in a file /etc/systemd/system/myservice.service.d/myenv.conf:

[Service]
Environment="SECRET=pGNqduRFkB4K9C2vijOmUDa2kPtUhArN"
Environment="ANOTHER_SECRET=JP8YLOc2bsNlrGuD6LVTq7L36obpjzxd"

Also note that if the directory exists and is empty, your service will be disabled! If you don't intend to put something in the directory, ensure that it does not exist.

For reference, the old way was:

The recommended way to do this is to create a file /etc/sysconfig/myservice which contains your variables, and then load them with EnvironmentFile.

For complete details, see Fedora's documentation on how to write a systemd script.

The systemd ExecStart option doesn't do any shell interpolation and thus doesn't understand stuff like $(echo 'Hello'). But, you can start a shell that executes the command to get behavior like this. Try something like:

ExecStartPost=/bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/etcdctl set /services/myServiceName '{ \"host\": \"%H\", \"port\": '$(echo $(/usr/bin/docker port my-container-name 5555) | cut -d':' -f2)'}'"