Run a script inside screen using systemd inside LXC container

[moi3879]

Hello everyone,

I'm pretty new at proxmox and I'm trying to setup a video game server inside an LXC container.

My goal is to build a server that run at startup, auto-save every week, and end when stopping the machine. That's why I looked after systemd.
I use screen because it seems simple to me to attach and detach screens.

So I have a "bootserver" service :

[Unit]
Description=boot server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
RemainAfterExit=yes
TimeoutStartSec=90

ExecStart=/usr/bin/screen -DmS mcserver server/bootserv.sh

ExecStop=/usr/bin/screen -p 0 -S mcserver -X stuff "stop\015"
ExecStop=/bin/sleep 20

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

When y run systemctl start bootserver, the service start and exit but there's no screen session using screen -ls
I've got this status

● mcserver.service - boot server
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/mcserver.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Thu 2026-05-14 10:55:03 CEST; 1s ago
 Invocation: e81a5ba203af4e2db2b3af7512cb9a40
    Process: 331 ExecStart=/usr/bin/screen -DmS mcserver server/bootserv.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 331 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Mem peak: 1.7M
        CPU: 11ms

mai 14 10:55:03 lxc-deb-mc systemd[1]: Started mcserver.service - boot server.

Note that screen works well when I call it from terminal without using systemd.
Another point is I didn't create any user, so I'm working as root inside the LXC container.

Does someone know how I could run my script inside a screen session launched using systemd services ?
If it's not possible, is there another way to save my lxc server and have a backup on my NAS ?

Thank you all, have a good day/

 

[Impact]

This has little to do with PVE but try to give it the absolute path to the script.

 

[moi3879]

Hello,

Thank you for your answer.
Yes it is not necessary about PVE. It's more about LXC container.

With your help I figured out I was working inside /root directory.
I moved everything inside /home, but I still can't run a screen session using systemd.

Is there another way to periodically save my server using PVE tools (I'm thinking about snapshot and Backup ?) ? Is there a way to have a second save sended to a NAS ?

I'll try to ask the screen question somewhere else.
Thank you

 

[Impact]

Moving the file isn't really what I was suggesting. PVE has Snapshot and Backup functionality. Just use that for your guest.

 

[moi3879]

Hello,

Yeah, I was a bit fast in my previous answer.
In fact my script's full path was /root/server/bootserv.sh

When I used this full path it didn't worked. That's why I moved everything in another folder : /home/mcserver
After troobleshooting I found a mistake in the script's path (mcserv instead of mcserver) and now it works.

Your answer helped me a lot ! Thank you !