Running Project Zomboid Server as a systemd Service

Project Zomboid Server as a systemd Service

Running the server as a systemd service gives you automatic startup on boot, crash recovery, and clean log management.

Prerequisites

Create a dedicated user for the server (recommended):

sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash pzserver
sudo su - pzserver

Install SteamCMD and the server files as this user to /home/pzserver/pz/.

Unit File

Create /etc/systemd/system/pzserver.service:

[Unit]
Description=Project Zomboid Dedicated Server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=pzserver
Group=pzserver
WorkingDirectory=/home/pzserver/pz
ExecStart=/home/pzserver/pz/start-server.sh -servername servertest
ExecStop=/bin/kill -s SIGTERM $MAINPID
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal
SyslogIdentifier=pzserver

# Give the process time to save the world on shutdown
TimeoutStopSec=120

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enabling and Starting

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable pzserver
sudo systemctl start pzserver
sudo systemctl status pzserver

Viewing Logs

# Live log stream
sudo journalctl -u pzserver -f

# Last 100 lines
sudo journalctl -u pzserver -n 100

# Logs since last boot
sudo journalctl -u pzserver -b

Managing the Service

sudo systemctl stop pzserver        # Graceful stop (waits up to 120s for world save)
sudo systemctl restart pzserver     # Stop and start
sudo systemctl status pzserver      # Current state and recent log lines

Automatic Updates

To update the server before each start, use a wrapper script instead of calling start-server.sh directly:

# /home/pzserver/start-pz-with-update.sh
#!/bin/bash
/home/pzserver/steamcmd/steamcmd.sh \
  +force_install_dir /home/pzserver/pz \
  +login anonymous \
  +app_update 380870 \
  +quit

exec /home/pzserver/pz/start-server.sh -servername servertest

chmod +x /home/pzserver/start-pz-with-update.sh

Then update the unit file's ExecStart to point to this wrapper script.

Save-on-Shutdown

The SIGTERM stop command and TimeoutStopSec=120 give the server up to 2 minutes to finish saving the world before systemd force-kills it. Project Zomboid saves the world before shutting down cleanly, so this window is usually sufficient.