How to Enable /etc/rc.local with Systemd

The solution

As you can see from above, The unit file have no [Install] section. As such Systemd can not enable it. First we need to create a file:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service

Then add the following content to it.

[Unit]
 Description=/etc/rc.local Compatibility
 ConditionPathExists=/etc/rc.local

[Service]
 Type=forking
 ExecStart=/etc/rc.local start
 TimeoutSec=0
 StandardOutput=tty
 RemainAfterExit=yes
 SysVStartPriority=99

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and close the file. To save a file in Nano text editor, press Ctrl+O, then press Enter to confirm. To exit the file, Press Ctrl+X.  Next, run the following command to make sure /etc/rc.local file is executable.

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local

Note: Starting with 16.10, Ubuntu doesn’t ship with /etc/rc.local file anymore. You can create the file by executing this command.

printf '%s\n' '#!/bin/bash' 'exit 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/rc.local

Then add execute permission to /etc/rc.local file.

sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.local

After that, enable the service on system boot:

sudo systemctl enable rc-local

Output:

Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/rc-local.service to /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service.

Now start the service and check its status:

sudo systemctl start rc-local.service
sudo systemctl status rc-local.service