7.3.1 Linux

There are many Linux distributions, and historically, many of them had their own way of starting programs at boot time. Today, a number of major Linux distributions have chosen to use systemd as their init system. Tinc ships with systemd service files that allow you to start and stop tinc using systemd. There are two service files: tinc.service is used to globally enable or disable all tinc daemons managed by systemd, and tinc@netname.service is used to enable or disable specific tinc daemons. So if one has created a tinc network with netname foo, then you have to run the following two commands to ensure it is started at boot time:

systemctl enable tinc
systemctl enable tinc@foo

To start the tinc daemon immediately if it wasn’t already running, use the following command:

systemctl start tinc@foo

You can also use ‘systemctl start tinc’, this will start all tinc daemons that are enabled. You can stop and disable tinc networks in the same way.

If your system is not using systemd, then you have to look up your distribution’s way of starting tinc at boot time.