7.8 Timer Units Running as Regular Users

All of the systemd timer units we’ve seen so far have been run as root. It’s also possible to create a timer unit as a regular user. To do this, add the --user option to systemd-run.

However, if you log out before the unit runs, the unit won’t start; and if you log out before the unit completes, the unit terminates. This happens because systemd has a user manager associated with a logged-in user, and this is necessary to run timer units. You can tell systemd to keep the user manager around after you log out with this command:

$ loginctl enable-linger

As root, you can also enable a manager for another user:

# loginctl enable-linger user