systemctl template units not enabled per docs

[Edward Gow]

Report is for
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release: 16.04

Package data is
Package: systemd
Architecture: amd64
Version: 229-4ubuntu21.10
Multi-Arch: foreign

No log file is applicable

The problem is that systemctl enable does not perform according to documentation in enabling template unit files.

If a template unit file exists

  /full_path_to/tmpl@.service

and you try to enable it with systemctl per the docs

  sudo systemctl enable /<email address hidden>
or
  systemctl --user enable /<email address hidden>

you get the error

  Failed to execute operation: No such file or directory

What should happen is that systemctl fails to find /<email address hidden> so it then tries the template name /full_path_to/tmpl@.service, finds it, and creates a symlink to that template file.

[Edward Gow (elgow)]

This is related to https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/661

[Dan Streetman (ddstreet)]

please reopen if this is still an issue