Startup of program run as a service fails

Question

At boot time I want to start the Pidgin Instant Messenger on a system running Bodhi Linux 5.1.0.

On boot, the user is automatically logged in.

It works fine when I start it manually from the GUI.

When I hit /usr/bin/pidgin from a terminal window, it also starts.

With nano I created and saved:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/pidgin.service

Contents:

Description=Pidgin Instant Messenger

Wants=network.target
After=syslog.target network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/pidgin
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
KillMode=process

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I reloaded all services, enabled, and started the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable pidgin
sudo systemctl start pidgin

This shows it as enabled:

sudo systemctl list-unit-files --type=service

But...:

sudo systemctl status pidgin.service

...shows in red:

Process: 3915 ExecStart=/usr/bin/pidgin (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 3915 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

What did I wrong?

Answer 1

After some digging through the menus, I found the solution there - no fiddling in terminal mode necessary.

FWIW, for those who use Bodhi Linux with the Moksha desktop:

Menu, Settings, Settings Panel
Apps, Startup Applications, Applications
CLICK Pidgin Internet Messenger
+ Add
Apply, Close
CLOSE Settings Panel

Restart the PC to test if it works.

Obviously, any other GUI application can be started this way when the system (re)boots.