Ok, I took Jóhann's idea and ran with it, trying to preserve as much of the functionality of the sysv init script as I could. It turn out the need to change device permissions is only for people who want to run mythbackend as a real user, not root. I'm not sure if the following is valid, but here it is: [Unit] Description=MythTV backend service After=network.target mysqld.service [Service] Type=forking PIDFile=/var/run/mythbackend.pid EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/mythbackend Environment=MYTHCONFDIR=${MYTHTV_HOME:-/etc/mythtv} Environment=HOME=${MYTHTV_HOME:-/etc/mythtv} Environment=MYTHBACKEND_USER=${MYTHBACKEND_USER:-root} ExecStart=/usr/bin/mythbackend --daemon --user $MYTHBACKEND_USER --logfile /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log --pidfile /var/run/mythbackend.pid [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target Thanks, Richard -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel