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Abdiel Wilson
Abdiel Wilson

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Managing Laravel Queues with systemd (Instead of Supervisor)

#laravel #linux #devops #tutorial

If you’ve ever worked with Laravel queues, you know one thing for sure:

👉 in production, you need something to keep them running.

Without a process manager, your php artisan queue:work will eventually die, and you’ll be stuck restarting it manually.

For a long time, I (like many developers) defaulted to Supervisor for this job. But recently I explored another option: systemd — and honestly, it’s clean, simple, and already built into most Linux distros.

Let’s walk through how you can set up systemd to manage your Laravel queues.

Why systemd?

  • ✅ Already part of most Linux servers (no extra install needed)
  • ✅ Can automatically restart your queue worker if it crashes
  • ✅ Starts queue workers on boot
  • ✅ Built-in logging via journalctl
  • ✅ Fewer moving parts compared to Supervisor

Step 1: Create a systemd service file

We’ll create a service definition for our Laravel queue worker.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/laravel-queue.service
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Paste in the following configuration:

[Unit]
Description=Laravel Queue Worker
After=network.target

[Service]
User=www-data
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /path/to/your/laravel/artisan queue:work --tries=3 --sleep=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
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Explanation:

  • User=www-data → Runs the queue worker under the web server user (change if needed).
  • Restart=always → Ensures the process restarts if it crashes.
  • ExecStart → The actual command that runs your queue worker. Update the path to match your Laravel app.
  • WantedBy=multi-user.target → Ensures it starts with the system at boot.

Step 2: Reload systemd and enable the service

After saving the file, reload systemd so it picks up the new service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable laravel-queue
sudo systemctl start laravel-queue
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Step 3: Manage your queue worker

Now you can use standard systemctl commands:

sudo systemctl status laravel-queue   # Check status
sudo systemctl restart laravel-queue  # Restart worker
sudo systemctl stop laravel-queue     # Stop worker
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And check logs with:

journalctl -u laravel-queue -f
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This will stream logs from your queue worker in real-time.

Step 4: Scale it up (Optional)

If you want multiple workers, you can use systemd templates. For example:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/laravel-queue@.service
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Then you can run:

sudo systemctl start laravel-queue@1
sudo systemctl start laravel-queue@2
sudo systemctl start laravel-queue@3
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Each one runs independently, and you can scale up as needed.

Supervisor vs systemd

Feature Supervisor systemd
Install required ✅ Yes ❌ No (already included)
Auto restart ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
Logging ✅ Yes ✅ Yes (journalctl)
Scaling workers ✅ Easy ✅ Easy with templates
Startup on boot ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
Complexity Higher Lower

If you’re already comfortable with Supervisor, it works great. But if you want fewer dependencies and tighter integration with your OS, systemd is a solid choice.

Conclusion

Laravel queues are essential for background jobs, but keeping them alive in production is just as important.

While Supervisor has been the go-to for years, systemd provides a simpler, more native approach to managing queue workers.

Next time you’re deploying a Laravel app, give systemd a try. You might not look back. 🚀

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