After=
dependency is only effective when service including After=
and service included by After=
are both scheduled to start as part of your boot up.
Ex:
a.service
[Unit]
After=b.service
This way, if both a.service
and b.service
are enabled, then systemd will order b.service
after a.service
.
If I am not misunderstanding, what you are asking is how to start b.service
when a.service
starts even though b.service
is not enabled.
The directive for this is Wants=
or Requires=
under [Unit]
.
website.service
[Unit]
Wants=mongodb.service
After=mongodb.service
The difference between Wants=
and Requires=
is that with Requires=
, a failure to start b.service
will cause the startup of a.service
to fail, whereas with Wants=
, a.service
will start even if b.service
fails. This is explained in detail on the man page of .unit
.