> It will be run according to the status of the rc-local service - i.e. what does > systemctl status rc-local > say. It's enabled by default, but it only runs if rc.local is executable (as defined in the [Unit] section). When booted with /etc/rc.d/rc.local being not executable, it says: ● rc-local.service - /etc/rc.d/rc.local Compatibility Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service; static; vendor preset: disabled) Active: inactive (dead) After making it executable: ● rc-local.service - /etc/rc.d/rc.local Compatibility Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service; static; vendor preset: disabled) Active: active (exited) since Sun 2017-03-12 11:08:47 EDT; 10s ago Process: 1012 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/rc.local start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Mar 12 11:08:47 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting /etc/rc.d/rc.local Compatibility... Mar 12 11:08:47 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started /etc/rc.d/rc.local Compatibility. But I dug into it more, and it revealed that systemd introduces the concept of generators: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.generator.html Which are run early in the boot process (before unit files are processed). And their purpose is to dynamically generate dependencies. Particularly, rc-local-generator dynamically makes rc-local service a dependency of multi-user.target if /etc/rc.d/rc.local is executable: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/v233/src/rc-local-generator/rc-local-generator.c#L89 Regards, Yuri