Service Management¶

Trident ships with service integration for both systemd (Linux) and rc.d (FreeBSD).

systemd (Linux)¶

The systemd unit file is installed automatically by the package or by using --with-service with the install script.

Start Trident¶

sudo systemctl start trident

Stop Trident¶

sudo systemctl stop trident

Enable on Boot¶

sudo systemctl enable trident

Or start and enable in one command:

sudo systemctl enable --now trident

Check Status¶

sudo systemctl status trident

View Logs¶

journalctl -u trident -f

Filter by time:

journalctl -u trident --since "1 hour ago"

Reload Configuration¶

Trident supports graceful configuration reload via SIGHUP:

sudo systemctl reload trident

Unit File Details¶

The default unit file (/lib/systemd/system/trident.service):

[Unit]
Description=Trident HTTP Cache Proxy
Documentation=https://github.com/qoliber/trident
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=trident
Group=trident
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/trident
ExecStart=/usr/bin/trident --config ${TRIDENT_CONFIG}
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

# Security hardening
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
NoNewPrivileges=true
ProtectSystem=strict
ProtectHome=true
ReadWritePaths=/var/lib/trident /var/log/trident
PrivateTmp=true
PrivateDevices=true
ProtectKernelTunables=true
ProtectKernelModules=true
ProtectControlGroups=true

# Resource limits
LimitNOFILE=65535
LimitNPROC=4096

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Key properties:

Runs as trident user — never as root
CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE — allows binding to ports below 1024
Security hardening — filesystem, kernel, and device protections enabled
Auto-restart — restarts on failure after 5 seconds
65535 file descriptors — sufficient for high-concurrency workloads

Environment File¶

The config path is set via /etc/default/trident:

TRIDENT_CONFIG=/etc/trident/config.toml

Edit this file to change the configuration file path or add environment variables.

rc.d (FreeBSD)¶

Enable Trident¶

Add to /etc/rc.conf:

sysrc trident_enable="YES"

Start Trident¶

sudo service trident start

Stop Trident¶

sudo service trident stop

Reload Configuration¶

sudo service trident reload

rc.conf Variables¶

Variable	Default	Description
`trident_enable`	`NO`	Enable the service
`trident_config`	`/usr/local/etc/trident/config.toml`	Config file path
`trident_user`	`trident`	Run-as user
`trident_group`	`trident`	Run-as group
`trident_flags`	(empty)	Additional CLI flags
`trident_pidfile`	`/var/run/trident.pid`	PID file path

Example customization:

sysrc trident_config="/usr/local/etc/trident/mysite.toml"
sysrc trident_flags="--log-level debug"