How can I start a remote service using Terraform provisioning?

Question

I want my Terraform config to provision a server and start the service at the end by invoking a command and keep running it. I tried using nohup and screen using remote-exec:

Answer 1

Try adding a sleep after your nohup. Worked for me. I suspect backgrounding your last remote-exec lets Terraform get away with shutting down the connection before the child process has a chance to start up, despite the nohup.

provisioner "remote-exec" {
    inline = [
        "nohup sudo command &",
        "sleep 1"
    ]
}