# Activating Prometheus Service

**URL:** <https://discuss.prometheus.io/t/activating-prometheus-service/511>\
**Category:** General Help/Support\
**Created:** [September 19, 2021, 1:28pm UTC](https://discuss.prometheus.io/t/activating-prometheus-service/511 "2021-09-19T13:28:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dasKENTA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a698b9/32.png) [@dasKENTA](https://discuss.prometheus.io/u/dasKENTA)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2021, 1:28pm UTC](https://discuss.prometheus.io/t/activating-prometheus-service/511/1 "2021-09-19T13:28:34Z")

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Hi everyone,

I am rookie on prometheus and trying to install to VirtualBox installed CentOS8. I see following error when I try to run service. Can someone help me?

Error: `Failed to start prometheus.service. Unit prometheus.service has a bad unit file setting.`

Service file:

```auto
[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/prometheus \
    --config.file /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
    --storage.tsdb.path /var/lib/prometheus/ \
    --web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles \
    --web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SuperQ](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/discuss.prometheus.io/superq/32/4_2.png) [@SuperQ](https://discuss.prometheus.io/u/SuperQ)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2021, 3:02pm UTC](https://discuss.prometheus.io/t/activating-prometheus-service/511/2 "2021-09-19T15:02:29Z")

</div>

Maybe try [Ansible-Prometheus](https://github.com/cloudalchemy/ansible-prometheus).