🎯 Mission Briefing: The Service That Won't Stay Up

After last night's upgrade the queue worker stopped processing jobs. systemd keeps restarting it every few seconds — hundreds of times by now — and it dies every single time. Restarting it again won't help; you need the reason.

Your objective

Find out why worker.service crashes, fix the cause without exposing its secrets, and get it running.

Investigation toolkit

systemctl status worker              # "activating (auto-restart)" = a crash loop
journalctl -u worker -n 20           # What does the worker say before it dies?
systemctl cat worker                 # The unit file: what runs, and as which user?
ls -l /etc/worker/                   # Who owns the config, who may read it?
id worker                            # Which groups is the service user in?

Fix and verify

sudo chown worker /etc/worker/config.yml     # Give the file to the service's user
# (or: sudo chgrp worker … && sudo chmod 640 …)
sudo systemctl restart worker
systemctl status worker

💡 The config holds a password — don't fix this with chmod 644, which would let every user read it. Give access to exactly the user who needs it.