Mount external disk via curlftps as a service

If I have an external drive I access via FTPS, how can I add a systemctl service to mount it and unmount it and have it mount it upon start-up? I already saw some examples with scripts and crontab but I found them too incoherent and hard to deal with.

Create the directory where you'd like to mount the drive

mkdir /mnt/ftp-drive

Create now the file /etc/systemd/system/external-ftp.service with this content (your systemd/system dir might be in a different location):

[Unit]
Description=Mount FTP Space
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/curlftpfs -o ssl,no_verify_peer,nonempty,user=<user>:<pass> <host> /mnt/ftp-drive/ -f -v
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -u /mnt/ftp-drive

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note the -f option to make curlftps run as daemon. ExecStart and ExecStop need full path of commands, that is, note the full path of curlftps and fusermount. In your case may be different, find the full path with sudo find / -name curlftps -type f.

Now you just start the service

sudo service external-ftp start

if everything is OK, you should be able to access /mnt/ftp-drive and the command sudo service external-ftp status should return OK.

If everything is OK, activate the service to start on boot:

sudo systemctl enable external-ftp