diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index e3fa714..a806984 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ Install from the AUR: `paru -S zram-swap-git`
 
 or directly from GitHub:
 
-```bash
+```sh
 mkdir zram-swap-git && cd zram-swap-git
 wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/foundObjects/zram-swap/arch-packaging/PKGBUILD
 makepkg -Cci
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Make any configuration changes to `/etc/default/zram-swap` first if desired, see
 
 *Others:*
 
-```bash
+```sh
 git clone https://github.com/foundObjects/zram-swap.git
 cd zram-swap && sudo ./install.sh
 ```
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ The configuration file is heavily commented and self-documenting.
 A very simple configuration that's expected to use roughly 2GB RAM might look
 something like:
 
-```bash
+```sh
 # override fractional calculations and specify a fixed swap size
 _zram_fixedsize="6G"
 
@@ -74,15 +74,13 @@ lz4.
 
 ### Debugging
 
-Start zram-swap.sh with `zram-swap.sh -x (start|stop)` to view the debug trace
-and determine what's going wrong.
+To view a script debug trace either start zram-swap.sh with `zram-swap.sh -x (start|stop)`
+or uncomment the debug flag in `/etc/default/zram-swap`:
 
-To dump the full execution trace during service start/stop edit
-`/etc/systemd/systemd/zram-swap.service` and add -x to the following two lines:
-
-```
-ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/zram-swap.sh -x start
-ExecStop=/usr/local/sbin/zram-swap.sh -x stop
+```sh
+# setting _zram_swap_debugging to any non-zero value enables debugging
+# default: undefined
+_zram_swap_debugging="beep boop"
 ```
 
 ### Compatibility
diff --git a/service/zram-swap.config b/service/zram-swap.config
index 61e3b7d..0f04624 100644
--- a/service/zram-swap.config
+++ b/service/zram-swap.config
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@ _zram_algorithm="lz4"
 # default: "1/2"
 _zram_fraction="1/2"
 
+# setting _zram_swap_debugging to any non-zero value enables debugging
+# default: undefined
+#_zram_swap_debugging="beep boop"
+
 # expected compression factor; set this by hand if your compression results are
 # drastically different from the estimates below
 #
diff --git a/zram-swap.sh b/zram-swap.sh
index 06543eb..2db30e2 100755
--- a/zram-swap.sh
+++ b/zram-swap.sh
@@ -17,11 +17,16 @@ _zram_fraction="1/2"
 _zram_algorithm="lz4"
 _comp_factor=''
 _zram_fixedsize=''
+_zram_swap_debug=''
 
 # load user config
 [ -f /etc/default/zram-swap ] &&
   . /etc/default/zram-swap
 
+# support a debugging flag in the config file so people don't have to edit the systemd service
+# to enable debugging
+[ -n "$_zram_swap_debug" ] && set -x
+
 # set expected compression ratio based on algorithm -- we'll use this to
 # calculate how much uncompressed swap data we expect to fit into our
 # target ram allocation.  skip if already set in user config