systemd claims to start init.d script but doesn't

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I am trying to start a service set up with an init.d script using systemd. The service starts just fine when I use:

/etc/init.d/myservice start

However when I use:

systemctl start myservice

systemd claims it started it using:

Process: 31502 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/myservice start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

But it did not start.
I used this to add the service to systemd:

chkconfig -add myservice

I have other systems very similarly configured where it is working. I appear to have made some change which creates this problem but have a hard time debugging it because no errors are thrown and systemd claims to have done the right thing.
The only Journal entry created when I run the start command is:

Aug 09 16:41:19 hostname systemd[1]: Started LSB: myservice.

/var/log/messages did not provide any additional information

2

You never said what “service is started” means, so it is impossible to guess anything. The only factual information you provided that whatever process was started by your script exited.

3

The service produces log files and a .sock when it starts. After it ends it removes the .sock.

After

systemctl start myservice

No files are created.

After

/etc/init.d/myservice start

log files and the .sock exist.
If I run

/etc/init.d/myservice stop

The log files persist but the .sock is removed.

The init.d script starts a process which runs asynchronously going forward. Stop contacts the service and tells it to shut down.

Does that answer your question?

4

On 2013-08-09 19:36, ug2215 wrote:
>
> The service produces log files and a .sock when it starts. After it ends
> it removes the .sock.

You will probably have to provide the init script itself, and actual
command sequences.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

5

There are others MySQL instances that are using almost the exact same script and start just fine. Again, no errors are ever throne and executing this script directly with “start” gets things moving properly. Systemctl start does nothing but claims it ran the init script with “start”.

#!/bin/sh
#
# MySQL This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
# the MySQL instance for WEB (001).


### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             mysql-WEB
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:        3 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 2 6
# Short-Description:    MySQL-WEB
# Description:          MySQL-WEB
### END INIT INFO

RETVAL=0

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
# Start daemons.
echo -n "Starting MySQL for WEB (001): "
cd ~mysql-WEB
su - mysql-WEB -c "/usr/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/WEB/my.cnf --socket=/var/lib/mysql/WEB/mysql.sock" &
RETVAL=$?
       $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/mysql-WEB
echo
;;
stop)
# Stop daemons.
echo -n "Shutting down WEB (001): "
cd ~mysql-WEB
mysqladmin --user=shutdownUser --password=STV6DZqwaZ_cLEyi90CVyjqVB1RG7vdTUAm_olU0 --socket /var/lib/mysql/WEB/mysql.sock shutdown
RETVAL=$?
 $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/mysql-WEB
echo
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
RETVAL=$?

;;
*)
echo "Usage: mysql {start|stop|restart}"
exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL

/var/lib/mysql/WEB/ is where the log files show up, it is the data directory specified in my.cnf

6

This sounds like systemd thinks service has finished and runs stop script. Please show full “systemctl status myservice.service” output.

7

Things have progressed somewhat, I can now get starting to work reliably but shutdown does not. No, I don’t know what changed. It seems that for the first run I must use /etc/init.d/ but after that I can use systemctl start.

The init script is below.

If I use

/etc/init.d/WEB stop

the process will stop as apparent by the removal of the .sock and the /var/lock/ file.

systemctl stop WEB

does not stop the process.

#!/bin/sh
#
# MySQL This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
# the MySQL instance for WEB (001).


### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             mysql-WEB
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:        3 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 2 6
# Short-Description:    MySQL-WEB
# Description:          MySQL-WEB
### END INIT INFO

RETVAL=0

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
# Start daemons.
echo -n "Starting MySQL for WEB (001): "
cd ~mysql-WEB
su - mysql-WEB -c "/usr/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/WEB/my.cnf --socket=/var/lib/mysql/WEB/mysql.sock" &
RETVAL=$?
       $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/mysql-WEB
echo
;;
stop)
# Stop daemons.
echo -n "Shutting down WEB (001): "
cd ~mysql-WEB
mysqladmin --user=shutdownUser --password=gvikOrPIIcig2TJz2TEbgr6X5AdD_ZDtpNCaGYrR --socket /var/lib/mysql/WEB/mysql.sock shutdown
RETVAL=$?
 $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/mysql-WEB
echo
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
RETVAL=$?

;;
*)
echo "Usage: mysql {start|stop|restart}"
exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL
8

This output is for an instance that is currently running properly. Confirmed by connecting.

I guess that “Stopped LSB” is when the init script dies. As you can see in the previous post I use “&” because otherwise running systemctl start mysql-WEB would take focus on the shell forever. Should I move the & to systemctl start mysql-WEB and remove it from the init script?

mysql-WEB.service - LSB: MySQL-WEB
          Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/mysql-WEB)
          Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri, 2013-08-09 20:44:24 UTC; 6min ago
         Process: 3220 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/mysql-WEB stop (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
         Process: 3215 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/mysql-WEB start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
          CGroup: name=systemd:/system/mysql-WEB.service

Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing mysql-WEB[3215]: Starting MySQL for WEB (001):
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing systemd[1]: Started LSB: MySQL-WEB.
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing su[3216]: (to mysql-WEB) root on none
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing mysql-WEB[3220]: [80B blob data]
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing mysql-WEB[3220]: error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL serve...)'
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing mysql-WEB[3220]: Check that mysqld is running and that the ...s!
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing systemd[1]: Unit mysql-WEB.service entered failed state
Aug 09 20:44:24 firewall-testing mysql-WEB[3215]: Starting mysqld daemon with databases from...EB
Aug 09 20:44:32 firewall-testing systemd[1]: Stopped LSB: MySQL-WEB.
9

For help with systemd including creating a service file, have a look at my systemd bash helper script here: SysdCmd - systemd Command Help/Config Editor - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

Thank You,

10

On 2013-08-09 21:36, ug2215 wrote:
>
> There are others MySQL instances that are using almost the exact same
> script and start just fine. Again, no errors are ever throne and
> executing this script directly with “start” gets things moving properly.
> Systemctl start does nothing but claims it ran the init script with
> “start”.

I’m unsure if Required-Start and Required-Stop are needed. And provides.
I’m unsure if would really work on systemv.

> /var/lib/mysql/WEB/ is where the log files show up, it is the data
> directory specified in my.cnf

You can also create echo lines to show in the logs.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

11

I’m giving up and building service files.

init.d is dead…

12

This is what I’m off to try:
/etc/systemd/system/mysqld-WEB.service

[Unit]
Description=MySQL-WEB Database
After=sockets.target syslog.target 
Before=httpd.service postfix.service

[Service]
Type=simple
PIDFile=/var/run/mysql-WEB.pid
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/WEB/my.cnf --pid-file=/var/run/mysql-WEB.pid --socket=/var/lib/mysql/WEB/WEB.sock --user=mysql-WEB
ExecStop=mysqladmin --user=shutdownUser --password=gvikOrPIIcig2TJz2TEbgr6X5AdD_ZDtpNCaGYrR --socket /var/lib/mysql/WEB/WEB.sock shutdown
Restart=always
RestartSec=2
TimeoutSec=60

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Also=mysqld-WEB.socket

/etc/systemd/system/mysqld-WEB.socket

[Unit]
Description=MySQL-WEB Database activation socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=/var/lib/mysql/WEB/WEB.sock

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target
13

Please tell me you have downloaded my bash script SysdCmd. It will make such things a lot easier for you. The following terminal command will download and run the file for you:

rm ~/bin/sysdcmd ; wget -nc http://paste.opensuse.org/view/download/95655714 -O ~/bin/sysdcmd ; chmod +x ~/bin/sysdcmd ; sysdcmd

Why would you delay in giving it a try?

Thank You,

14

What you have here is race condition. systemd expects one main process that represents service. Service is running as long as this process is running. In your case you fork “su” and exit immediately. systemd assumes what is left is the main process and declares “su” to be the service. Next su starts mysqld (as background process …) and exits. For systemd it means service has finished and it initiates cleanup.

One workaround is to declare PID file for a service. In this case systemd will wait until PID file appears and take the PID there as main pid. This can be done by adding PIDFile comment to INIT INFO block, like


### BEGIN INIT INFO
...
# PIDFile: /var/run/myservice.pid
...
### END INIT INFO

Of course, your service has to actually use PID file for this to be useful.

15

If you use socket activation you do not really need to statically enable it. It will be started as soon as anyone connects to this socket.

16

To correct myself - for legacy sysvinit service it does not do it by default. From your status output it looks like genuine MySQL configuration issue, unfortunately output is truncated so it is impossible to say what was missing.

17

On 2013-08-10 07:26, arvidjaar wrote:
> What you have here is race condition. systemd expects one main process
> that represents service. Service is running as long as this process is
> running. In your case you fork “su” and exit immediately. systemd
> assumes what is left is the main process and declares “su” to be the
> service. Next su starts mysqld (as background process …) and exits.
> For systemd it means service has finished and it initiates cleanup.

Wow! :-o

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)