Sample /etc/init.d script

_service.md

Sample service script for debianoids

Look at LSB init scripts for more information.

Usage

Copy to /etc/init.d:

# replace "$YOUR_SERVICE_NAME" with your service's name (whenever it's not enough obvious)
cp "service.sh" "/etc/init.d/$YOUR_SERVICE_NAME"
chmod +x /etc/init.d/$YOUR_SERVICE_NAME

Edit the script and replace following tokens:

• <NAME> = $YOUR_SERVICE_NAME
• <DESCRIPTION> = Describe your service here (be concise)
• Feel free to modify the LSB header, I've made default choices you may not agree with
• <COMMAND> = Command to start your server (for example /home/myuser/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd)
• <USER> = Login of the system user the script should be run as (for example myuser)

Start and test your service:

service $YOUR_SERVICE_NAME start
service $YOUR_SERVICE_NAME stop

Install service to be run at boot-time:

update-rc.d $YOUR_SERVICE_NAME defaults

Enjoy

Uninstall

The service can uninstall itself with service $NAME uninstall. Yes, that's very easy, therefore a bit dangerous. But as it's an auto-generated script, you can bring it back very easily. I use it for tests and often install/uninstall, that's why I've put that here.

Don't want it? Remove lines 56-58 of the service's script.

Logs?

Your service will log its output to /var/log/$NAME.log. Don't forget to setup a logrotate :)

I'm noob and/or lazy

Yep, I'm lazy too. But still, I've written a script to automate this :)

wget 'https://raw.github.com/gist/4275302/new-service.sh' && bash new-service.sh

In this script I will download service.sh into a tempfile, replace some tokens, and then show you commands you should run as superuser.

If you feel confident enough with my script, you can sudo the script directly:

wget 'https://raw.github.com/gist/4275302/new-service.sh' && sudo bash new-service.sh

Note: the cool hipsterish curl $URL | bash won't work here, I don't really want to check why.

Demo

Creating the service:

Looking at service files (logs, pid):

Uninstalling service:

new-service.sh

#!/bin/bash

SERVICE_FILE=$(tempfile)

echo "--- Download template ---"
wget -q -O "$SERVICE_FILE" 'https://raw.github.com/gist/4275302/service.sh'
chmod +x "$SERVICE_FILE"
echo ""

echo "--- Customize ---"
echo "I'll now ask you some information to customize script"
echo "Press Ctrl+C anytime to abort."
echo "Empty values are not accepted."
echo ""

prompt_token() {
  local VAL=""
  while [ "$VAL" = "" ]; do
    echo -n "${2:-$1} : "
    read VAL
    if [ "$VAL" = "" ]; then
      echo "Please provide a value"
    fi
  done
  VAL=$(printf '%q' "$VAL")
  eval $1=$VAL
  sed -i "s/<$1>/$(printf '%q' "$VAL")/g" $SERVICE_FILE
}

prompt_token 'NAME'        'Service name'
if [ -f "/etc/init.d/$NAME" ]; then
  echo "Error: service '$NAME' already exists"
  exit 1
fi

prompt_token 'DESCRIPTION' ' Description'
prompt_token 'COMMAND'     '     Command'
prompt_token 'USERNAME'    '        User'
if ! id -u "$USERNAME" &> /dev/null; then
  echo "Error: user '$USERNAME' not found"
  exit 1
fi

echo ""

echo "--- Installation ---"
if [ ! -w /etc/init.d ]; then
  echo "You don't gave me enough permissions to install service myself."
  echo "That's smart, always be really cautious with third-party shell scripts!"
  echo "You should now type those commands as superuser to install and run your service:"
  echo ""
  echo "   mv \"$SERVICE_FILE\" \"/etc/init.d/$NAME\""
  echo "   touch \"/var/log/$NAME.log\" && chown \"$USERNAME\" \"/var/log/$NAME.log\""
  echo "   update-rc.d \"$NAME\" defaults"
  echo "   service \"$NAME\" start"
else
  echo "1. mv \"$SERVICE_FILE\" \"/etc/init.d/$NAME\""
  mv -v "$SERVICE_FILE" "/etc/init.d/$NAME"
  echo "2. touch \"/var/log/$NAME.log\" && chown \"$USERNAME\" \"/var/log/$NAME.log\""
  touch "/var/log/$NAME.log" && chown "$USERNAME" "/var/log/$NAME.log"
  echo "3. update-rc.d \"$NAME\" defaults"
  update-rc.d "$NAME" defaults
  echo "4. service \"$NAME\" start"
  service "$NAME" start
fi

echo ""
echo "---Uninstall instructions ---"
echo "The service can uninstall itself:"
echo "    service \"$NAME\" uninstall"
echo "It will simply run update-rc.d -f \"$NAME\" remove && rm -f \"/etc/init.d/$NAME\""
echo ""
echo "--- Terminated ---"

service.sh

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          <NAME>
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $network $named $time $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $network $named $time $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Description:       <DESCRIPTION>
### END INIT INFO

SCRIPT=<COMMAND>
RUNAS=<USERNAME>

PIDFILE=/var/run/<NAME>.pid
LOGFILE=/var/log/<NAME>.log

start() {
  if [ -f /var/run/$PIDNAME ] && kill -0 $(cat /var/run/$PIDNAME); then
    echo 'Service already running' >&2
    return 1
  fi
  echo 'Starting service…' >&2
  local CMD="$SCRIPT &> \"$LOGFILE\" & echo \$!"
  su -c "$CMD" $RUNAS > "$PIDFILE"
  echo 'Service started' >&2
}

stop() {
  if [ ! -f "$PIDFILE" ] || ! kill -0 $(cat "$PIDFILE"); then
    echo 'Service not running' >&2
    return 1
  fi
  echo 'Stopping service…' >&2
  kill -15 $(cat "$PIDFILE") && rm -f "$PIDFILE"
  echo 'Service stopped' >&2
}

uninstall() {
  echo -n "Are you really sure you want to uninstall this service? That cannot be undone. [yes|No] "
  local SURE
  read SURE
  if [ "$SURE" = "yes" ]; then
    stop
    rm -f "$PIDFILE"
    echo "Notice: log file is not be removed: '$LOGFILE'" >&2
    update-rc.d -f <NAME> remove
    rm -fv "$0"
  fi
}

case "$1" in
  start)
    start
    ;;
  stop)
    stop
    ;;
  uninstall)
    uninstall
    ;;
  retart)
    stop
    start
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|uninstall}"
esac

service.sh line 18 should be:

if [ -f "$PIDFILE" ] && kill -0 $(cat "$PIDFILE"); then

Otherwise if I start my service multiple times, the script won't complain. And afterward if I stop the service, the system will complain about not finding the pid.

Since there's no pull request of gist, please download the updated shell script here:
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/fengye/3265b4463e14a569358e/raw/e6b414e10685d283167031538b06cc996f2e5e02/service.sh

https://gist.github.com/naholyr/4275302#file-service-sh-L61 should be restart

Your wget link is broken... however this one works:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/naholyr/4275302/raw/9df4ef3f4f2c294c9585f11d1c8593b62bdd52d3/new-service.sh

Can we run the same service multiple times from different directory. Ex: myservice & myservice1 have to run same application from different directory... it is possible?
I have tried the same but either it executive same or get the error...
Please let me know the code for this...
Thanks in advance...

I made a better version https://github.com/x13machine/ubuntu-demon-creator

https://gist.github.com/naholyr/4275302#file-service-sh-L18 should be
if [ -f "$PIDFILE" ] && kill -0 $(cat "$PIDFILE"); then

I had a couple issues with the "start" function above on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

1. For one it references a made up variable like @fengye mentioned above. His fix works for me:
   if [ -f "$PIDFILE" ] && kill -0 $(cat "$PIDFILE"); then

2. For me output of the script was going into the pid file and not the log file which prevented it from shutting down and also was dumb. Had to do this.
   su -c "$CMD" $RUNAS > "$LOGFILE"

3. The trickiest issue I ran into was with writing the process id to the file. I think it may be because my script uses xonsh and there's a slight delay starting up. I'm not sure, but I found that I had to use the double ampersand here or the pid written to the file would be wrong.
   local CMD="$SCRIPT &> \"$LOGFILE\" && echo \$! > $PIDFILE"

Here's the whole function for convenience:

`start() {
  if [ -f "$PIDFILE" ] && kill -0 $(cat "$PIDFILE"); then
    echo 'Service already running' >&2
    return 1
  fi
  echo 'Starting service…' >&2
  local CMD="$SCRIPT &> \"$LOGFILE\" && echo \$! > $PIDFILE"
  su -c "$CMD" $RUNAS > "$LOGFILE"
  echo 'Service started' >&2
}

Congrats for your code!! To you and all involved on comments!
Was very helpful for my project!

Your $PIDNAME variable is also undefined???

kinda retartet

You meant "retarded" I guess. But this kind of comments usually goes with the awful writing too, no surprise ;)

Well it's been 5 years old now, and I think it's totally obsolete since systemd is the new thing (which has been a year or two now). I understand your disappointment if you did not consider this. For your future explorations, please remember to check the publication date of what you're reading, it may help you not being so disappointed that you need to compulsively add such comment.

It was a joke and it was based on a couple of things:

1. Your typo in line 61, which literally says "retart".
2. There are also incorrect variables usage (PIDFILE vs PIDNAME).
3. There is no status functionality.
4. Many people commented on all those issues, but you decided to do nothing.

All in all - this is a really bad example of SysV Init script. I hope i made myself clear and sorry if this offended you.

@deseven you are retarded

@nitzanav ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Failed to stop testservice.service: Unit testservice.service not loaded.

can someone suggest what this error for.
I took service.sh file and copied into /etc/init.d/testservice
i edited the to testservice in service.sh

Hey guys, hey guys, did you see there was a typo ?????? retart ok ? hein ? ok ? did you see that ?

@deseven do you have a better script template? please share if you do..

@johnyserpa this one looks fine for me.

For running smth in the background (like runing a nohup java -jar ... commandyou'll have to add the usual & at the end of the actual command run which is su -c "$CMD" $RUNAS > "$PIDFILE". It is useless and certainly not work to add the & at the end of the SCRIPT variable.