CentOS - Sep 2015 - Help with systemd

Hi

I am trying to get Greenstone3 http://www.greenstone.org/download to work
with systemd.
So far I have come up with the following which works but feels more like a
hack than a solution.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this better ?

# cat /etc/tmpfiles.d/greenstone3.conf
d /run/greenstone3 0755 gs3 gs3 -

# cat /etc/systemd/system/greenstone3.service
# Systemd unit file for Greenstone 3
[Unit]
Description=Greenstone 3 Server
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/greenstone3/greenstone3.pid
Environment=PATH=/usr/apache-ant-1.9.6/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin

ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c "cd /greenstone/gs3/ && ant start ;
/usr/sbin/pidof java | awk '{print $1}' >
/run/greenstone3/greenstone3.pid"

SuccessExitStatus=143
User=gs3
Group=gs3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target


Thanks

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 09:36:59AM +1200, Clint Dilks
wrote:
> # cat /etc/systemd/system/greenstone3.service
> # Systemd unit file for Greenstone 3
> [Unit]
> Description=Greenstone 3 Server
> After=syslog.target network.target
> 
> [Service]
> Type=forking
> PIDFile=/run/greenstone3/greenstone3.pid
>
Environment=PATH=/usr/apache-ant-1.9.6/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin
> 
> ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -c "cd /greenstone/gs3/ && ant start ;
> /usr/sbin/pidof java | awk '{print $1}' >
/run/greenstone3/greenstone3.pid"
2 Comments here:

1.) why 'cd /greenstone/gs3 && ant start' when you could just
run
'/greenstone/gs3/ant start'.  
2.) You're going through a lot of effort to generate a pidfile, when
it's completely unnecesary for systemd services.

You could probably replace the ExecStart with:

ExecStart=/greenstone/gs3/ant start

... and get rid of the PIDFile.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

On 9/23/2015 2:58 PM, Jonathan Billings wrote:
> 1.) why 'cd /greenstone/gs3 && ant start' when you could
just run
> '/greenstone/gs3/ant start'.
thats *not* equivalent, unless ant is in /greenstone/gs3 *and* . is in 
the path, and even then,  ant looks for build.xml in the current path 
when its invoked, so the cd /path/to/build/  is appropriate.



-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the feedback


2.) You're going through a lot of effort to generate a pidfile,
when
> it's completely unnecesary for systemd services.
>
> I tried not using a pidfile initially and this that case things would
start up and run correctly for a short period but then systemd would put
the service into a failed state and kill it off.
Based on the documentation below I believe that systemd was "guessing"
the
Main PID wrong, and so thought the service was dead and killing off all
child processes.
"GuessMainPID
Takes a boolean value that specifies whether systemd should try to guess
the main PID of a service if it cannot be determined reliably. This option
is ignored unless Type=forking is set and PIDFile= is unset because for the
other types or with an explicitly configured PID file, the main PID is
always known. The guessing algorithm might come to incorrect conclusions if
a daemon consists of more than one process. If the main PID cannot be
determined, failure detection and automatic restarting of a service will
not work reliably. Defaults to yes"