CentOS - Mar 2019 - Systemd's [ OK ] in green beginning of line

Hi

I have to (re-)write many bootup scripts to move a bunch of servers from CentOS6
to CentOS7

In sysvinit the "echo_success" and "echo_failure" used to do
this.

What is the equivalent for systemd?


thanks
Jobst

On Mar 4, 2019, at 10:15 PM, Jobst Schmalenbach <jobst at barrett.com.au>
wrote:
> 
> I have to (re-)write many bootup scripts to move a bunch of servers from
CentOS6 to CentOS7
> 
> In sysvinit the "echo_success" and "echo_failure" used
to do this.
> 
> What is the equivalent for systemd?
First off, processes started by systemd unit files don?t necessarily echo
anything at all, and when they do, that output is captured by journald, not sent
straight to the system console.

Systemd infers success or failure of the started service in one of several ways:

- process exit code
- contents of a PID file
- existence of a FIFO
- etc.

Your code in the unit file tells systemd which method to use.

Systemd prints out the green ?OK? when the rules you?ve set up in the unit file
match actual conditions on the server.

This is also how systemd can provide automatic service restarts: you?ve told it
what it looks like when a service is ?up?, so it can implicitly detect ?down?
and restart the dead service for you.  In the old scheme, that?s something you
had to hand-code, and it was outside of the scope of SysVInit besides, so most
services didn?t have that ability.  With systemd, you can set this up with a
line or three in the unit file, and systemd then handles it for you.

You should start reading here:

   
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html#Options

The Type value you select affects which ?up? detection methods are sensible. 
For example, if you say your service is a ?forking? type, it doesn?t make sense
for systemd to be told to look for a nonzero exit status.

Read the rest of that page as well.  There?s a lot of power to take advantage of
in systemd.

Resist the temptation to just launch your old shell script via systemd.  It?s
better to rewrite its imperative logic in declarative form within the unit file,
so you get full benefit of systemd?s power.