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finit/doc/service.md
2025-03-27 10:23:10 +01:00

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Finit Services
==============
Starting & Monitoring
---------------------
Finit can start and monitor the following types of daemons:
* Forks to background, creates a PID file
* Runs in foreground:
- creates a PID file
- does not create a PID file -- Finit can create it for you (optional)
Finit can *not* start and monitor a daemon that:
* Forks to background and does *not* create a PID file
| | Forking | Creates PID File | Finit creates PID File |
|---|---------|------------------|------------------------|
| ✔ | Yes | Yes | No |
| ✔ | No | Yes | No |
| ✔ | No | No | Yes, optionally |
| ✘ | Yes | No | No |
> [!NOTE]
> PID files is one mechanism used to assert conditions to synchronize
> the start and stop of other, dependent, services.
### Forks to Background w/ PID File
There are two syntax variants, type 1 and type 2. The former is the
traditional one used also for `sysv` start/stop scripts, and the latter
is inspired by systemd, with a twist -- it lets Finit guess the pifdile
to look for based on the standard path and the basename of the command.
service pid:!/run/serv.pid serv -- Forking service, type 1
service type:forking serv -- Forking service, type 2
In this example the resulting files to watch for are `/run/serv.pid` and
`/var/run/serv.pid`, respectively. On most modern Linux systems this is
the same directory (`/var/run` is a symlink to `../run`).
### Runs in Foreground w/ PID File
service serv -n -p -- Foreground service w/ PID file
### Runs in Foreground w/o PID File
Same as previous, but we tell Finit to create the PID file, because we
need it to synchronize start/stop of a dependent service.
service pid:/run/serv.pid serv -n -- Foreground service w/o PID file
### Runs in Foreground w/ Custom PID File
service pid:/run/servy.pid serv -n -p -P /run/servy.pid -- Foreground service w/ custom PID file
State Machine
-------------
A service is bound to a state machine that is in one of six (6) states.
For `run`s and `task`s there is an additional end state called `DONE`,
not shown in the diagram for brevity. Services start in the `HALTED`
state.
![The service state machine](svc-machine.png "The service state machine")
The current state depends on the two following conditions:
* `E`: Service enabled. In order for `E` to be satisfied, the service
must be allowed to run in the current runlevel and not be stopped.
A service may be stopped, or blocked, for several reasons:
- The user has manually stopped the service using `initctl stop NAME`
- The program exits immediately. I.e. keeps crashing (make sure to use
the 'run this service in the foreground' command line option)
- The binary is missing in the filesystem
* `C`: Service conditions are satisfied:
- `on` (+): The condition is asserted.
- `off` (-): The condition is deasserted.
- `flux` (~): The condition state is unknown.
For a detailed description of conditions, and how to debug them,
see the [Finit Conditions](conditions.md) document.