DINIT-CHECK(8)

💖 dinit-check(8) — Dinit - service management system 💖

hey bestie, welcome to dinit-check(8) from the Dinit - service management system manual. this utility is your pre-flight vibe check for Dinit service configs, and it's here to catch problems before they cause a service to fail to load during system operation. iconic behavior, honestly.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

dinit-check — check service configuration

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dinit-check [-d|--services-dir dir] [service-name...]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

The dinit-check utility checks the service configuration for Dinit services (see dinit(8)), and reports any errors it finds. This allows for finding errors before they can cause a service to fail to load during system operation.

Errors reported by dinit-check include:

• Syntax errors — the grammar police have entered the chat 🚨
• Invalid parameter values — not the vibe, bestie
• Service dependency cycles — the friend group is going in circles 😭

Unless altered by options specified on the command line, this utility uses the same search paths (for service description files) as dinit.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -d dir, --services-dir dir — specifies dir as the directory containing service description files (can be given multiple times to specify multiple service directories). Default directories are not searched for services when this option is provided. See dinit(8) for defaults.
• -n, --online — operate in "online" mode; contact a running instance of dinit to obtain the service directories and environment variables (used for substitution in service setting values). The --services-dir (-d) and --env-file (-e) options will be ignored.
• -s, --system — use defaults for a system instance. This affects default service directories, environment file, and (when in online mode) control socket path. It is the default when run as the root user.
• -u, --user — use defaults for a user instance. This affects default service directories, environment file, and (when in online mode) control socket path. It is the default when not run as the root user.
• --socket-path socket-path, -p socket-path — specify the path to the socket used for communicating with the service manager daemon. When not specified, the value from the DINIT_SOCKET_PATH environment variable is used, with the default path (as documented for dinit(8)) used if the variable is unset. This option is ignored unless --online (-n) is also specified.
• -e file, --env-file file — read supplementary environment from file, which should be in the format used by dinit(8). If not specified, the default is as for dinit(8). This setting is not used when --online (-n) is specified.
• --help — display brief help text and then exit.
• service-name — specifies the name of a service that should be checked (along with its dependencies). If none are specified, defaults to boot (which requires that a suitable service description for the boot service exists).

💅 NOTES 💅

For service properties that are subject to environment variable substitution, including socket-listen, logfile, env-file, working-dir and pid-file, the substitution may have a different result when performed by dinit-check than when performed by dinit if the two processes have a different environment.

For this reason dinit-check will issue a warning whenever substitution is used, unless run in "online" mode (--online or -n), in which case environment variable values are obtained from the running instance of dinit. bestie, that warning is not being dramatic — it's being accurate 💀

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

dinit(8), dinit-service(5).

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Dinit, and this manual, were written by Davin McCall.

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and that's the whole page, bestie — no notes missed, no options ghosted, no cap 🫶 this iconic manual is from Dinit 0.21.0, dated March 2026 ✨💖