INSSERV(8)

📦
version 1.26.0 · 2 versions
, in debian trixie

🌸 INSSERV(8) — the manual page, but make it make sense 🌸

okay bestie, sit down, we're doing insserv from the System Manager's Manual section 8, and honestly? it's giving boot sequence royalty. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

insserv — boot sequence organizer using LSB init.d script dependency information

like, it literally organizes your boot sequence. that's the whole job. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

insserv [-v] [-c <config>] [-p <path>] [-d] [-f]
[[/]path/to/init.d/]script ...

insserv [-v] [-c <config>] [-p <path>]
[[/]path/to/init.d/]script[,start=<lvl1,lvl2,...>,stop=<lvl1,lvl2,...>]

insserv [-v] [-c <config>] [-p <path>] -r [-d] [-f]
[[/]path/to/init.d/]script ...

insserv -h

four whole moods. pick your fighter. 🫶

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so insserv is a low level tool used by update-rc.d — it's the backstage crew, not the main character — and what it does is enable an installed system init script (aka a boot script) by reading the comment header of the script. and the header looks exactly like this, no cap:

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# Required-Start:    boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# Required-Stop:     boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# Should-Start:      boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# Should-Stop:       boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# X-Start-Before:    boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# X-Stop-After:      boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]
# Default-Start:     run_level_1 [ run_level_2 ...]
# Default-Stop:      run_level_1 [ run_level_2 ...]
# X-Interactive:     true
# Short-Description: single_line_description
# Description:       multiline_description
### END INIT INFO

and then it calculates the dependencies between all the scripts. literally all of them. 🌈

⚠️ the vibe check that matters: it is not recommended to execute insserv directly unless you know exactly what you're doing. doing so may render your boot system inoperable. like, bricked. dead. 💀 update-rc.d is the recommended interface for managing init scripts, bestie. please use it. 🙏

okay so now, the keywords:

The Default-Start keyword declares on which runlevels the script must be started. An empty value means the script will never be started. and the same applies for its counterpart Default-Stop, with the only difference being that the script will be stopped. (yes queen, symmetry ✨)

please be aware that the line

# Required-Stop:  boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]

declares facilities which must be available during shutdown of the service declared in the Provides tag. same holds true for

# Should-Stop:    boot_facility_1 [ boot_facility_2 ...]

which declares facilities which should be available during shutdown of the service declared in the Provides tag. in both cases the script system should avoid stopping services which are declared by these two Stop tags until the script including these tags is stopped. so like… don't yank the rug out from under them. 🧚

the optional X-Interactive keyword implies that the script using this keyword should be started alone in a concurrent boot configuration, because it interacts with the user at the console. only the value true is recognised — all others are ignored. (sorry to the other values, you're not invited 🎀)

the optional X-Start-Before keyword implies that the script using this keyword should be started before the specified service names. whereas the optional X-Stop-After keyword implies that the script using this keyword should be stopped after the specified service names. both imply that those services now depend on the specifying script. with known dependencies and runlevel(s), insserv sets and reorders the corresponding symbolic links of the concerned runlevels directories. iconic behavior. 💅

🌸 system facilities & the config file 🌸

insserv scans for System Facilities in the configuration file /etc/insserv.conf and each file in the directory /etc/insserv.conf.d/. each line which begins with $ and a following name defines a system facility accordingly to the Linux Standard Base Specification (LSB). all names followed by such a system facility will declare the required dependencies of the facility. here's an example for /etc/insserv.conf:

# All local filesystems are mounted
# (done during boot phase)
$local_fs       boot

# Low level networking
$network        network route

# Named is operational
$named          named

# All remote filesystems are mounted
# (in some cases /usr may be remote).
$remote_fs      $local_fs nfs

# System logger is operational
$syslog         syslog

# All network daemons are running (This was removed in LSB 1.2)
$netdaemons     portmap inetd

# Services which need to be interactive
<interactive>   boot.crypto

names starting with a + sign are marked as optional. if the service with the name after the plus sign is available it will be used, if not available it is ignored silently. (no drama, no complaints, she just moves on 🦋)

words beginning with < and ending with > are keywords. currently <interactive> is the only known keyword for marking a service as an interactive one — e.g., a service which requires a passphrase or password input during boot or runlevel change. the special facility $null is used to enforce an empty dependency in case of Should-Stop and Required-Stop.

in addition to the defined System Facilities in the configuration file /etc/insserv.conf, insserv also knows the special facility $all. this facility indicates that a service should be inserted at the end of all services at starting and at the very beginning at stopping. clearly all services using this facility will be grouped into one starting or stopping order. periodt. 💖

✨ OPTIONS ✨

currently the following options are recognized by insserv:

  • -v, --verbose — perform the operation with more diagnostic messages printed on stderr. she's chatty, she's telling you everything ✨
  • -q, --silent — perform operations silently. this blocks warning messages from being printed to stderr. only fatal error messages are printed. so like, quiet but not too quiet 💅
  • -c <config>, --config <config> — specify path to the insserv.conf file (by default located at /etc/insserv.conf). this is typically used for testing purposes. insserv(8) will automatically check for the existence of an insserv configuration directory under this location. for example, specifying /usr/local/etc/insserv.conf will cause insserv to also scan the directory /usr/local/etc/insserv.conf.d/ 🎀
  • -i, --insserv-dir — the insserv program will try to place dependency information in the /etc/init.d directory. when using the -i flag, the user can specify an alternative directory for dependency information. this is typically used when debugging insserv. 🧚
  • -o <path>, --override <path> — LSB comment headers found in this path will override existing LSB comment headers of scripts in the init.d directory (default path is /etc/insserv/overrides/). override queen 👑
  • -p <path>, --path <path> — specify path to init.d directory. useful for testing. 🍓
  • -n, --dryrun, --dry-run — do not update symlinks. does not create depend.boot, depend.start, and depend.stop files. it's giving pretend 🌈
  • -s, --showall, --show-all — output runlevel and sequence information. do not update symlinks. just show, don't touch. 👀
  • -r, --remove — remove the listed scripts from all runlevels. bye bestie 🫶
  • -d, --default — use default runlevels as defined in the scripts. this may restore an edited runlevel link scheme. the glow-up back to factory settings ✨
  • -f, --force — ignore if a required service is missed. beside this, if start and or stop levels are specified on the command line the default levels of the script will be ignored. force = main character energy, no rules 💅
  • -u <path>, --upstart-job <path> — path to replace existing upstart job path. (default path is /lib/init/upstart-job). 🔧
  • -h, --help — print out short usage message. the classic "help me" 💖

but you may use the argument syntax described in the following section. and you will, because it slays.

✨ ARGUMENTS ✨

  • [[/]path/to/init.d/] — relative or absolute path to the init scripts base directory. this defaults to /etc/init.d/ in compliance with the LSB specification. in this case insserv does not add or remove a script to the runlevels declared in the script headers, but may re-order the runlevels if the order of the currently enabled scripts has changed (see option -d). note that if a relative path is used, insserv has to be called from the root directory. 🫶
  • [[/]path/to/init.d/]script ... — list of scripts which have to be added to the runlevels. if a path is used it should point to the absolute or relative location of the boot scripts. insserv checks for the existence of these scripts. for the runlevels the information found in the script is used. 💅
  • [[/]path/to/init.d/]script[,start=<lvl1,lvl2,...>] — list of scripts which have to be added to the specified runlevels to be started with. you may use this extension to override the default values for start and stop runlevels of the script. note that lvl1, lvl2, … are the known runlevels explained above. the extension ,stop=<lvl1,lvl2,...> is also possible. ✨
  • -r [[/]path/to/init.d/]script ... — list of scripts which should be removed from the runlevels. if a path is used it should point to the absolute or relative location of the boot scripts. insserv checks for the existence of these scripts. 🫶

✨ OVERRIDES ✨

beside using the extensions ,start=<lvl1,lvl2,...> and ,stop=<lvl1,lvl2,...>, it is possible to use override files to replace an LSB comment header or simply provide a missing LSB comment header. this can be done by placing a file with the new LSB comment header using the same name as the boot or init script in the directory /etc/insserv/overrides/. for third party boot scripts without an LSB header, it is possible to add a file with the same name in the directory /usr/share/insserv/overrides/ to make them completely LSB compliant. glow-up via file name matching, iykyk 🎀

✨ UPSTART JOB COMPATIBILITY ✨

to allow upstart jobs to work as init.d scripts, insserv will recognize a symlink from path/to/init.d/script to /lib/init/upstart-job as upstart jobs, and instead of reading the header from the file, it will run the script with the argument lsb-header to get the script header. sneaky? no. genius. 💅

✨ EXIT CODES ✨

the exit codes have the following conditions:

  1. 0 — Service was successfully installed or removed
  2. 1 — Service was not installed or removed

like, two moods. that's it. 🌸

okay and that's not even the whole thing — more parts are coming, bestie, so don't go anywhere 💖

✨ NOTE ✨

Okay bestie, listen up, because this is a vibe check for your boot script file names 💅. Heads up: insserv will not accept these patterns of boot script file names:

*.dpkg*
*.ucf*
*.rpm*
*.ba*
*.old
*.new
*.org
*.orig
*.save
*.swp
*.core
*~

That's with the wildcard character *, no cap 🫶.

Also, all boot script file names that begin with one of these characters:

$.#%_+-\*[]^:()~

will be ignored. Like, straight up ghosted 👻.

Administrators can further filter files by extension in the /etc/init.d/ directory by creating a text file called /etc/insserv/file-filters ✨. The file-filters configuration file lists — one per line — extensions that should be ignored by insserv as it parses the /etc/init.d/ directory. An example of /etc/insserv/file-filters might look like this:

git
svn
html

So cute, so organized 🎀.

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Boot scripts sometimes lack a LSB comment header 😭. If that's happening, contact a package maintainer or developer of the software which provides the script to have a LSB comment header added to it. Slay responsibly.

📁 FILES 📁

  • /etc/insserv.conf — configuration file for insserv which defines the LSB System Facilities 👑.
  • /etc/insserv.conf.d/ — directory for further configuration files for declaring LSB System Facilities 🗂️.
  • /etc/insserv/overrides/ — path to replace existing LSB comment headers with the comment headers found in this path 🔁.
  • /etc/insserv/file-filters — configuration file which lists file extensions (one per line) we should ignore when parsing the init.d directory 🧹.
  • /etc/init.d/ — path to the init script base directory as required by the Linux Standard Base Specification (LSB) 🐧.
  • /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start, /etc/init.d/.depend.stop — The make(1) like dependency files produced by insserv for booting, starting, and stopping with the help of startpar(1) ⚙️.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

init(8), startpar(1).

Like, go read those too, they're giving main character energy 🌈.

  • 2000–2009 Werner Fink,
  • 2009 SuSE Linux Products GmbH Nuernberg, Germany.
  • 2000–2003 SuSE GmbH Nuernberg, Germany,
  • 2007–2009 SuSE Linux Products GmbH Nuernberg, Germany.
  • 2019– Jesse Smith

✍️ AUTHOR ✍️

Werner Fink <feedback@suse.de>

🫶 CONTRIBUTORS 🫶

  • Petter Reinholdtsen
  • Kel Modderman

And that's the whole page, bestie 💖. This iconic manual is from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, dated July 29, 2008, and it's literally INSSERV(8). Periodt. 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from
  • debian trixie: insserv 1.26.0-1
  • Copyright 2000-2009 Werner Fink
  • Copyright 2000-2003 SuSE GmbH Nuernberg, Germany
  • Copyright 2007-2009 SuSE Linux Products GmbH Nuernberg, Germany
  • Copyright 2009 Petter Reinholdtsen
  • 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms