service(8)

💖 service(8) — the System Manager's Manual glow-up 💖

okay bestie, welcome to service(8), straight out of the System Manager's Manual ✨ this is the lil command that runs your System V init scripts, and honestly? she's doing the most with the least. let's get into it 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

service — run a System V init script 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

service SCRIPT COMMAND [OPTIONS]

service --status-all

service --help | -h | --version

like, that's the whole vibe check. three shapes, pick your fighter 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

service runs a System V init script in as predictable an environment as possible — which lowkey means it yeets most of your environment variables out the window and sets the current working directory to /. no cap. clean slate energy ✨

the SCRIPT parameter specifies a System V init script, and she lives at /etc/init.d/SCRIPT 🏠 the supported values of COMMAND depend on whichever script you invoked, because service is a total girlboss delegator — she passes COMMAND and OPTIONS to the init script unmodified. she does not edit. she does not interpret. she just hands it over 💅

✨ pro tip from the ancestors: all scripts should support at least the start and stop commands. that's the bare minimum, babes.

now for the special case 🌈 if COMMAND is --full-restart, the script gets run twice — first with the stop command, then with the start command. it's giving "we're doing this properly" 😤

service --status-all runs all the init scripts, in alphabetical order, with the status command. very organized. very demure. very mindful 🧚

and here's the plot twist 😭 if the init script file does not exist, the script tries to use legacy actions. if there's no suitable legacy action found and COMMAND is one of the actions specified in the LSB Core Specification, then input is redirected to systemctl. otherwise? the command fails with return code 2 💀 so close, yet so far.

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/init.d — the directory containing System V init scripts. it's the home address of every script you're about to summon 🏡

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💜 ENVIRONMENT 💜

• PATH, TERM — these two are literally the only environment variables passed to the init scripts. that's it. that's the whole guest list. everyone else got left on read 🙈

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• chkconfig(8)
• ntsysv(8)
• systemd(1)
• systemctl(8)
• systemd.service(5)

go read those too, bestie, they're all in the same friend group 🫶

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💖 that's the whole page!! this one came from the System Manager's Manual, dated Jan 2006 — yeah she's been iconic for a minute 👑 thanks for reading, mwah 💅✨