On 18/02/2014 13:54, Mark David Dumlao wrote: >> Shouldn't sysadmins use the init-scripts for that? >> > If done correctly, permissions should not be an issue. >> > >> > Restarting services without keeping file ownership into account will >> > always cause issues. Regardless of the init-system used. >> > > That's just the thing though. As a sysadmin, how do you debug a service > that isn't starting to begin with? Let's say your new to the service. You're > not even sure if you got the config right the first time around. Or maybe > you're adjusting a setting somewhere, and you're confused why it > isn't taking effect. > > All the /upstream documentation/, all the /man pages/, all the /usr/share/doc > stuff will tell you to start it _raw_. The init script obscures the > starting options, > environment variables, and sometimes even the running user from you. What are > you gonna do, play a human shell script parser? Nobody's perfect, do it > enough times and you're going to casually gloss over the line where > --safe-mode is appended to the string depending on the phase of > the moon...
I do all of that, I've been around long enough to have learned. Like yourself. ps and tailing a daemon's log file is my standard approach to really verify that a daemon is running. The other side of the coin is I usually start with the distro's init scripts and assume for argument sake they work. When the facts prove that wrong, I dig deeper. The list of daemons I use that are not well behaved wrt init scripts are rather short in reality > If you're lucky, you've never had to start an unfamiliar service, or debug > someone else's unfamiliar config under time pressure... > Nope, not so lucky. Not even close. We're getting OT, but by far the worst behaved daemons out there are non-OSS paid-for things for a corproate market. Like Ossec. Oracle databases. Sybase. Anything and everythign that purports to do backups. I shan't mention Oracle's various offerings for business use for fear my brain shall explode. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com