[Bug 583310] Re: service command should report more information on failure

[Steve Langasek]

In later releases of Ubuntu, this has been addressed by providing per-
service log files in /var/log/upstart.

** Package changed: sysvinit (Ubuntu) => upstart (Ubuntu)

** Changed in: upstart (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Fix Released

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/583310

Title:
  service command should report more information on failure

Status in “upstart” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: sysvinit-utils

  thomas at home:/etc/mysql$ lsb_release -rd
  Description:    Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
  Release:        10.04

  sysvinit-utils : 2.87dsf-4ubuntu17

  
  Hi,

  Lately I was facing this bug :
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-dfsg-5.1/+bug/573318

  This involved specifically how services are started.

  In the case of mysql :

  From my understanding, the service command process
  /etc/init/mysql.conf

  Run the "pre-start script",start the service and  run the "post-init
  script" if pre-start is ok.

  On the mysql case, the pre-init script fails because /etc/mysql/my.cnf
  was missing (the fact that it's missing is the point of the bug
  mention at the beginning of this bug).

  this command return 1 instead of 0
  [ -r $HOME/my.cnf ]

  And all we get is this message:

  start: Job failed to start

  This just informs that the service couldn't start, but there is no clue about why it did fail.
  There's is absolutely nothing logged about this failure despite this in deamon.log : 

  May 17 19:05:28 sd1 init: mysql pre-start process (4506) terminated
  with status 1

  but still, it doesn't help the admin to solve the issue (ok we know
  that pre-init script exists and it fails).

  What I had to do to find out what is going wrong is : 
  1/ understand how the service command works
  2/ understand how /etc/init/*.conf scritps works
  3/ execute the pre init script to see where it fails

  which is not straight forward.

  We need that pre-init and post-init script reports verbosely the
  failures on stdout or at least in deamon.log so that error can be fix
  quicker (and in these case, it can be stressfull to see that a service
  won’t start without knowing why).

  This could be done by catching what the script writes out stderr and
  then display this to the user and in the logs. (or any other mean, but
  we need a detailed reports of the failure)

  Anyhow, ubuntu is by far my favourite distribution and I try to spread its use every time I have the occasion.
  Thomas.

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