[Bug 1828883] Re: systemd sysv-compatibility eats exit codes

[Benjamin Reed]

I am the maintainer of the OpenNMS scripts (and debian/ubuntu packages).

We return 6 ("not configured") if there are `dpkg-dist` files that have
not been merged before startup, or if the database has not been properly
initialized.  This can happen *after* upgrade of a normal working
system, so it's not just that it's a "first install" situation.

Without an error exit, the user may not know that OpenNMS did not
restart properly after upgrade because there are tasks to do to have a
working OpenNMS install.

It seems strange to me that `systemd` would treat ANY error code as not-
an-error without deliberate choice from the packager's POV, but I guess
this is only one of many things that are confusing about systemd.  I'll
work on making a proper systemd file for OpenNMS and then hopefully it
won't be an issue.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1828883

Title:
  systemd sysv-compatibility eats exit codes

Status in systemd package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Systemd properly honors an exit code of 6 when creating a native
  service, like so:

  ---8<---
  ranger at carolina:/lib/systemd/system$ cat exitcode.service
  [Unit]
  Description=Test Exit Code (Systemd)

  [Service]
  Type=oneshot
  ExecStart=/bin/bash -c 'exit 6'

  [Install]
  WantedBy=default.target
  ranger at carolina:/lib/systemd/system$ sudo systemctl start exitcode
  Job for exitcode.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
  See "systemctl status exitcode.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
  ranger at carolina:/lib/systemd/system$ echo $?
  1
  ---8<---

  However, the equivalent SysV init file improperly returns an exit code
  of 0 when starting under the compatibility layer:

  ---8<---
  ranger at carolina:/etc/init.d$ cat exitcode
  #! /bin/sh

  ### BEGIN INIT INFO
  # Provides:          exitcode
  # Required-Start:    $local_fs
  # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
  # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
  # Short-Description: Test Exit Code (SysV)
  # Description:       Test case for Systemd SysV compatibility layer
  ### END INIT INFO

  exit 6
  ranger at carolina:/etc/init.d$ sudo systemctl enable exitcode
  exitcode.service is not a native service, redirecting to systemd-sysv-install.
  Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable exitcode
  ranger at carolina:/etc/init.d$ sudo systemctl start exitcode
  ranger at carolina:/etc/init.d$ echo $?
  0
  ---8<---

  Even if I change the script to do `exit 1` it still returns exit code
  0.

  These are tiny examples but we are hitting it in the real world with
  the startup scripts for the OpenNMS Debian/Ubuntu packages, which
  return exit code 6 (LSB "not configured") when there are leftover
  upgrade files in `/etc/opennms`. The OpenNMS startup is not properly
  failing on attempted startup in this case.

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