.\" Copyright (c) 2007-2015 The OpenRC Authors. .\" See the Authors file at the top-level directory of this distribution and .\" https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/AUTHORS .\" .\" This file is part of OpenRC. It is subject to the license terms in .\" the LICENSE file found in the top-level directory of this .\" distribution and at https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/LICENSE .\" This file may not be copied, modified, propagated, or distributed .\" except according to the terms contained in the LICENSE file. .\" .Dd December 14, 2009 .Dt START-STOP-DAEMON 8 SMM .Os OpenRC .Sh NAME .Nm start-stop-daemon .Nd ensures that daemons start and stop .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Fl S , -start .Ar daemon .Op Fl - .Op Ar arguments .Nm .Fl K , -stop .Ar daemon .Nm .Fl s , -signal .Ar signal .Ar daemon .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm provides a consistent method of starting, stopping and signaling daemons. If neither .Fl K , -stop nor .Fl s , -signal are provided, then we assume we are starting the daemon. If a daemon cannot background by itself, nor create a pidfile, .Nm can do it for the daemon in a secure fashion. .Pp If .Nm is used in an OpenRC service, then OpenRC can in turn check to see if the daemon is still running. If not, then the service is marked as crashed. .Pp Here are the options to specify the daemon and how it should start or stop: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl x , -exec Ar daemon The .Ar daemon we start or stop. If this option is not specified, then the first non option argument is used. .It Fl p , -pidfile Ar pidfile When starting, we expect the daemon to create a valid .Ar pidfile within a reasonable amount of time. When stopping we only stop the first pid listed in the .Ar pidfile . .It Fl n , -name Ar name Match the process .Ar name instead of a pidfile or executable. .It Fl i , -interpreted When matching process name, we should ensure that the correct interpreter is also matched. So if the daemon foo starts off like so .D1 #!/usr/bin/perl -w then .Nm matches the process .D1 /usr/bin/perl -w foo If an interpreted daemon changes its process name then this won't work. .It Fl u , -user Ar user Ns Op : Ns Ar group Start the daemon as the .Ar user and update $HOME accordingly or stop daemons owned by the user. You can optionally append a .Ar group name here also. .It Fl t , -test Print the action(s) that would be taken, but don't actually do anything. The return value is set as if the command was taken and worked. .It Fl v , -verbose Print the action(s) that are taken just before doing them. .It Fl P , -progress Echo a . to the console for each second elapsed whilst waiting. .El .Pp These options are only used for starting daemons: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl a , -startas Ar name Change the process name of the daemon to .Ar name . This just changes the first argument passed to the daemon. .It Fl b , -background Force the daemon into the background. Some daemons don't create pidfiles, so a good trick is to get the daemon to run in the foreground, and use the this option along with .Fl m , -make-pidfile to create a working pidfile. .It Fl d , -chdir Ar path chdir to this directory before starting the daemon. .It Fl r , -chroot Ar path chroot to this directory before starting the daemon. All other paths, such as the path to the daemon, chdir and pidfile, should be relative to the chroot. .It Fl c , -chuid Ar user Same as the .Fl u , -user option. .It Fl e , -env Ar VAR=VALUE Set the environment variable VAR to VALUE. .It Fl g , -group Ar group Start the daemon as in the group. .It Fl k , -umask Ar mode Set the umask of the daemon. .It Fl m , -make-pidfile Saves the pid of the daemon in the file specified by the .Fl p , -pidfile option. Only useful when used with daemons that run in the foreground and forced into the background with the .Fl -b , -background option. .It Fl I , -ionice Ar class Ns Op : Ns Ar data Modifies the IO scheduling priority of the daemon. Class can be 0 for none, 1 for real time, 2 for best effort and 3 for idle. Data can be from 0 to 7 inclusive. .It Fl N , -nicelevel Ar level Modifies the scheduling priority of the daemon. .It Fl 1 , -stdout Ar logfile Redirect the standard output of the process to logfile when started with .Fl background . Must be an absolute pathname, but relative to the path optionally given with .Fl r , -chroot . The logfile can also be a named pipe. .It Fl w , -wait Ar milliseconds Wait .Ar milliseconds after starting and check that daemon is still running. Useful for daemons that check configuration after forking or stopping race conditions where the pidfile is written out after forking. .It Fl 2 , -stderr Ar logfile The same thing as .Fl 1 , -stdout but with the standard error output. .El .Pp These options are only used for stopping daemons: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Fl R , -retry Ar timeout | Ar signal Ns / Ns Ar timeout The retry specification can be either a timeout in seconds or multiple signal/timeout pairs (like SIGTERM/5). .El .Sh ENVIRONMENT .Va SSD_IONICELEVEL can also set the IO scheduling priority of the daemon, but the command line option takes precedence. .Pp .Va SSD_NICELEVEL can also set the scheduling priority of the daemon, but the command line option takes precedence. .Pp .Va SSD_STARTWAIT As the .Fl w , -wait option above. .Pa /etc/rc.conf .Nm waits for to check the daemon is still running. .Sh NOTE .Nm uses .Xr getopt 3 to parse its options, which allows it to accept the `--' option which will cause it to stop processing options at that point. Any subsequent arguments are passed as arguments to the daemon to start and used when finding a daemon to stop or signal. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr chdir 2 , .Xr chroot 2 , .Xr getopt 3 , .Xr nice 2 , .Xr rc_find_pids 3 .Sh BUGS .Nm cannot stop an interpreted daemon that no longer exists without a pidfile. .Sh HISTORY .Nm first appeared in Debian. .Pp This is a complete re-implementation with the process finding code in the OpenRC library (librc, -lrc) so other programs can make use of it. .Sh AUTHORS .An Roy Marples <roy@marples.name>