Operations grimoire/Services

Software running as daemons should be set as services to manage them at OS level a standard way.

Systemd, rc and runit

Nasqueron infrastructure uses 3 services software:

Service management

OS	Use case	Software	Commands
FreeBSD	Standard	rc	service <service> <command>
Linux	Standard	systemd	systemctl <command> <service>
Linux	Docker containers	runit	sv <service> <command>

Note how systemd inverts the general order by putting the command before the service.

Systemd

Services

Search for .service file in operations repository for an idea. It's well documented on ArchLinux wiki and freedesktop.org site.

References:

• https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.service.html
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd

Timers

• Generally better to use a systemd service and a systemd timer than a crontab entry on Linux
• Don't forget to start the timer, see this comment on D3674 for a demonstration

Howto for operations repository

You can follow this tutorial to deploy a service on Nasqueron infrastructure, it covers the step from software deployment, configuration, user creation and a systemd service.

FreeBSD rc

Structure of a rc configuration file

Each service is configured in /etc/rc.conf.d/<service> file or by all the files in /etc/rc.conf.d/<service>/ directory.

Those files follow rc.conf syntax and use:

• <service>_enable="YES" to indicate auto start of the service
• various <service>_<key>=<value> per service documentation

To know all the available options for a service the best is to read the documentation at the top of every service, located in /usr/local/etc/rc.d for applications and /etc/rc.d for the base system.

Template for operations repository

If you need to add a rc service, we've a template for the file: follow D3571 instructions