Systemd 254 released

Posted Aug 3, 2023 18:09 UTC (Thu) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164)
In reply to: Systemd 254 released by jem
Parent article: Systemd 254 released

> I don't see why it would be "totally confusing and unexpected" to a user that the commands in ExecStop are not run if the service fails to start. If the service failed to start, what's the point in trying to stop it? You don't try to close a file that you failed to open, either.

But according to the source code, the ExecStop commands *are* run even if the service fails to start. Referring to zdzichu's comment somewhere in this thread (see https://lwn.net/Articles/940224/), line 2264 in service.c (in service_enter_running()) calls service_enter_stop() when a service fails to start. service_enter_stop() in turn executes the ExecStop commands.

I agree with you: I don't expect ExecStop to be triggered if a service fails to start. The documentation agrees, if I interpret it correctly. But unless both zdzichu and I are misreading the code, the code does trigger it in that case.

Systemd 254 released

Posted Aug 3, 2023 18:56 UTC (Thu) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (1 responses)

They are not:

$ sudo systemd-run --quiet -t -p ExecStop="echo hello" false
$ sudo systemd-run --quiet -t -p ExecStop="echo hello" true
hello

Systemd 254 released

Posted Aug 4, 2023 7:47 UTC (Fri) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

And neither are the ExecStop= commands executed when ExecStartPost failed:

$ sudo systemd-run --quiet -t -p ExecStop="echo hello" -p ExecStartPost="false" true
-> gives no output

So it seems we both did misread the code. Good, that solves my worries.