How do I translate init.d scripts from Ubuntu/Debian Linux to Solaris?

Question

I have several init.d scripts that I'm using to start some daemons. Most of these scripts I've found on the internet and they all use start-stop-daemon. My understanding is that "start-stop-daemon" is a command that is specific to Linux or BSD distros and is not available on Solaris.

What is the best way to translate my init.d scripts from Linux to Solaris? Is there a command equivalent to start-stop-daemon that I can use, roughly?

Since I'm not much of a Solaris user, I'm willing to admit upfront that I don't even know if my question is inherently invalid or not.

Answer 1

Hi,

start-stop-daemon is a Linux thing, and not used that much on Solaris. I guess you can port the command though, if you want to reuse your init scripts.

Otherwise it depends on what version of Solaris you are using. Starting with Solaris 10 and also OpenSolaris they use a new startup script framework "Solaris Service Management Facility", which you configure with the commands "svcs", "svccfg" and "svcadm".

See http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/selfheal/smf-quickstart.jsp for more information.

For older Solaris releases most init scripts are written in pure shell without any helper commands like start-stop-daemon.

Answer 2

On Solaris 10 or later using SMF is recommended, but on an earlier release you'd create an init script in /etc/init.d and link to it from the rcX.d directories. Here's a bare-bones example of an init script for launching an rsync daemon:

#!/sbin/sh

startcmd () {
    /usr/local/bin/rsync --daemon  # REPLACE WITH YOUR COMMANDS
}

stopcmd () {
    pkill -f "/usr/local/bin/rsync --daemon"  # REPLACE WITH YOUR COMMANDS
}

case "$1" in
'start')
        startcmd
        ;;
'stop')
        stopcmd
        ;;
'restart')
        stopcmd
        sleep 1
        startcmd
        ;;
*)
        echo "Usage: $0 { start | stop | restart }"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

Create a link to the script from each rcX.d directory (following the "S"/"K" convention).

# ln rsync /etc/rc3.d/S91rsync
# for i in `ls -1d /etc/rc*.d | grep -v 3`; do ln rsync $i/K02rsync; done

See the README in each rcX.d directory and check the man page for init.d. Here's a bit of the man page:

 File  names  in  rc?.d   directories   are   of   the   form
 [SK]nn<init.d  filename>,  where  S  means start this job, K
 means kill this job, and nn is the relative sequence  number
 for killing or starting the job.

 When entering  a  state  (init  S,0,2,3,etc.)  the  rc[S0-6]
 script  executes  those  scripts in /etc/rc[S0-6].d that are
 prefixed with K followed by those scripts prefixed  with  S.
 When  executing  each  script  in  one  of the /etc/rc[S0-6]
 directories, the /sbin/rc[S0-6] script passes a single argu-
 ment.  It  passes  the  argument 'stop' for scripts prefixed
 with K and the argument 'start' for scripts prefixed with S.
 There  is  no  harm  in applying the same sequence number to
 multiple scripts.