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DAEMON(7)			    daemon			     DAEMON(7)

NAME
       daemon - Writing and Packaging System Daemons

DESCRIPTION
       A daemon is a service process that runs in the background and
       supervises the system or provides functionality to other processes.
       Traditionally, daemons are implemented following a scheme originating
       in SysV Unix. Modern daemons should follow a simpler yet more powerful
       scheme (here called "new-style" daemons), as implemented by systemd(1).
       This manual page covers both schemes, and in particular includes
       recommendations for daemons that shall be included in the systemd init
       system.

   SysV Daemons
       When a traditional SysV daemon starts, it should execute the following
       steps as part of the initialization. Note that these steps are
       unnecessary for new-style daemons (see below), and should only be
       implemented if compatibility with SysV is essential.

	1. Close all open file descriptors except STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR (i.e.
	   the first three file descriptors 0, 1, 2). This ensures that no
	   accidentally passed file descriptor stays around in the daemon
	   process. On Linux this is best implemented by iterating through
	   /proc/self/fd, with a fallback of iterating from file descriptor 3
	   to the value returned by getrlimit() for RLIMIT_NOFILE.

	2. Reset all signal handlers to their default. This is best done by
	   iterating through the available signals up to the limit of _NSIG
	   and resetting them to SIG_DFL.

	3. Reset the signal mask using sigprocmask().

	4. Sanitize the environment block, removing or resetting environment
	   variables that might negatively impact daemon runtime.

	5. Call fork(), to create a background process.

	6. In the child, call setsid() to detach from any terminal and create
	   an independent session.

	7. In the child, call fork() again, to ensure the daemon can never
	   re-acquire a terminal again.

	8. Call exit() in the first child, so that only the second child (the
	   actual daemon process) stays around. This ensures that the daemon
	   process is reparented to init/PID 1, as all daemons should be.

	9. In the daemon process, connect /dev/null to STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR.

       10. In the daemon process, reset the umask to 0, so that the file modes
	   passed to open(), mkdir() and suchlike directly control the access
	   mode of the created files and directories.

       11. In the daemon process, change the current directory to the root
	   directory (/), in order to avoid that the daemon involuntarily
	   blocks mount points from being unmounted.

       12. In the daemon process, write the daemon PID (as returned by
	   getpid()) to a PID file, for example /var/run/foobar.pid (for a
	   hypothetical daemon "foobar"), to ensure that the daemon cannot be
	   started more than once. This must be implemented in race-free
	   fashion so that the PID file is only updated when at the same time
	   it is verified that the PID previously stored in the PID file no
	   longer exists or belongs to a foreign process. Commonly some kind
	   of file locking is employed to implement this logic.

       13. In the daemon process, drop privileges, if possible and applicable.

       14. From the daemon process notify the original process started that
	   initialization is complete. This can be implemented via an unnamed
	   pipe or similar communication channel that is created before the
	   first fork() and hence available in both the original and the
	   daemon process.

       15. Call exit() in the original process. The process that invoked the
	   daemon must be able to rely that this exit() happens after
	   initialization is complete and all external communication channels
	   established and accessible.

       The BSD daemon() function should not be used, as it implements only a
       subset of these steps.

       A daemon that needs to provide compatibility with SysV systems should
       implement the scheme pointed out above. However, it is recommended to
       make this behaviour optional and configurable via a command line
       argument, to ease debugging as well as to simplify integration into
       systems using systemd.

   New-Style Daemons
       Modern services for Linux should be implemented as new-style daemons.
       This makes it easier to supervise and control them at runtime and
       simplifies their implementation.

       For developing a new-style daemon none of the initialization steps
       recommended for SysV daemons need to be implemented. New-style init
       systems such as systemd make all of them redundant. Moreover, since
       some of these steps interfere with process monitoring, file descriptor
       passing and other functionality of the init system it is recommended
       not to execute them when run as new-style service.

       Note that new-style init systems guarantee execution of daemon
       processes in clean process contexts: it is guaranteed that the
       environment block is sanitized, that the signal handlers and mask is
       reset and that no left-over file descriptors are passed. Daemons will
       be executed in their own session, and STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR connected to
       /dev/null unless otherwise configured. The umask is reset.

       It is recommended for new-style daemons to implement the following:

	1. If SIGTERM is received, shut down the daemon and exit cleanly.

	2. If SIGHUP is received, reload the configuration files, if this
	   applies.

	3. Provide a correct exit code from the main daemon process, as this
	   is used by the init system to detect service errors and problems.
	   It is recommended to follow the exit code scheme as defined in the
	   LSB recommendations for SysV init scripts[1].

	4. If possible and applicable expose the daemon's control interface
	   via the D-Bus IPC system and grab a bus name as last step of
	   initialization.

	5. For integration in systemd, provide a .service unit file that
	   carries information about starting, stopping and otherwise
	   maintaining the daemon. See systemd.service(5) for details.

	6. As much as possible, rely on the init systemd's functionality to
	   limit the access of the daemon to files, services and other
	   resources. i.e. in the case of systemd, rely on systemd's resource
	   limit control instead of implementing your own, rely on systemd's
	   privilege dropping code instead of implementing it in the daemon,
	   and similar. See systemd.exec(5) for the available controls.

	7. If D-Bus is used, make your daemon bus-activatable, via supplying a
	   D-Bus service activation configuration file. This has multiple
	   advantages: your daemon may be started lazily on-demand; it may be
	   started in parallel to other daemons requiring it -- which
	   maximizes parallelization and boot-up speed; your daemon can be
	   restarted on failure, without losing any bus requests, as the bus
	   queues requests for activatable services. See below for details.

	8. If your daemon provides services to other local processes or remote
	   clients via a socket, it should be made socket-activatable
	   following the scheme pointed out below. Like D-Bus activation this
	   enables on-demand starting of services as well as it allows
	   improved parallelization of service start-up. Also, for state-less
	   protocols (such as syslog, DNS) a daemon implementing socket-based
	   activation can be restarted without losing a single request. See
	   below for details.

	9. If applicable a daemon should notify the init system about startup
	   completion or status updates via the sd_notify(3) interface.

       10. Instead of using the syslog() call to log directly to the system
	   syslog service, a new-style daemon may choose to simply log to
	   STDERR via fprintf(), which is then forwarded to syslog by the init
	   system. If log priorities are necessary these can be encoded by
	   prefixing individual log lines with strings like "<4>" (for log
	   priority 4 "WARNING" in the syslog priority scheme), following a
	   similar style as the Linux kernel's printk() priority system. In
	   fact, using this style of logging also enables the init system to
	   optionally direct all application logging to the kernel log buffer
	   (kmsg), as accessible via dmesg(1). This kind of logging may be
	   enabled by setting StandardError=syslog in the service unit file.
	   For details see sd-daemon(7) and systemd.exec(5).

       These recommendations are similar but not identical to the Apple MacOS
       X Daemon Requirements[2].

ACTIVATION
       New-style init systems provide multiple additional mechanisms to
       activate services, as detailed below. It is common that services are
       configured to be activated via more than one mechanism at the same
       time. An example for systemd: bluetoothd.service might get activated
       either when Bluetooth hardware is plugged in, or when an application
       accesses its programming interfaces via D-Bus. Or, a print server
       daemon might get activated when traffic arrives at an IPP port, or when
       a printer is plugged in, or when a file is queued in the printer spool
       directory. Even for services that are intended to be started on system
       bootup unconditionally it is a good idea to implement some of the
       various activation schemes outlined below, in order to maximize
       parallelization: if a daemon implements a D-Bus service or listening
       socket, implementing the full bus and socket activation scheme allows
       starting of the daemon with its clients in parallel (which speeds up
       boot-up), since all its communication channels are established already,
       and no request is lost because client requests will be queued by the
       bus system (in case of D-Bus) or the kernel (in case of sockets), until
       the activation is completed.

   Activation on Boot
       Old-style daemons are usually activated exclusively on boot (and
       manually by the administrator) via SysV init scripts, as detailed in
       the LSB Linux Standard Base Core Specification[1]. This method of
       activation is supported ubiquitously on Linux init systems, both
       old-style and new-style systems. Among other issues SysV init scripts
       have the disadvantage of involving shell scripts in the boot process.
       New-style init systems generally employ updated versions of activation,
       both during boot-up and during runtime and using more minimal service
       description files.

       In systemd, if the developer or administrator wants to make sure a
       service or other unit is activated automatically on boot it is
       recommended to place a symlink to the unit file in the .wants/
       directory of either multi-user.target or graphical.target, which are
       normally used as boot targets at system startup. See systemd.unit(5)
       for details about the .wants/ directories, and systemd.special(7) for
       details about the two boot targets.

   Socket-Based Activation
       In order to maximize the possible parallelization and robustness and
       simplify configuration and development, it is recommended for all
       new-style daemons that communicate via listening sockets to employ
       socket-based activation. In a socket-based activation scheme the
       creation and binding of the listening socket as primary communication
       channel of daemons to local (and sometimes remote) clients is moved out
       of the daemon code and into the init system. Based on per-daemon
       configuration the init system installs the sockets and then hands them
       off to the spawned process as soon as the respective daemon is to be
       started. Optionally activation of the service can be delayed until the
       first inbound traffic arrives at the socket, to implement on-demand
       activation of daemons. However, the primary advantage of this scheme is
       that all providers and all consumers of the sockets can be started in
       parallel as soon as all sockets are established. In addition to that
       daemons can be restarted with losing only a minimal number of client
       transactions or even any client request at all (the latter is
       particularly true for state-less protocols, such as DNS or syslog),
       because the socket stays bound and accessible during the restart, and
       all requests are queued while the daemon cannot process them.

       New-style daemons which support socket activation must be able to
       receive their sockets from the init system, instead of of creating and
       binding them themselves. For details about the programming interfaces
       for this scheme provided by systemd see sd_listen_fds(3) and sd-
       daemon(7). For details about porting existing daemons to socket-based
       activation see below. With minimal effort it is possible to implement
       socket-based activation in addition to traditional internal socket
       creation in the same codebase in order to support both new-style and
       old-style init systems from the same daemon binary.

       systemd implements socket-based activation via .socket units, which are
       described in systemd.socket(5). When configuring socket units for
       socket-based activation it is essential that all listening sockets are
       pulled in by the special target unit sockets.target. It is recommended
       to place a WantedBy=sockets.target directive in the [Install] section,
       to automatically add such a dependency on installation of a socket
       unit. Unless DefaultDependencies=no is set the necessary ordering
       dependencies are implicitly created for all socket units. For more
       information about sockets.target see systemd.special(7). It is not
       necessary or recommended to place any additional dependencies on socket
       units (for example from multi-user.target or suchlike) when one is
       installed in sockets.target.

   Bus-Based Activation
       When the D-Bus IPC system is used for communication with clients,
       new-style daemons should employ bus activation so that they are
       automatically activated when a client application accesses their IPC
       interfaces. This is configured in D-Bus service files (not to be
       confused with systemd service unit files!). To ensure that D-Bus uses
       systemd to start-up and maintain the daemon use the SystemdService=
       directive in these service files, to configure the matching systemd
       service for a D-Bus service. e.g.: for a D-Bus service whose D-Bus
       activation file is named org.freedesktop.RealtimeKit.service, make sure
       to set SystemdService=rtkit-daemon.service in that file, to bind it to
       the systemd service rtkit-daemon.service. This is needed to make sure
       that the daemon is started in a race-free fashion when activated via
       multiple mechanisms simultaneously.

   Device-Based Activation
       Often, daemons that manage a particular type of hardware should be
       activated only when the hardware of the respective kind is plugged in
       or otherwise becomes available. In a new-style init system it is
       possible to bind activation to hardware plug/unplug events. In systemd,
       kernel devices appearing in the sysfs/udev device tree can be exposed
       as units if they are tagged with the string "systemd". Like any other
       kind of unit they may then pull in other units when activated (i.e.
       Plugged in) and thus implement device-based activation. Systemd
       dependencies may be encoded in the udev database via the SYSTEMD_WANTS=
       property. See systemd.device(5) for details. Often it is nicer to pull
       in services from devices only indirectly via dedicated targets.
       Example: instead of pulling in bluetoothd.service from all the various
       bluetooth dongles and other hardware available, pull in
       bluetooth.target from them and bluetoothd.service from that target.
       This provides for nicer abstraction and gives administrators the option
       to enable bluetoothd.service via controlling a bluetooth.target.wants/
       symlink uniformly with a command like enable of systemctl(1) instead of
       manipulating the udev ruleset.

   Path-Based Activation
       Often, runtime of daemons processing spool files or directories (such
       as a printing system) can be delayed until these file system objects
       change state, or become non-empty. New-style init systems provide a way
       to bind service activation to file system changes. systemd implements
       this scheme via path-based activation configured in .path units, as
       outlined in systemd.path(5).

   Timer-Based Activation
       Some daemons that implement clean-up jobs that are intended to be
       executed in regular intervals benefit from timer-based activation. In
       systemd, this is implemented via .timer units, as described in
       systemd.timer(5).

   Other Forms of Activation
       Other forms of activation have been suggested and implemented in some
       systems. However, often there are simpler or better alternatives, or
       they can be put together of combinations of the schemes above. Example:
       sometimes it appears useful to start daemons or .socket units when a
       specific IP address is configured on a network interface, because
       network sockets shall be bound to the address. However, an alternative
       to implement this is by utilizing the Linux IP_FREEBIND socket option,
       as accessible via FreeBind=yes in systemd socket files (see
       systemd.socket(5) for details). This option, when enabled, allows
       sockets to be bound to a non-local, not configured IP address, and
       hence allows bindings to a particular IP address before it actually
       becomes available, making such an explicit dependency to the configured
       address redundant. Another often suggested trigger for service
       activation is low system load. However, here too, a more convincing
       approach might be to make proper use of features of the operating
       system: in particular, the CPU or IO scheduler of Linux. Instead of
       scheduling jobs from userspace based on monitoring the OS scheduler, it
       is advisable to leave the scheduling of processes to the OS scheduler
       itself. systemd provides fine-grained access to the CPU and IO
       schedulers. If a process executed by the init system shall not
       negatively impact the amount of CPU or IO bandwidth available to other
       processes, it should be configured with CPUSchedulingPolicy=idle and/or
       IOSchedulingClass=idle. Optionally, this may be combined with
       timer-based activation to schedule background jobs during runtime and
       with minimal impact on the system, and remove it from the boot phase
       itself.

INTEGRATION WITH SYSTEMD
   Writing Systemd Unit Files
       When writing systemd unit files, it is recommended to consider the
       following suggestions:

	1. If possible do not use the Type=forking setting in service files.
	   But if you do, make sure to set the PID file path using PIDFile=.
	   See systemd.service(5) for details.

	2. If your daemon registers a D-Bus name on the bus, make sure to use
	   Type=dbus in the service file if possible.

	3. Make sure to set a good human-readable description string with
	   Description=.

	4. Do not disable DefaultDependencies=, unless you really know what
	   you do and your unit is involved in early boot or late system
	   shutdown.

	5. Normally, little if any dependencies should need to be defined
	   explicitly. However, if you do configure explicit dependencies,
	   only refer to unit names listed on systemd.special(7) or names
	   introduced by your own package to keep the unit file operating
	   system-independent.

	6. Make sure to include an [Install] section including installation
	   information for the unit file. See systemd.unit(5) for details. To
	   activate your service on boot make sure to add a
	   WantedBy=multi-user.target or WantedBy=graphical.target directive.
	   To activate your socket on boot, make sure to add
	   WantedBy=sockets.target. Usually you also want to make sure that
	   when your service is installed your socket is installed too, hence
	   add Also=foo.socket in your service file foo.service, for a
	   hypothetical program foo.

   Installing Systemd Service Files
       At the build installation time (e.g.  make install during package
       build) packages are recommended to install their systemd unit files in
       the directory returned by pkg-config systemd
       --variable=systemdsystemunitdir (for system services), resp.
       pkg-config systemd --variable=systemduserunitdir (for user services).
       This will make the services available in the system on explicit request
       but not activate them automatically during boot. Optionally, during
       package installation (e.g.  rpm -i by the administrator) symlinks
       should be created in the systemd configuration directories via the
       enable command of the systemctl(1) tool, to activate them automatically
       on boot.

       Packages using autoconf(1) are recommended to use a configure script
       excerpt like the following to determine the unit installation path
       during source configuration:

	   PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG
	   AC_ARG_WITH([systemdsystemunitdir],
		   AS_HELP_STRING([--with-systemdsystemunitdir=DIR], [Directory for systemd service files]),
		   [], [with_systemdsystemunitdir=$($PKG_CONFIG --variable=systemdsystemunitdir systemd)])
	   if test "x$with_systemdsystemunitdir" != xno; then
		   AC_SUBST([systemdsystemunitdir], [$with_systemdsystemunitdir])
	   fi
	   AM_CONDITIONAL(HAVE_SYSTEMD, [test -n "$with_systemdsystemunitdir" -a "x$with_systemdsystemunitdir" != xno ])

       This snippet allows automatic installation of the unit files on systemd
       machines, and optionally allows their installation even on machines
       lacking systemd. (Modification of this snippet for the user unit
       directory is left as an exercise for the reader.)

       Additionally, to ensure that make distcheck continues to work, it is
       recommended to add the following to the top-level Makefile.am file in
       automake(1)-based projects:

	   DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS = \
		   --with-systemdsystemunitdir=$$dc_install_base/$(systemdsystemunitdir)

       Finally, unit files should be installed in the system with an automake
       excerpt like the following:

	   if HAVE_SYSTEMD
	   systemdsystemunit_DATA = \
		   foobar.socket \
		   foobar.service
	   endif

       In the rpm(8) .spec file use a snippet like the following to
       enable/disable the service during installation/deinstallation. Consult
       the packaging guidelines of your distribution for details and the
       equivalent for other package managers:

	   %post
	   if [ $1 -eq 1 ]; then
		   # On install (not upgrade), enable (but don't start) the
		   # units by default
		   /bin/systemctl enable foobar.service foobar.socket >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

		   # Alternatively, just call
		   # /bin/systemctl daemon-reload >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
		   # here, if the daemon should not be enabled by default on
		   # installation
	   fi

	   %preun
	   if [ $1 -eq 0 ]; then
		   # On uninstall (not upgrade), disable and stop the units
		   /bin/systemctl --no-reload disable foobar.service foobar.socket >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
		   /bin/systemctl stop foobar.service foobar.socket >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
	   fi

	   %postun
	   # Reload init system configuration, to make systemd honour changed
	   # or deleted unit files
	   /bin/systemctl daemon-reload >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
	   if [ $1 -ge 1 ] ; then
		   # On upgrade (not uninstall), optionally, restart the daemon
		   /bin/systemctl try-restart foobar.service >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
	   fi

       Depending on whether your service should or should not be
       started/stopped/restarted during package installation, deinstallation
       or upgrade, a different set of commands may be specified. See
       systemctl(1) for details.

       To facilitate upgrades from a package version that shipped only SysV
       init scripts to a package version that ships both a SysV init script
       and a native systemd service file, use a fragment like the following:

	   %triggerun -- foobar < 0.47.11-1
	   if /sbin/chkconfig --level 5 foobar ; then
		   /bin/systemctl --no-reload enable foobar.service foobar.socket >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
	   fi

       Where 0.47.11-1 is the first package version that includes the native
       unit file. This fragment will ensure that the first time the unit file
       is installed it will be enabled if and only if the SysV init script is
       enabled, thus making sure that the enable status is not changed. Note
       that chkconfig is a command specific to Fedora which can be used to
       check whether a SysV init script is enabled. Other operating systems
       will have to use different commands here.

PORTING EXISTING DAEMONS
       Since new-style init systems such as systemd are compatible with
       traditional SysV init systems it is not strictly necessary to port
       existing daemons to the new style. However doing so offers additional
       functionality to the daemons as well as simplifying integration into
       new-style init systems.

       To port an existing SysV compatible daemon the following steps are
       recommended:

	1. If not already implemented, add an optional command line switch to
	   the daemon to disable daemonization. This is useful not only for
	   using the daemon in new-style init systems, but also to ease
	   debugging.

	2. If the daemon offers interfaces to other software running on the
	   local system via local AF_UNIX sockets, consider implementing
	   socket-based activation (see above). Usually a minimal patch is
	   sufficient to implement this: Extend the socket creation in the
	   daemon code so that sd_listen_fds(3) is checked for already passed
	   sockets first. If sockets are passed (i.e. when sd_listen_fds()
	   returns a positive value), skip the socket creation step and use
	   the passed sockets. Secondly, ensure that the file-system socket
	   nodes for local AF_UNIX sockets used in the socket-based activation
	   are not removed when the daemon shuts down, if sockets have been
	   passed. Third, if the daemon normally closes all remaining open
	   file descriptors as part of its initialization, the sockets passed
	   from the init system must be spared. Since new-style init systems
	   guarantee that no left-over file descriptors are passed to executed
	   processes, it might be a good choice to simply skip the closing of
	   all remaining open file descriptors if sockets are passed.

	3. Write and install a systemd unit file for the service (and the
	   sockets if socket-based activation is used, as well as a path unit
	   file, if the daemon processes a spool directory), see above for
	   details.

	4. If the daemon exposes interfaces via D-Bus, write and install a
	   D-Bus activation file for the service, see above for details.

SEE ALSO
       systemd(1), sd-daemon(7), sd_listen_fds(3), sd_notify(3), daemon(3),
       systemd.service(5)

AUTHOR
       Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>
	   Developer

NOTES
	1. LSB recommendations for SysV init scripts
	   http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.1.1/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/iniscrptact.html

	2. Apple MacOS X Daemon Requirements
	   http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Articles/LaunchOnDemandDaemons.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001762-104738

systemd				  03/16/2012			     DAEMON(7)
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