Use runit to supervise Linux services

by Vincent Danen
Traditional Linux systems use SysV init for starting the system: running init scripts to start and stop services and
also to manage system runlevels and one-time startup scripts. The problem with using a SysV init system is that
services are also treated as one-time startup scripts. When init starts the system and calls a service, such as sshd, the
service will start; but if sshd dies for some reason, it will remain down until an administrator issues a service sshd
start command to restart the service.
This can be mitigated to some degree by starting services like sshd directly from /etc/inittab, similar to getties for
login. All the console logins are separate getties, and init restarts them when users log out. Running all services out
of /etc/inittab has its own shortcomings, however, as they cannot be easily stopped without rebooting.
Gerrit Pape's runit is similar to djb's daemontools and allows you to run supervised services, like daemontools, and
also allows you to replace SysV init completely if you so desire.
Some distributions provide runit, some do not. If your chosen distribution does not, runit is easy to download and
compile.
runit can still be used without replacing init and it works just fine, with minimal effort. To begin, create a script
called /sbin/runsvdir-start with the following:
#!/bin/sh

PATH=/command:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X11R6
/bin

exec env - PATH=$PATH \

runsvdir -P /service 'log:
.....................................................................................
.....................................................................................
.....................................................................................
.....................................................................................
.......................................................'
This is the script that init will start. What it does is call the runsvdir program on the /service directory; this is the
directory where all supervised services will be linked in order to tell runsvdir what to manage.
Next, edit /etc/inittab and add:
SV:123456:respawn:/sbin/runsvdir-start
to the bottom of the file. This will start (and re-start, if it ever exits) the /sbin/runsvdir-start program.
Next, you need to create run scripts for supervised services. This is quite easy; a number of run scripts can be found
on the runit Web site. For instance, to create a supervised sshd, create the directory /var/service/sshd and inside it
create a file called ./run; this is the run script. It should have the following contents:
#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/sbin/sshd -D >/dev/null 2>&1
Make sure the run script is mode 0750 so that it is executable. Next, create a symbolic link of /var/service/sshd into
the /service directory:
# cd /service
# ln -s /var/service/sshd .
Within a few seconds, runsvdir will notice the new symbolic link, create any control files that are required, and will
execute the ./run script. If the script terminates, runsvdir will re-execute the ./run script until told to stop. The sv
program can control services; using sv start /service/sshd will bring up the service (if down), and sv stop
/service/sshd will stop the service. Otherwise, runsvdir will always ensure the service is up.
Obviously there is a lot more to using supervised services; you can create logging services that will take the output
of the service and write it to log files. In the above example we simply redirected the output to /dev/null, letting sshd
log to syslog instead. In that case, a log service is not necessary, but on any service that has output, be it to stderr or
stdout, a logging service can be used to capture and log it, regardless of whether it logs to syslog as well. We'll take
a look at logging services next week.