Systemctl – service exit codes and status information explanation

systemd

When checking a service status via systemctl

systemctl status docker

the output is something like

● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
  Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2018-03-19 13:52:21 CST; 4min 32s ago
  Docs: https://docs.docker.com
  Process: 6001 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// (code=exited, status=205/LIMITS)
  Main PID: 6001 (code=exited, status=205/LIMITS)

The question is about the part in bold: the main process exit code and status information.
Is there a list of all the codes and statuses along with their explanation ?

^{I know that most times it's self-explanatory (and I know the answer to the question here) but lately we get this question a lot at work (some people search via google but can't find it, other people open the systemd.service man page, search for e.g. code 203 and don't find it…) so I thought I might as well put it here so it's easier for people to find the answer via google.}

Best Answer

Yes, but only since 2017 when Jan Synacek finally documented them in the systemd manual. Your work colleagues are simply reading the wrong page of the manual. ☺

Environment="USER=ubuntu" "Path=/home/ubuntu/console/bin" 
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/console/bin
ExecStart=/bin/sh -ec "exec /sbin/start-stop-daemon -S -c ${USER} -d ${Path} --pidfile=/var/run/console.pid --oknodo  --exec consoleExecutable " #2>/dev/null
ExecStop=/bin/sh -ec "exec /sbin/start-stop-daemon -K --quiet -c ${USER} -d ${Path} --pidfile=/var/run/console.pid  --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --oknodo --exec consoleExecutable" #2>/dev/null

This is almost worthy of the systemd House of Horror. Were it not the case that there's a horror story already in there that does this.

Do not use start-stop-daemon in a service unit to do all of the things that a service unit already does. With unnecessary PID files and the wrongheaded assumption that ExecStart accepts shell syntax comments, no less.

And do not do what the other answer says and try to bodge it with Type=forking. That makes things worse, not better.

The nonsense with start-stop-daemon is why things are going wrong. Because the process running start-stop-daemon does not become the service, but in fact exits pretty much imediately, systemd is thinking that your service is terminating. In your first systemctl status output, you can see that systemd is in the middle of sending SIGTERM to clean up all left-over running processes after running the ExecStop action, which is what it does when it thinks that a service has terminated.

Just do things simply:

Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/console/bin
User=ubuntu
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/console/bin/consoleExecutable

No ExecStop nor Environment is actually required.

Systemctl – service exit codes and status information explanation

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