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I'm working on a Docker container built on Phusion's baseimage which needs to have a number of services only started on demand. I'd like these services to remain as runit services, I'd just like them to not automatically start on boot.

As seen in their documentation, you can easily add a service by creating a folder in /etc/service with the name of your service, ie: /etc/service/jboss. Next, you must create and chmod +x a file in that service directory called run which will execute the startup of your service.

How can I do this and ensure that the service will not start on boot? The goal is still to be able to do sv start jboss, but to not have it start on boot.

Naftuli Kay
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  • I don't know if you are not looking for this, but you can add the services as classic sysvinit in `/etc/init.d/` and then use inside the container `service start` whenever you want. – Javier Cortejoso Jan 31 '15 at 09:31

3 Answers3

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Add your services to /etc/sv/<SERVICE_NAME>/ and add the run executable just like you are doing now. When you are ready to run the service, simply symlink it to /etc/service and runit will pick it up and start running it automatically.

Here's a short (non-optimized) Dockerfile that shows a disabled service and an enabled service. The enabled service will start at Docker run. The disabled service will not start until it is symlinked to /etc/service, at which time runit will start it within five seconds.

FROM phusion/baseimage

RUN mkdir /etc/sv/disabled_service
ADD disabled_service.sh /etc/sv/disabled_service/run
RUN chmod 700 /etc/sv/disabled_service/run

RUN mkdir /etc/sv/enabled_service
ADD enabled_service.sh /etc/sv/enabled_service/run
RUN chmod 700 /etc/sv/enabled_service/run
RUN ln -s /etc/sv/enabled_service /etc/service/enabled_service

CMD ["/sbin/my_init"]
Matt Barlow
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  • The runit documentation doesn't clearly mention it, but I think of this as the standard way to do this. Generally you should not store your runit services directly in /etc/service and should instead symlink them in so you can enable/disable them. – Gordon Seidoh Worley Jul 27 '18 at 19:22
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With phusion/baseimage:0.9.17 (not sure in which version it was introduced) you can bake RUN touch /etc/service/jboss/down in your Dockerfile. It prevents the runit from starting it on boot and you're still able to sv start jboss later.

Rafael Kassner
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I'm looking at exactly the same problem (when running Cassandra in a container) and I haven't found a clean answer. Here are the two hacky ways I've come up with.

-Have an early runlevel script that moves a file in and out of run depending on whether you want something to start at boot.

-(mis)Use one of the service control commands for runit to actually start your service and use a dummy run command to bypass the automatic start.

Both methods are clearly less than ideal, but they've worked for some purposes.

user187595
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  • You might be able to play with the permissions too. ie: `chmod -x run` to prevent start, then `chmod +x run` to enable start. – Naftuli Kay May 05 '15 at 18:45