docker systemctl replacement

This script may be used to overwrite "/usr/bin/systemctl".
It will execute the systemctl commands without SystemD!

This is used to test deployment of services with a docker container as the target host. Just as on a real machine you can use "systemctl start" and "systemctl enable" and other commands to bring up services for further configuration and testing. Information from "systemctl show" allows deployment automation tools to work seamlessly.

This script can also be run as docker-init of a docker container (i.e. the main "CMD" on PID 1) where it will automatically bring up all enabled services in the "multi-user.target" and where it will reap all zombies from background processes in the container. When running a "docker stop" on such a container it will also bring down all configured services correctly before exit.

## docker exec lamp-stack-container systemctl list-units --state=running
httpd.service     loaded active running   The Apache HTTP Server
mariadb.service   loaded active running   MariaDB database server

## docker exec lamp-stack-container pstree -ap
systemctl,1 /usr/bin/systemctl
  |-httpd,7 -DFOREGROUND
  |   |-httpd,9 -DFOREGROUND
  |   |-httpd,10 -DFOREGROUND
  `-mysqld_safe,44 /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --basedir=/usr
      `-mysqld,187 --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql
          |-{mysqld},191
          |-{mysqld},192

Problems with SystemD in Docker

The background for this script is the inability to run a SystemD daemon easily inside a docker container. There have been multiple workarounds with varying complexity and actual functionality. (The systemd-nsspawn tool is supposed to help with running systemd in a container but only rkt with CoreOs is using it so far).

Most people have come to take the easy path and to create a startup shell script for the docker container that will bring up the service processes one by one. Essentially one would read the documentation or the SystemD *.service scripts of the application to see how that would be done. By using this replacement script a programmer can skip that step.

Service Manager

The systemctl-replacement script does cover the functionality of a service manager where commands like systemctl start xx are executed. This is achieved by parsing the *.service files that are installed by the standard application packages (rpm, deb) in the container. These service unit descriptors define the actual commands to start/stop a service in their ExecStart/ExecStop settings.

When installing systemctl.py as /usr/bin/systemctl in a container then it provides enough functionality that deployment scripts for virtual machines continue to work unchanged when trying to start/stop, enable/disable or mask/unmask a service in a container.

This is also true for deployment tools like Ansible. As of version 2.0 and later Ansible is able to connect to docker containers directly without the help of a ssh-daemon in the container. Just make your inventory look like

[frontend]
my_frontend_1 ansible_connection=docker

Based on that ansible_connection one can enable the systemctl-replacement to intercept subsequent calls to "service:" steps. Effectively Ansible scripts that shall be run on real virtual machines can be tested with docker containers. However in newer centos/ubuntu images you need to check for python first.

- copy: src="files/docker/systemctl.py" dest="/usr/bin/systemctl"
- package: name="python"
- file: name="/run/systemd/system/" state="directory"
- service: name="dbus.service" state="stopped"

See SERVICE-MANAGER for more details.