Problem starting a service running Debian

Question

I want to run a UPNP renderer as a service on a Raspberry Pi using Raspian, a Debian based distro. Actually, everything runs fine but one thing : I can't manage to start the service at boot time at the right time. To me, it looks that it starts too early before the wifi connection has been established. As a result, the renderer can't be seen on the network. If I manually stop the service and restart it, it works fine.

As root, I run the following command to create the service :

update-rc.d gmediarender defaults

but links are created like S02gmediarender and the wifi manager is S03wicd so after unregistering gmediarender, I tried :

update-rc.d gmediarender defaults 99

but the result is just the same.

Originally, my script was :

#!/bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: gmediarender
# Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start GMediaRender at boot time
# Description: Start GMediaRender at boot time.
### END INIT INFO

USER=root
HOME=/root
export USER HOME
case "$1" in
    start)
        echo "Starting GMediaRender"
        start-stop-daemon -x /usr/local/bin/gmediarender -c pi:audio -S -- -f "Raspberry" -d
        ;;
    stop)
        echo "Stopping GMediaRender"
        start-stop-daemon -x /usr/local/bin/gmediarender -K
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/gmediarender {start|stop}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

i tried to remove the header part but it didn't help. Thanks for your help :-)

After adding the $network dependency, I issued the update-rc.d command with (and then without) the -n option :

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo update-rc.d -n gmediarender defaults 99
update-rc.d: using dependency based boot sequencing
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc0.d/K01gmediarender
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc1.d/K01gmediarender
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc2.d/S02gmediarender
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc3.d/S02gmediarender
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc4.d/S02gmediarender
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc5.d/S02gmediarender
insserv: enable service ../init.d/gmediarender -> /etc/init.d/../rc6.d/K01gmediarender
insserv: dryrun, not creating .depend.boot, .depend.start, and .depend.stop
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ 

Here's my rc2.d disrectory : I wonder if network-manager and wicd are not redundant and may interfere and cause trouble ?

pi@raspberrypi /etc/rc2.d $ ll
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  17 oct.  28 23:43 K01lightdm -> ../init.d/lightdm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  20 mars  16 19:20 K06nfs-common -> ../init.d/nfs-common
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  17 mars  16 19:20 K06rpcbind -> ../init.d/rpcbind
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 677 févr.  8 01:26 README
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  18 oct.  28 22:56 S01bootlogs -> ../init.d/bootlogs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  17 oct.  28 23:27 S01ifplugd -> ../init.d/ifplugd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  14 oct.  28 22:56 S01motd -> ../init.d/motd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  17 oct.  28 23:27 S01rsyslog -> ../init.d/rsyslog
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  14 mars  16 17:50 S01sudo -> ../init.d/sudo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  22 oct.  28 23:27 S01triggerhappy -> ../init.d/triggerhappy
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  14 oct.  28 23:27 S02cron -> ../init.d/cron
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  14 oct.  28 23:27 S02dbus -> ../init.d/dbus
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  24 oct.  28 23:28 S02dphys-swapfile -> ../init.d/dphys-swapfile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  22 mars  30 21:38 S02gmediarender -> ../init.d/gmediarender
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  13 oct.  28 23:27 S02ntp -> ../init.d/ntp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  15 mars  16 18:00 S02rsync -> ../init.d/rsync
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  13 oct.  28 23:59 S02ssh -> ../init.d/ssh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  22 mars  16 21:25 S03avahi-daemon -> ../init.d/avahi-daemon
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  19 mars  16 18:47 S03bluetooth -> ../init.d/bluetooth
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  25 mars  16 18:48 S03network-manager -> ../init.d/network-manager
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  14 mars  23 15:09 S03wicd -> ../init.d/wicd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  20 mars  16 19:20 S04pulseaudio -> ../init.d/pulseaudio
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  18 mars  16 19:20 S05rc.local -> ../init.d/rc.local
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  19 mars  16 19:20 S05rmnologin -> ../init.d/rmnologin
pi@raspberrypi /etc/rc2.d $ 

A new try : I tried to rename /etc/rc2.d/S02gmediarender as /etc/rc2.d/S06gmediarender Same problem : after reboot, the service isn't visible on the network.

Finally: I went in another direction : getting the problem simpler as I suspected that wicd and network-manager were probably interfering with each other. So I got rid of the two of them and configured /etc/network/interfaces so the RPI simply connect to my wifi access point. The KISS effect : Keep it simple, stupid ;-) Without the wifi managers overhead and after a reboot, the GMediaRenderer is now available on my network.

Solution

Modern Debian uses a dependency-based init system. The dependencies are defined in the LSB header you have at the top of the init script. You need to define a dependency on $network:

# Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog $network
# Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog $network

Comments

[ott--]

If you omit the 99, does it create the script with S20... then? What version of Debian is that?

[Sun Wukong]

When I omitted the 99, the scripts were created with S02 and the network manager(s) were like S03. I got rid of them and it is now fine. Raspian is a Debian based distro for the €25 Raspberry computer

[hildred]

possible duplicate of Creating a shutdown only script with update-rc.d

[Sun Wukong]

thanks for your help. I added the $network dependency, issued the update-rc.d gmediarender defaults command and rebooted. But unfortunatly after reboot, the service is up (like before) but the renderer isn't seen on the network (as it is if I restart it manually). Here's a trace I made :