I want to generate a debian package, to install a (webserver) application, running as a service. I now have a package, with only a few warning from lintian (I have left aside the confmodule for later) I am able to install it and it runs as wanted on the target machine. However I frequently run into issues if the init.d scripts need to be updated, as I'm still in a development phase. Thus, I suspect I am not doing the things right.
(Some more details on my case: It is to be installed on a debian11 machine with no network access, thus whl and dependencies are also included in the deb package. Also I want the service to be run as a system user I create during install)
Here is what I have so far:
repository/
- debian/
- DEBIAN/
- conffiles
- config
- control
- postinst
- postrm
- preinst
- prerm
- templates
- etc/my_app/my_app.conf
- etc/init.d/my_app
- lib/systemd/system/my_app.service
- usr/lib/my_app/whl/
(... some python whl to load into the virtualenv ...)
- share/doc/my_app/copyright
- my_app/
- scriptA.sh
- scriptB.sh
- scriptC.sh
(... stuff ...)
- debianbuildscript.sh
- readme
- changelog.Debian
debian build script:
copy needed files from ./my*app to ./debian/usr/lib/my_*app/
Copy and gzip the changelog to ./debian/usr/share/doc/my_app/
Change directories permissions to 755
then
fakeroot dpkg-deb --build debian
In conffiles:
/etc/init.d/gozer
/etc/gozer/gozer.conf
From what I read, it is not necessary as debian treats everything below /etc as configuration files, but for the matter of avoiding implicit, I have declared them here. Anyway, this is part of my problem.
my_app.service:
[Unit]
Description=my super application
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/etc/init.d/my_app start
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
lintian complains here that I should not be calling the init.d script. But I m not sure of what I should do instead?
/etc/init.d/my_app:
Essentially retrieving environment variables, reading the myapp.conf file and running myapp/script{A,B,C}.sh as the system user 'my_app', created by preinst script, depending on var $1.
(For example, to start: )
d_start()
{
if [ -f $RUNFILES_PATH/$MYAPP_SITE.pid ]; then
echo -n " already running"
else
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet \
--pidfile $RUNFILES_PATH/$MYAPP_SITE.pid \
--chuid $RUN_AS --chdir $SITE_PATH/$MYAPP_SITE\
--exec $SITE_PATH/$MYAPP_SITE/runserver.sh
fi
}
My problem:
When I remove or update the package with a newer version: /etc/init.d/my_app is left unchanged. (as it is considered a configuration file, that sounds quite strange to me as they are essentially init scripts ?)
Only way is to force install it, with
rm /etc/init.d/my_app
dpkg -i --forceconfmiss ./my_app_X.Y-Z.deb
It does not feel right, any suggestion of improvement ?
a way to tag the init.d file as not a configuration file perhaps ?
What about my current service configuration ?
