F15: Cannot start mediatomb (systemd)

[trojanfoe]

Hi there, I am trying to start mediatomb, however it won't run (not in 'ps' listing) but no error messages or log files are generated. If I add 'set -x' to /etc/init.d/mediatomb I don't see any additional output when using 'service mediatomb start' and, in fact, I don't see any of the output from echo statements in the init.d file either. Does systemd suppress output from /etc/init.d files? Is there a way of getting additional info when trying to start a service?

Attached are my /etc/mediatomb.conf and /etc/mediatomb/config.xml files (I know the config.xml file is OK as I've been using it for years on previous machines).

Cheers,
Andy

[trojanfoe]

I finally managed to get this working by explicitly turning off the use of systemctl/systemd from within /etc/init.d/mediatomb by setting the following environment variable before including /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions:

SYSTEMCTL_SKIP_REDIRECT=1

If this variable is not set then systemctl tries to start 'mediatomb.service' which it seems to think has succeeded. , even though it doesn't exist.

[jpollard]

Success from systemd's point of view is the exit status of the script.

If it exits with a 0, systemd assumes it started normally.

[trojanfoe]

Why is systemctl/systemd even involved with mediatomb when all the functionality to start and stop it is within /etc/init.d/mediatomb?

[jpollard]

Because that is what the systemd developers decided.

systemd tries to do everything - inetd, system initialization, process monitoring, process restart, system shutdown, network monitoring...

And in my opinion misses the boat. It looses logs, it overintegrates all system functioning into a monolithic blob making it hard to operate non-systemd processes.