Fix Ghost init script not starting automatically in FreeBSD jail

I've been redoing the infrastructure for the web servers here at the bennett project—migrating from Ubuntu 12.04 to FreeBSD 11. I've shared the reasons for that elsewhere. Today I wanted to document an issue I ran into when setting up the Ghost blogging platform inside a FreeBSD Jail.

I wanted the ghost application to start automatically on boot; to do this I needed to create a custom FreeBSD init script. I found some examples of FreeBSD init scripts for ghost online and modified a few to suit my purposes.

After I was done this is what my init script looked like:

#!/bin/sh

# PROVIDE: ghost
# KEYWORD: shutdown

PATH="/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin"

. /etc/rc.subr

name="ghost"
rcvar="ghost_enable"
extra_commands="status"
load_rc_config ${name}
: ${ghost_enable:="NO"}

status_cmd="ghost_status"
start_cmd="ghost_start"
stop_cmd="ghost_stop"
restart_cmd="ghost_restart"

ghost="/usr/local/www/ghost"

ghost_start() {
su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production forever start -al $ghost/ghost.log $ghost/index.js"
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 start $ghost/index.js --name $name"
}
ghost_stop() {
su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production forever stop $ghost/index.js"
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 stop $name"
}

ghost_status() {
su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production forever list"
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 list"
}

ghost_restart() {
ghost_stop;
ghost_start;
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 restart $name"
}

run_rc_command "$1"

After testing it out using service ghost start I rebooted the jail, but my service didn't start up. After much searching around on the internet I did not find a solution. That's when I decided to Read The FreeBSD Manual for RC scripting.

Turns out I needed to add # REQUIRE: LOGIN cleanvar to the init script in order to get the service started the way I wanted. The final ghost init script then, looked like this:

#!/bin/sh

# PROVIDE: ghost
# REQUIRE: LOGIN cleanvar
# KEYWORD: shutdown

PATH="/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin"

. /etc/rc.subr

name="ghost"
rcvar="ghost_enable"
extra_commands="status"
load_rc_config ${name}
: ${ghost_enable:="NO"}

status_cmd="ghost_status"
start_cmd="ghost_start"
stop_cmd="ghost_stop"
restart_cmd="ghost_restart"

ghost="/usr/local/www/ghost"

ghost_start() {
su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production forever start -al $ghost/ghost.log $ghost/index.js"
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 start $ghost/index.js --name $name"
}
ghost_stop() {
su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production forever stop $ghost/index.js"
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 stop $name"
}

ghost_status() {
su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production forever list"
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 list"
}

ghost_restart() {
ghost_stop;
ghost_start;
#su ghost -c "NODE_ENV=production pm2 restart $name"
}

run_rc_command "$1"

FreeBSD has good documentation. When in doubt, always read the FreeBSD manuals.

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