Bug 1332071

Summary: RFE: systemctl could be verbose while starting/restarting a service
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Pavan <pbhat>
Component: systemdAssignee: systemd-maint
Status: CLOSED UPSTREAM QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 23CC: johannbg, lnykryn, msekleta, muadda, sdharane, s, systemd-maint, zbyszek
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OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2016-05-02 12:11:19 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Pavan 2016-05-02 04:47:13 UTC
Description of problem:
While restarting a service, if there is a error/exception thrown while stopping it, and start up is clean, the user is left to wonder if the service restart was successful indeed.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Fedora 23

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Restart polkit service


Additional info:

### As seen below, restarting polkit threw some exceptions onto the screen and i was wondering if the service restart was successful. I felt it would be better to have a message like service start up successful.

[root@dhcp35-202 ~]# systemctl restart polkit
PolicyKit daemon disconnected from the bus.
We are no longer a registered authentication agent.
[root@dhcp35-202 ~]# 


[root@dhcp35-202 ~]# systemctl status polkit
● polkit.service - Authorization Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/polkit.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2016-05-02 09:02:42 IST; 1h 5min ago
     Docs: man:polkit(8)
 Main PID: 1082 (polkitd)
   CGroup: /system.slice/polkit.service
           └─1082 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd --no-debug
...
[root@dhcp35-202 ~]#

I tried searching why systemctl restart/start is made quiet, could not find any docs or any other previous enancement requests. Please advice.

Comment 1 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek 2016-05-02 12:11:19 UTC
systemctl follows the general unix principle of silent success, and doesn't print anything unless there was a problem. In addition, operations like start and restart are asynchronous (depending on the unit type). There have been various requests to add monitoring, [1] is currently open upstream. I'll close this, because it's a non trivial issue that should be implemented upstream. Nobody is working on that currently, and an (external) patch would be very welcome.

[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/1287