On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 08:50:54PM -0800, whitivery wrote:
It is a system with several servers (various platforms/distros).
One piece of software runs on all of the servers. For it to operate correctly, the instance on one server (prime) must start before the others (auxiliary).
So a boot delay is added (via a script sourced from initscript, which first waits for network to come up) to set the boot delay values for each server - prime at 0, others at some other value of 15 to 110 seconds depending on platform.
But when it is necessary to manipulate the service interactively via the "service" command, the boot delay needs to be bypassed.
Well, the first thing I'd do is make the service wait for the network to be online. In the [Unit] section add Wants=network-online.target.
Secondly, I'd try to find a way for the auxiliary services to ping the prime service to ensure its up, and make that script a ExecStartPre entry in the [Service] section. You'll want to adjust the TimeoutStartSec in case it might exceed the DefaultTimeoutStartSec in /etc/systemd/system.conf, which is 90 seconds.