🔄 service

Manage system services — start, stop, enable, disable, restart, reload.

⚡ Actions

Action	Description
`:nothing`	Do nothing (default) — use with notifications
`:start`	Start the service (only if not running)
`:stop`	Stop the service (only if running)
`:restart`	Restart the service (always runs)
`:reload`	Reload the service config (only if running)
`:enable`	Enable the service at boot (only if not enabled)
`:disable`	Disable the service at boot (only if enabled)

⚠️ Note: The default action is :nothing, not :start. This is intentional — services are typically used as notification targets. You must explicitly set action if you want the service to start/enable.

📋 Attributes

Attribute	Type	Default	Description
`name`	String	Resource name	Service name (auto-set from resource name)
`provider`	Symbol	—	Service provider (`:systemd`, `:upstart`, etc.)

💡 When provider is set, Itamae appends _under_<provider> to all specinfra method calls. For example, with provider :systemd, it calls check_service_is_running_under_systemd instead of check_service_is_running.

🔍 How It Works

Query — Checks if the service is currently running and enabled
Compare — Determines which state changes are needed
Execute — Runs only the necessary operations:
- :start and :stop are conditional (check state first)
- :restart always runs unconditionally
- :reload only runs if the service is currently running
- :enable and :disable are conditional (check state first)

🔬 Dry-Run Behavior

Running and enabled states are queried from the system. You see which services would start, stop, enable, or disable. No service state changes are applied.

📖 Examples

Enable and start a service

service 'nginx' do
  action [:enable, :start]
end

Restart on configuration change

service 'nginx' do
  action :nothing
end

template '/etc/nginx/nginx.conf' do
  source 'nginx.conf.erb'
  notifies :restart, 'service[nginx]'
end

Use a specific provider

service 'myapp' do
  provider :systemd
  action [:enable, :start]
end

Stop and disable

service 'apache2' do
  action [:stop, :disable]
end

Reload without restart (via subscribes)

service 'nginx' do
  action :nothing
  subscribes :reload, 'template[/etc/nginx/conf.d/app.conf]'
end

Multiple actions in sequence

service 'app' do
  action [:enable, :start]
end

💡 Actions in an array are executed in order. [:enable, :start] first enables the service, then starts it.