SMF_METHOD(7) Standards, Environments, and Macros SMF_METHOD(7)

smf_method — service management framework conventions for methods

The class of services managed by svc.startd(8) in the service management framework, smf(7), consists of applications that fit a simple fork(2)-exec(2) model. The svc.startd(8) master daemon and other restarters support the fork(2)-exec(2) model, potentially with additional capabilities. The svc.startd(8) daemon and other restarters require that the methods which activate, manipulate, or examine a service instance follow the conventions described in this manual page.

The form of a method invocation is not dictated by convention. In some cases, a method invocation might consist of the direct invocation of the daemon or other binary executable that provides the service. For cases in which an executable script or other mediating executable is used, the convention recommends the form:

/path/to/method_executable abbr_method_name

The abbr_method_name used for the recommended form is a supported method such as start or stop. The set of methods supported by a restarter is given on the related restarter page. The svc.startd(8) daemon supports start, stop, and refresh methods.

A restarter might define other kinds of methods beyond those referenced in this page. The conventions surrounding such extensions are defined by the restarter and might not be identical to those given here.

The restarter provides four environment variables to the method that determine the context in which the method is invoked.

The service fault management resource identifier (FMRI) of the instance for which the method is invoked.
The full name of the method being invoked, such as start or stop.
The service FMRI of the restarter that invokes the method
The name of the zone in which the method is running. This can also be obtained by using the zonename(1) command.

These variables should be removed from the environment prior to the invocation of any persistent process by the method. A convenience shell function, (), is given for service authors who use Bourne-compatible shell scripting to compose service methods in the include file described below.

The method context can cause other environment variables to be set as described below.

A method is defined minimally by three properties in a property group of type method.

These properties are:

(astring)
Method executable string.
(count)
Number of seconds before method times out. See the Timeouts section for more detail.
(astring)
Method type. Currently always set to method.

A Method Context can be defined to further refine the execution environment of the method. See the Method Context section for more information. If no Method Context is present then the service is started as root, with user ID and group ID set to 0 and full privileges in effect, and in the system root directory, /. However, if a Method Context is used then the defaults described below in Method Context apply. Note that in particular, for services started as root, this may cause a change of working directory to /root.

When defined in the exec string of the method by the restarter svc.startd(8), a set of tokens are parsed and expanded with appropriate value. Other restarters might not support method tokens. For example, the delegated restarter for inet services, inetd(8), does support the following method expansions.

%
Name of the restarter, such as
The full name of the method being invoked, such as start or stop.
Name of the service
Name of the instance
FMRI of the instance
Value(s) of a property. The might be a property FMRI, a property group name and a property name separated by a /, or a property name in the property group. These values can be followed by a , (comma) or : (colon). If present, the separators are used to separate multiple values. If absent, a space is used. The following shell metacharacters encountered in string values are quoted with a \ (backslash):

; & ( ) | ^ < > newline space tab \ " ' `

An invalid expansion constitutes method failure.

Two explicit tokens can be used in the place of method commands.

[-signal]
Sends the specified signal, which is SIGTERM by default, to all processes in the primary instance contract. Always returns SMF_EXIT_OK. This token should be used to replace common pkill(1) invocations.
Always returns SMF_EXIT_OK. This token should be used for methods that are required by the restarter but which are unnecessary for the particular service implementation.

The required behavior of a start method is to delay exiting until the service instance is ready to answer requests or is otherwise functional.

The following exit status codes are defined in <libscf.h> and in the shell support file.

Method exited, performing its operation successfully.
Method exited successfully but purposefully leaves no processes remaining in the contract; it should be treated as if it had a transient service model.
Method failed fatally and is irrecoverable without administrative intervention.
Unrecoverable configuration error. A common condition that returns this exit status is the absence of required configuration files for an enabled service instance.
Method encountered some problems; the service may not be fully functional.
Method has been mistakenly invoked outside the smf(7) facility. Services that depend on smf(7) capabilities should exit with this status value in that situation.
Method requires a form of permission such as file access, privilege, authorization, or other credential that is not available when invoked.
Method requests that the service instance be temporarily disabled. This is honoured only for start methods. A method may use this when it determines that the service should not run in the current environment. The disable does not persist across a reboot, so the method runs again on the next boot in case the condition that prompted it has since cleared. The instance can also be re-enabled at any time using svcadm(8). This is equivalent to the service running ‘svcadm disable -t’ on itself, but is performed atomically by the restarter. See () below for a convenient way to record the reason for the disable.
non-zero Any non-zero exit status from a method is treated as an unknown error. A series of unknown errors can be diagnosed as a fault by the restarter or on behalf of the restarter.

Use of a precise exit code allows the responsible restarter to categorize an error response as likely to be intermittent and worth pursuing restart or permanent and request administrative intervention.

Each method can have an independent timeout, given in seconds. The choice of a particular timeout should be based on site expectations for detecting a method failure due to non-responsiveness. Sites with replicated filesystems or other failover resources can elect to lengthen method timeouts from the default. Sites with no remote resources can elect to shorten the timeouts. Method timeout is specified by the timeout_seconds property.

If you specify a timeout_seconds of 0 for a method, it declares to the restarter that there is no timeout for the service. This setting is not preferred, but is available for services that absolutely require it.

-1 is also accepted, but is a deprecated specification.

A set of environment variables that define the above exit status values is provided with convenience shell functions in the file /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh. This file is a Bourne shell script suitable for inclusion via the source operator in any Bourne-compatible shell.

To assist in the composition of scripts that can serve as SMF methods as well as /etc/init.d scripts, the () shell function is provided. If the smf(7) facility is not available, smf_present() returns a non-zero exit status.

One possible structure for such a script follows:

if smf_present; then
	# Shell code to run application as managed service
	...
	smf_clear_env
else
	# Shell code to run application as /etc/init.d script
	...
fi

This example shows the use of both convenience functions that are provided.

The () function records a human-readable reason for the action a method is taking and then exits with the provided exit_status:

smf_method_exit exit_status reason

It is intended for use with SMF_EXIT_TEMP_DISABLE. The reason is stored in the property of the instance, the same property used by the -c option of svcadm(8), and is displayed by svcs(1) in the -x and -l output while the instance remains disabled. Like the temporary disable itself, this property does not persist across a reboot and is removed automatically when the instance is re-enabled.

The service management facility offers a common mechanism to set the context in which the fork(2)-exec(2) model services execute.

The desired method context should be provided by the service developer. All service instances should run with the lowest level of privileges possible to limit potential security compromises.

A method context can contain the following properties:

A boolean that specifies whether the profile should be used instead of the user, group, privileges, and limit_privileges properties.
Environment variables to insert into the environment of the method, in the form of a number of NAME=value strings.
The name of an RBAC (role-based access control) profile which, along with the method executable, identifies an entry in exec_attr(5).
The user ID in numeric or text form.
The group ID in numeric or text form.
An optional string that specifies the supplemental group memberships by ID, in numeric or text form.
An optional string specifying the privilege set as defined in privileges(7).
An optional string specifying the limit privilege set as defined in privileges(7).
The home directory from which to launch the method. :home can be used as a token to indicate the home directory of the user whose uid is used to launch the method. If the property is unset, the default depends on the presence of the use_profile, profile, user, and group properties. If any of these are set then :home is used, otherwise the method starts in the root directory, /.
The security flags to apply when launching the method. See security-flags(7).

The “default” keyword specifies those flags specified in svc:/system/process-security. The “all” keyword enables all flags, the “none” keyword enables no flags. The “current” keyword specifies the current flags. Flags may be added by specifying their name (optionally preceded by ‘+’), and removed by preceding their name with ‘-’.

Use of “all” has associated risks, as future versions of the system may include further flags which may harm poorly implemented software.

An optional string that specifies the corefile pattern to use for the service, as per coreadm(8). Most restarters supply a default. Setting this property overrides local customizations to the global core pattern.
The project ID in numeric or text form. :default can be used as a token to indicate a project identified by getdefaultproj(3PROJECT) for the user whose uid is used to launch the method.
The resource pool name on which to launch the method. :default can be used as a token to indicate the pool specified in the project(5) entry given in the project attribute above.

The method context can be set for the entire service instance by specifying a property group for the service or instance. A method might override the instance method context by providing the method context properties on the method property group.

Invalid method context settings always lead to failure of the method, with the exception of invalid environment variables that issue warnings.

In addition to the context defined above, many fork(2)-exec(2) model restarters also use the following conventions when invoking executables as methods:

The arguments in are set consistently with the result of of the exec string.
File descriptor 0 is /dev/null. File descriptors and are recommended to be a per-service log file.

/lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh
Definitions of exit status values.
/usr/include/libscf.h
Definitions of exit status codes.

svcs(1), zonename(1), exec(2), fork(2), getdefaultproj(3PROJECT), exec_attr(5), project(5), service_bundle(5), attributes(7), privileges(7), rbac(7), security-flags(7), smf(7), smf_bootstrap(7), zones(7), coreadm(8), inetd(8), svc.startd(8), svcadm(8), svccfg(8)

The present version of smf(7) does not support multiple repositories.

When a service is configured to be started as root but with privileges different from limit_privileges, the resulting process is privilege aware. This can be surprising to developers who expect seteuid(<non-zero UID>) to reduce privileges to basic or less.

July 18, 2026 OmniOS