Service won't start since pid file is found

[bhaeussermann]

OS: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS

I used the template to create a service for starting the docker daemon.

Starting the service:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/docker start
Starting docker

Querying status:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/docker status
Stopped

Surely enough, the docker daemon isn't running at this stage.

Checking the error log /var/log/docker.err I see

time="2023-05-05T12:31:24.062889666Z" level=info msg="Starting up"
failed to start daemon: pid file found, ensure docker is not running or delete /var/run/docker.pid

Deleting the docker.pid file and starting the service again yields the same result.

If I delete the line

echo $! > "$pid_file"

from the script, the service works as expected and the docker.pid is automatically created with the correct PID.

It appears that the System V init script isn't supposed to be writing the docker.pid file, but should be leaving that to init.