"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
<!--
+ SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1+
+
This file is part of systemd.
Copyright 2010 Lennart Poettering
<para>The command line may carry a list of environment variables
to send as part of the status update.</para>
- <para>Note that systemd will refuse reception of status updates
- from this command unless <varname>NotifyAccess=all</varname> is
- set for the service unit this command is called from.</para>
-
+ <para>Note that systemd will refuse reception of status updates from this command unless
+ <varname>NotifyAccess=</varname> is set for the service unit this command is called from.</para>
+
+ <para>Note that <function>sd_notify()</function> notifications may be attributed to units correctly only if either
+ the sending process is still around at the time PID 1 processes the message, or if the sending process is
+ explicitly runtime-tracked by the service manager. The latter is the case if the service manager originally forked
+ off the process, i.e. on all processes that match <varname>NotifyAccess=</varname><option>main</option> or
+ <varname>NotifyAccess=</varname><option>exec</option>. Conversely, if an auxiliary process of the unit sends an
+ <function>sd_notify()</function> message and immediately exits, the service manager might not be able to properly
+ attribute the message to the unit, and thus will ignore it, even if
+ <varname>NotifyAccess=</varname><option>all</option> is set for it.</para>
+
+ <para><command>systemd-notify</command> will first attempt to invoke <function>sd_notify()</function> pretending to
+ have the PID of the invoking process. This will only succeed when invoked with sufficient privileges. On failure,
+ it will then fall back to invoking it under its own PID. This behaviour is useful in order that when the tool is
+ invoked from a shell script the shell process — and not the <command>systemd-notify</command> process — appears as
+ sender of the message, which in turn is helpful if the shell process is the main process of a service, due to the
+ limitations of <varname>NotifyAccess=</varname><option>all</option> described above.</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>