# How to start a service manually?

**URL:** <https://forums.suse.com/t/how-to-start-a-service-manually/2406>\
**Category:** Rancher 1.x\
**Created:** [April 12, 2016, 2:16am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/how-to-start-a-service-manually/2406 "2016-04-12T02:16:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/cc9497/32.png) [@kai](https://forums.suse.com/u/kai)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2016, 2:16am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/how-to-start-a-service-manually/2406/1 "2016-04-12T02:16:08Z")

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There’s a service mainly for running a test with some test case. And I’ve put `io.rancher.container.start_once: 'true'` on it.

Now I want the service stay on “stop” state after `rancher-compose up`, so I can start it manually on Rancher-UI, run the test and read the output log.

Anyway to achieve the above? Thanks~

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**Author:** ![denise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@denise](https://forums.suse.com/u/denise)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 9:33pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/how-to-start-a-service-manually/2406/2 "2016-04-13T21:33:24Z")

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I’m not sure if I completely follow what you are trying to do, but here’s what I think would work in your use case.

Launch a service that has `io.rancher.container.start_once: 'true'` in it.  
Assuming your container will automatically exit (as you would use the label so that after it exits, it wouldn’t try to launch another container), the state of the service would be `Started-Once` in the UI.

In the UI, you can click on the container in the service and select “Start” to have the container start up again and read the output log, but you’d have to read it before the container stops again.

If your container is not going to automatically stop and exit, then you don’t need the label. You can create the service using `rancher-compose create`, which creates them in the UI but does not start them. Then, when you are ready to run the test, you could start the service in the UI and read the output log.