[chef] trouble getting service to start

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Chef folks,

I’m having trouble getting a service to start using the chef service
resource.  If I do either of the following

service "brisk" do
  action [:enable, :start]
end

service "brisk" do
  action [:enable, :start]
  start_command "/etc/init.d/brisk start"
end

then brisk doesn’t start, and I see no signs anywhere of trouble, except that
the service isn’t running, and there’s no log file for brisk.  But if
instead I do

execute "start_brisk" do
  command "/etc/init.d/brisk start"
  action :run
end

then brisk starts up the way it should.  Any thoughts about what I’m doing
wrong?  If it makes a difference, the target machine is RedHat 5.5.

Thanks in advance for the help,

Jeff Stroomer