differences between service command and running command directly

[Barry Brimer]

> I use service and running the command in /etc/init.d/ directly  to run the
> services in that directory. Until now I thought it was the same to run, for
> example:
>
> service httpd status
>
> and
>
> /etc/init.d/httpd status
>
> but now I have a server that they don´t do the same:

<snip>

> Anyone can explain me this? I suposse it´s something about enviroment
> variables, but I can´t see the difference

I would run both with bash -x and redirect the output and compare or diff 
them.

bash -x service httpd status >/tmp/service.log 2>&1

bash -x /etc/init.d/httpd status >/tmp/initscript.log 2>&1

Barry