Re: [gentoo-dev] init script guidelines

[Roy Marples <uberlord@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 12:42 -0400, Eric Brown wrote:


> The real problem is not that the daemons don't return errors, but that our init
> scripts do not make reasonable attempts to verify service startup.  If a Gentoo
> init script claims that a service started, it should make an effort to check
> that the processes are actually running shortly after the script is run, even if
> start-stop-daemon says the parent process initialized.  Relying on the return
> value of start-stop-daemon is simply insufficient for some services.

I agree.

Infact, rc-services.sh (/lib/rcscripts/sh) has been totally re-written
for the baselayout-1.12.x branch. It now intercepts calls to
start-stop-daemon and checks if the daemon is still active after a
default time of 0.1 (adjustable) seconds. If not, the we assume the
daemon failed. This solves many existing bugs :)

Also, we kill any rogue processes and other such checks when a stop call
to start-stop-daemon is made - which is handy for when asterisk fails to
start and leaves mpg123 processes lying around :)

Check it out when baselayout-1.12.0pre1 hits portage!

Caveat: - some init scripts abuse start-stop-daemon. One example are all
courier scripts which pass the env program as a daemon. This is easily
worked around, but we fail badly if env then calls a shell script which
in turn launches a daemon. Of all the server stuff I run, only couier
has this issue - but there may be other programs too. Basically
start-stop-daemon should only call daemons!

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98745

Roy

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