Bug#41554: report #41554
severity 41554 minor
tags 41554 patch
thanks
The complaint here was that when the pidfile method
is used to check whether an instance of a daemon is
running, it is the existence of the pidfile and not the
existence of the process named in the pidfile that
is checked.
This is reasonable behavior. start-stop-daemon is designed
to start a daemon unless an *instance* of that daemon is
already running. Thus, it needs to check for processes of
a given type, not for a process with a specific process i.d.
The type of the process is specified either by the name of
the executable or by the name of the pidfile it creates.
It could be done the other way (i.e., start-stop-daemon could
check for the actual process named in the pidfile) but I
don't think it would be very safe to make that change:
it might cause some serious breakage.
So I guess the manual could be clarified a bit. Here's
a suggestion.
--- start-stop-daemon.8_ORIG Tue Oct 1 11:00:55 2002
+++ start-stop-daemon.8 Tue Oct 1 11:01:58 2002
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@
).
.TP
\fB-p\fP|\fB--pidfile\fP \fIpid-file\fP
-Check for processes whose process-id is specified in
+Check for processes that create the file
.IR pid-file .
.TP
\fB-u\fP|\fB--user\fP \fIusername\fP|\fIuid\fP
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