Bug#926168: debian-policy: §9.3.2 difference to LSB (force-reload action of init scripts)

[Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.de>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 4.3.0.3
Severity: normal

Hi,

Policy 4.3.0.3 §9.3.2 reads:

   force-reload                                                                                                  
          cause the configuration to be reloaded if the service supports
          this, otherwise restart the service.

LSB 5 (but this is also present in LSB 3) reads¹:

   force-reload cause the configuration to be reloaded if the service
   supports this, otherwise restart the service if it is running

① http://refspecs.linuxbase.org/LSB_5.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/iniscrptact.html


Please clarify whether the omission of “if it is running” after
“otherwise restart the service” is a deliberate deviation from
LSB (whether initially deliberate or caused by compatibility)
or adjust the text to include this.

This has relevance because, for a service that does not support
reloading (or where the init script maintainer does not know how
to achieve that in a meaningful way), force-reload would be
equivalent to “restart” per Policy but “try-restart” per LSB,
the difference being that “try-restart” does not start the service
if it is not currently running, whereas “restart” does.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unreleased
  APT policy: (500, 'unreleased'), (500, 'buildd-unstable'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: x32 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386, amd64

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=C (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/lksh
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

debian-policy depends on no packages.

Versions of packages debian-policy recommends:
ii  libjs-sphinxdoc  1.8.4-1

Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
pn  doc-base  <none>

-- no debconf information