Re: PROPOSAL: init file actions (draft 5)

[Daniel Quinlan <quinlan@transmeta.com>]

[ carbon copy to debian-policy ]

Shane Owenby <shane@raleigh.ibm.com> writes:

> What is the 'force-reload' option doing that the 'restart' option
> doesn't already do? They both _force_ the daemon to reload its
> configuration.  'restart' stops and then restarts the daemon and
> 'force-reload' seems to do the same thing.....if the daemon supports a
> dynamic configuration change (like Apache) then the 'reload' option
> can be used....
>
> So can anyone give an example where the below will not work?

There is one case where force-restart helps:

  - if you don't know whether reload is supported
  - and you want to reload the configuration
  - and you don't mind restarting the service

Otherwise, you pretty much go for restart or reload.  It seems like a
bit of a stretch to me.  However, in the absence of defined exit codes
for init files (which we now have), I can see how it might be wanted.

Under the current draft, if you need the force-restart behavior for some
reason (either script or command line), you could do the following:

  <init file> reload
  if $? -eq <unsupported exit code>; then
     <init file> restart
  fi

Then again, that's not difficult to add the equivalent to the init file.

Dan