Bug 440658

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #433018 +++

Description of problem:

The status() function from rc.d/init.d/functions uses pidof to locate pids
before considering pid files. A service that uses pid files will not have them
considered, except for the pid dead but pid file exists case, and pids of
processes with the same name as the service may be incorrectly associated with
the service.

This can result in issues during "service X start" when the init script for X 
is
written to be LSB-ish compliant (only start if not running) and it uses 
status()
to determine if the service is running.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

At least version initscripts 8.60-1 and 8.63-1


Additional info:

A proposed solution is attached as a patch to initscripts-8.63. It changes the
logic of status() to consider pid files only if one is available. There is no
logical change for init scripts that do not use pid files, they will still use
pidof to locate pids of their processes. The logical change for scripts that 
use
pid files is that they cannot have similarly named processes inadvertently
associated with their service, a good thing. However, if the script uses pid
files and those pid files are improperly managed, i.e. don't hold correct pids
for the service or are not removed when the service stops, the script is
essentially relying on pidof and this change will expose the dependency and 
the
broken pid file management.

-- Additional comment from mfarrellee on 2008-02-15 13:14 EST --
Created an attachment (id=295025)
proposed patch to rc.d/init.d/functions


--------------
I'm seeing this bug with cachefilesd.  The initscript for that recurses into 
itself about three times for condrestart, and in the innermost process, pidof 
finds the PID of the outermost process when cachefilesd isn't running (noticed 
when fixing bug 237827).