Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 170928
initscripts - pidof calls with a non-existent option
Last modified: 2014-03-16 22:56:29 EDT
Description of problem: In /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions there are few calls to 'pidof' which look like that: pid=`pidof -c -o $$ - .... ` The problem is that 'man pidof' does not mention '-c' and with /sbin/pidof from SysVinit-2.85-41 this reacts like that: pidof: invalid options on command line! without bothering to mention what valid options really are. 'pidof' is not always called when starting and stoping services but when it is then one sees: pidof: invalid options on command line! pidof: invalid options on command line! Starting RPC idmapd: [ OK ] which is still "OK" but # service rpcidmapd stop Shutting down RPC idmapd: pidof: invalid options on command line! pidof: invalid options on command line! [FAILED] and this is actually the case and can be confirmed with pgrep. Removing '-c' from pidof calls in 'functions' make things to work again. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): initscripts-8.17-1 How reproducible: always
What SysVinit do you have installed?
As I wrote in the original report - SysVinit-2.85-41. After an update to SysVinit-2.85-42 an option '-c' is accepted by 'pidof' again; but it does not make it a tiniest bit more documented without diving into sources. I guess I will write a bug report about that too.
Ah, no! I take "undocumented" back. It was indeed undocumented on 'man pidof' from SysVinit-2.85-41 but this is not the case with SysVinit-2.85-42 even if "01 Sep 1998" in a footer of this manpage remains the same. OTOH '/sbin/pidof -h' is totally numb and '/sbin/pidof --help' prints only "pidof: invalid options on command line!". Sigh!