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When restarting sshd using the /etc/rc.d/init.d/sshd script the restart fails when the person doing the restart is logged in through ssh. In /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions the daemon() function does a check for whether any proceses with the same executable name is currently running by doing: # See if it's already running. pidlist=`pidofproc $1` pid= for apid in $pidlist ; do [ -d /proc/$apid ] && pid="$pid $apid" done [ -n "$pid" ] && return However, when you are logged in by ssh to the machine and you try to restart sshd, there IS a process called /usr/sbin/sshd running so the daemon function"returns" without actually doing anything. I can see how this might be a good idea sometimes, however, in this case it makes the script useless for anyone running headless boxes, and makes it easy to get stuck with a machine with no way to login to. (the restart fails, but you don't notice and then logout of the one ssh shell you currently have---then you can never login until a reboot) I'm not sure of the best way to fix this except to remove the check and make individual scripts check for other running instances if they want.
I think this is a serious problem. Changing Priority to "high".
My workaround: Build a script... #!/bin/bash #/root/restart-sshd.sh sleep 1m #Sleep for 1 minute to allow time for user to log off. service sshd restart #now restart, no sshd processes should be running
This was fixed, among other things, in errata OpenSSH 2.2.0p1-5.
Also, from the initscripts point of view, I don't think there's much better way of checking whether a daemon is running. _Some_ sort of method should be in initscripts -- if some daemon needs special attention, it should probably be done there then.