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.
Created attachment 295025 [details] proposed patch to rc.d/init.d/functions
I'm leery of removing the fallback to pidof; this would cause status to behave differently from killproc, etc. Fixed in: http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=initscripts.git;a=commitdiff;h=27bb4e72ea41d86efa0478d27026f80e2cc4a75f;hp=d027a8366d22b2aa7a54ef8c030fff4024bdd5b9