Questions tagged [start-stop-daemon]

start-stop-daemon is a program used to control the creation and termination of Linux system-level processes (daemons). Using one of the matching options, start-stop-daemoncan be configured to find existing instances of a running process.

The man page specifies below note:

Note: unless --pidfile is specified, start-stop-daemon behaves similar to killall(1). start-stop-daemon will scan the process table looking for any processes which match the process name, uid, and/or gid (if specified). Any matching process will prevent --start from starting the daemon. All matching processes will be sent the TERM signal (or the one specified via --signal or --retry) if --stop is specified. For daemons which have long-lived children which need to live through a --stop, you must specify a pidfile.

Usage sample:

start-stop-daemon --start --background -m --pidfile ${PIDFILE} --exec ${DAEMON} -- ${TARGETDIR}

Command arguments explanation:

• --start : Check for an instance of the specified process and start it (if not already started).
• --background : the daemon is launched as a background process.
• -m : make a PID file. This is used when your process doesn't create its own PID file, and is used with --background.
• --pidfile ${PIDFILE} : check if the PID file has been created or not.
• --exec : make sure the processes are instances of this executable (in this case, DAEMON)

For more informations and more options, check the man page.