On Aug 25,  7:48am, Luke Mewburn wrote:
} 
} Module Name:	basesrc
} Committed By:	lukem
} Date:		Wed May  9 16:41:00 UTC 2001
} 
} Modified Files:
} 	basesrc/etc: rc.subr
} 
} Log Message:
} * change wait_for_pids() to spin forever (rather than just ~ 65 seconds).
} * change the default `stop' case to wait_for_pids after kill $sig_stop.
}   this means that "/etc/rc.d/foo stop" won't return until the service
}   has shut down. third party scripts that implement their own stop mechanism
}   should offer this functionality as well.
} * in the default restart case, don't bother doing `$0 poll' in between
}   stop & start, because of the change above. (XXX: deprecate poll ?)

     Yuck!  I really don't like this change.  This is one of the things
I hate about SysV.  I have seen too many cases where some service fails
to stop and hangs the shutdown process.  Murphy's Law means that
usually you are far enough along in the shutdown process that you can't
recover and have to hit the "big red button" which leads to problems
with things like corrupt filesystems.  Processes that don't die within
a reasonable period of time should be killed with extreme prejudice.
If you're going to go this route, then you should at least make the old
behaviour an option.

}-- End of excerpt from Luke Mewburn