Re: How Unix manages processes in userland

[John Nemeth <jnemeth%cue.bc.ca@localhost>]

On Dec 7,  1:26am, Roy Marples wrote:
} On 07/12/2013 1:08, Aaron B. wrote:
} > As a sysadmin, I often care less about the internal details, and more
} > about what a system provides. What I want to see:
} > 
} > 1) Easy to define/install a new service
} > 2) Easy to manipulate a service (enable/disable/restart/etc)
} > 3) Easy to query a service's state.
} > 
} > IMHO, #3 is the ticky part. People often assume things are 'up' or
} > 'down' and ignore the scope of all the other failures in between.
} 
} Well, from a service management perspective it's either up or down.
} It may have an intermediate state of starting, but that still falls in 
} the down category.

     Not quite.  If it's down, you may want to do a restart.
However, if it is currently starting, then you want to give it time
to complete the startup process before doing a restart.  And, of
course, if it fails to come up after a few restart attempts, you
want to mark it as failed, stop doing restarts, and bring it to
the attention of an administrator.

}-- End of excerpt from Roy Marples