Re: How Unix manages processes in userland

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

On Dec 8,  8:07pm, Brett Lymn wrote:
} On Fri, Dec 06, 2013 at 05:33:16PM -0800, John Nemeth wrote:
} > 
} >      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.
} 
} Heh - you know, you are close to describing the Solaris SMF (service
} management facility)...

     If we're serious about service management, then something like
that, or a similar facility from another OS is most likely what we
need.  Using something that already exists, if a suitable one can
be found, would probably be a good thing.

     In the above, I didn't even get into the issue of dependencies.
I.e. if you type "service start lockd" it should also start rpcbind.
Should rpcbind fail, then lockd should also be marked as failed.
Right now, typing "/etc/rc.d/lockd onestart" will not automatically
start rpcbind.  If rpcbind isn't running, then lockd will simply
fail to start.

     Doing service management properly can quickly get quite complex,
which is a good reason to use something that already exists where
the kinks have already been worked out.  It is also a very good
reason to not have init doing service management, since init should
be kept simple.

}-- End of excerpt from Brett Lymn