problem with start-stop-daemon and --exec

[Ed W]

On 05/03/2012 18:44, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
>> On the other hand simply looking for the --exec string to match anywhere in
>> the /proc/pid/cmdline appears to solve both cases, ie use strstr rather than
>> strcmp?
> strstr is too permissive. Think how many processes --exec n (for example)
> will match.
>

Actually, at most 1 ...

Remember my proposal is that this is only effective for the specific 
case of --exec AND --pidfile.

Using only one has risks of killing the wrong process if say the 
original daemon died.  Using both together is quite precise and can kill 
at most one process (tree).  The only risk is by loosening the --exec 
match that some process dies AND some new process with a very similar 
name is lucky enough to get the same pid...  The benefit is that fuzzy 
matching matches what gentoo does and also handles daemons that change 
their cmdline in a reasonable way

I'm not on a soapbox over this, but I can see a reasonable value in 
(lets call it fuzzy matching) in the specific case that we also have a pid

Thanks - will leave it there - perhaps you can give it further 
consideration though?

Cheers

Ed W