Hello everyone, this should be a challenge I think. I'm running SuSE 9.1 . I have a perl script that runs a proxy server designed for mobile web use. I would like to have an /etc/init.d/ script that controls this. I want it to have the standard start, stop, restart, and status command, just like the scripts used for dhcpd, network, smbd, etc. However, I don't want the script to return running just beacuse the script file started, I want it to wait until the proxy server is actually running. I'm assuming I'll need to put something in my perl script that says something like, ok I'm acually running now.

This has been very difficult for me. I've tried working with the /etc/init.d/skeleton file as a basis, but all the existing /etc/init.d scripts are calling executable binary files, where mine is a perl script. The existing scripts use startproc. I looked in the man page for startproc, and under bugs, it says something about not being able to start things thru scripts. It cannot do this because it looks for the script's inode in the running process list, when you are actually looking for whatever is in the script to be running.

I really appreciate anything anyone can help me with. And If you need more information, please ask. It's hard to explain every single detail.

Thanks !

Hi Jonathon,

Although this does not directly answer your question, you might find it useful.

A family of programs collectively called "runit" is designed to start, stop and monitor services. I use runit to start scripts running at boot time. Using runit is *much* simpler than writing init.d style init scripts ( based on first hand experience ).

Hope this helps.

Here's the link: http://smarden.org/runit/index.html .

- Dave

Hmm, there are links to quite a few interesting pages, but nothing seems to help. I think maybe I know why I cannot figure this out - I may be asking for the wrong information.

Perhaps what I really need to know is how to pass information from a running perl script to the script that called it. For expample, when the perl script is called, it may take about 2-3 seconds before it is actually running, and doing its job. It is then that it should tell the script that called it (sysvinit?) that it is Running .

And how do I go about stopping this? This also comes into play with the /etc/init.d/ script. I need to look in the list of running processes, but for what? Am I killing Perl, or am I killing my script?

It is the interaction between the /etc/init.d/ script, and the daemons (my perl script) that I need to know about. I'm assuming I'll have to implement more code into the perl script.

Thanks!