Bug#291148: Proposal

[Peter Eisentraut <petere@debian.org>]

So since no one had anything to add, here is a concrete proposal.  All
of this reflects current practice, I believe.  Since the addition of
status_of_proc to /lib/lsb/init-functions, this has been quite
standardized in practice, and as I wrote earlier, more than half of the
affected packages are already doing this.

      * Add "status" as an optional init script option (similar to
        "reload").  No one objected to that.
      * Require exit status 0 or not 0.  There were concerns about
        anything more specific, and it's not necessary in practice, as
        consumers of this generally only check for 0 or not 0.  Could be
        refined in the future.
      * Add footnote encouraging use of LSB exit statuses anyway.
      * Add footnote about what "service is running" might mean.  Some
        people in the discussion were concerned about this being
        ambiguous, some were concerned about making it too specific.
        The main nonhuman consumers of this interface are system
        monitoring programs that will decide to run "start" if "status"
        reports not running.  So it is reasonable to define the behavior
        of "status" in terms of "start".
      * Add something simple about console messages from status option.
        That whole section seems to have been overtaken by reality, but
        what I wrote is pretty close to it.

I think this matter could be moved from Discussion to Proposal now.

diff --git i/policy.sgml w/policy.sgml
index 52dbb26..4dffbe0 100644
--- i/policy.sgml
+++ w/policy.sgml
@@ -6711,13 +6711,25 @@ rmdir /usr/local/share/emacs 2>/dev/null || true
 	      <tag><tt>force-reload</tt></tag>
 	      <item>cause the configuration to be reloaded if the
 		  service supports this, otherwise restart the
-		  service.</item>
+		  service,</item>
+
+	      <tag><tt>status</tt></tag>
+
+              <item>report whether the service is running<footnote>A
+		  service is running if the result of the
+		  <tt>start</tt> action is in effect.</footnote>, exit
+		  with status 0 if yes, with a status other than
+		  0<footnote>Packages are encouraged to use the
+		  specific nonzero exit statuses defined by LSB, but
+		  policy currently does not require their use.  It is
+		  only required to distinguish between 0 for running
+		  and not 0 for not running.</footnote> if no.</item>
 	    </taglist>
 
 	    The <tt>start</tt>, <tt>stop</tt>, <tt>restart</tt>, and
 	    <tt>force-reload</tt> options should be supported by all
 	    scripts in <file>/etc/init.d</file>, the <tt>reload</tt>
-	    option is optional.
+	    and <tt>status</tt> options are optional.
 	  </p>
 
 	  <p>
@@ -7193,6 +7205,22 @@ Reloading <var>description</var> configuration...done.
 		daemon starting message.
 	      </p>
 	    </item>
+
+	    <item>
+	      <p>When the <tt>status</tt> action is called</p>
+
+	      <p>
+                When the <tt>status</tt> action is called and the
+                service is running, print:
+                <example compact="compact">
+<var>Service</var> is running.
+                </example>
+                When the service is not running, print:
+                <example compact="compact">
+<var>Service</var> is not running.
+                </example>
+              </p>
+            </item>
 	  </list>
 	</p>
       </sect>