README

Startstop -- a Universal Init Script Support Utility
Author: Cris Perdue <cris@perdues.com>

This "universal" LSB (Linux Standard Base) start/stop package
streamlines authoring of application init scripts for daemon-style
servers.  It provides a full set of LSB actions (start/stop/restart/-
status/etc.), and supports running the server as a non-root user,
protection against SIGHUP, reliable service restart, service monitoring
with auto-restart, and logging of significant events to syslog.  It was
built originally for Java servers, but can be valuable for many other
servers as well.

The main command-line program, "startstop", is designed to provide most
of the logic for a standard init script, typically located in
/etc/init.d/ according to the latest standard file system layouts.  The
"monitor" command and "setuser" command might find some general utility
also.

The files "myservice" and "myservice-redhat" in the documentation are
sample init scripts using startstop.  See also the man page for
startstop, for monitor, and the documentation file "CHANGES" for the
package change history.

This software is a variant of software that has been used for three or
four years, but has experienced some redesign and rewriting to comply
with the LSB specification and more logical usage, so I consider it to
be at a beta stage of maturity.  This software has minimal dependencies
and the startstop shell script attempts to conform to the Single Unix
Specification; however its portability to non-Linux systems has not been
tested.  There is no autoconfiguration, just a simple Makefile.