ptrace in production systems

[Shachar Shemesh]

Oron Peled wrote:
> On Sunday, 1 בFebruary 2009, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>   
>> Then again, it is a daemon. It has no parent (well, init is its parent).
>>     
>
> It's not clear from your description (or your replies to other posters)
> why you don't want init to babysit this daemon.
Because I do not want it under a watchdog. This is not what this is about.

Under certain circumstances I need to get the agent to reload its 
configuration. When that happens, and only then, I need to *shut it 
down* and then restart it. I do NOT want a watchdog to automatically 
restart it whenever it fails. Such a thing will actually be a hindrance.

The second point is that I don't need advice about how it can be done. I 
can think of three or four ways not mentioned here at all. They have 
disadvantages in relation to what I implemented, mostly in how long it 
takes to figure out that the daemon has, indeed, finished, and in how 
much protocol specific changes they would require. I am asking for 
opinion about that one specific way I chose, which works beautifully, 
but is extremely non-standard.

I'll repeat - it is already implemented, debugged and working.
>    * The init stuff in busybox is really simple, i've once played with
>      it.
Ooh, that's one I try to avoid if at all possible. 3rd party patches are 
bad enough to maintain, getting your own into 3rd party projects is a 
last resort at best.

Thanks all of you for your help. It may not sound like that, but I am 
grateful for your help.

Shachar