Hi, I have a question about what return status to use when exiting my start method.
My service (ipmievd) will not run if the local host does not have a BMC device available. ipmievd itself will return a 1 and give an error message that "no BMC is available". When using SMF, attempting to start ipmievd (via my start method), fails and returns a 1, which causes SMF to attempt to restart it several times again before it puts the service in maintenance mode. I then put a check for the BMC in the start method, and if no BMC is present, I exit with SMF_EXIT_ERR_FATAL so that SMF would not attempt any restarts before putting my service into maintenance mode. A colleague told me that perhaps the service should not go into maintenance mode, but instead just "disable" itself because it is not in an error state that can be "fixed" by a sysadmin. So is it a "maintenance" state that my service should go into if no BMC is available, or a "disable" state? I'm afraid that a person would see the service "disabled" and keep trying to start it. Do you know what the correct action would be in this case? Thanks, Cathy
