Init.d script hanging

Question

I have an init.d script that looks like:

#!/bin/bash
# chkconfig 345 85 60
# description: startup script for swapi
# processname: swapi

LDIR=/var/www/html/private/daemon
EXEC=swapi.php
PIDF=/var/run/swapi.pid
IEXE=/etc/init.d/swapi

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: swapi
# Required-Start: $local_fs
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6
# Short-Description: startup script for swapi
# Description: startup script for swapi.php which processes actionq into switch
### END INIT INFO

if [ ! -f $LDIR/$EXEC ]
then
        echo "swapi was not found at $LDIR/$EXEC"
        exit
fi

case "$1" in
  start)
        if [ -f $PIDF ]
        then
                echo "swapi is currently running. Killing running process..."
                $IEXE stop
        fi
        $LDIR/$EXEC >> $LDIR/swapi.log & MYPID=$!
        echo $MYPID > $PIDF
        echo "swapi is now running."
        ;;
  stop)
        if [ -f $PIDF ]
        then
                echo "Stopping swapi."
                PID_2=`cat $PIDF`
                if [ ! -z "`ps -f -p $PID_2 | grep -v grep | grep 'swapi'`" ]
                then
                        kill -9 $PID_2
                fi
                rm -f $PIDF
        else
                echo "swapi is not running, cannot stop it. Aborting now..."
        fi
        ;;
  force-reload|restart)
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Use: /etc/init.d/swapi {start|stop|restart|force-reload}"
        exit 1
esac

And then I have a keepalive cronjob that calls this if the pid goes down. Problem is that that keepalive script hangs whenever I run it like a cron job (ie. run-parts /var/www/html/private/fivemin), (the keepalive script being in /var/www/html/private/fivemin).

Is there something funky in my init.d script that I am missing?

I have been racking my brain on this problem for hours now! I am on centos4 btw.

Thanks for any help. -Eric

EDIT:

The keepalive/cronjob script was simplified for testing to a simple:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?

exec("/etc/init.d/swapi start");

?>

The strange this is the error output from swapi.php is put into /var/spool/mail like normal cron output except that I have all the output being dumped into the swapi.log in the init.d script?

When I run keepalive.php from the cli (as root from /) it operates exactly as I would expect it to.

When keepalive runs ps aux | grep php looks like:

root      4525  0.0  0.0  5416  584 ?        S    15:10   0:00 awk -v progname=/var/www/html/private/fivemin/keepalive.php progname {?????   print progname ":\n"?????   progname="";????       }????       { print; }
root      4527  0.7  1.4 65184 14264 ?       S    15:10   0:00 /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/private/daemon/swapi.php

And If I do a:

/etc/init.d/swapi stop

from the cli then both programs are no longer listed.

Swapi ls -l looks like:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 5500 5500 33148 Aug 29 15:07 swapi.php

Here is what the crontab looks like:

*/5 * * * * root run-parts /var/www/html/private/fivemin

Here is the first bit of swapi.php

#!/usr/bin/php
<?
chdir(dirname( __FILE__ ));
include("../../config/db.php");
include("../../config/sql.php");
include("../../config/config.php");
include("config_local.php");
include("../../config/msg.php");

include("../../include/functions.php");

set_time_limit(0);
echo "starting @ ".date("Ymd.Gi")."...\n";
$actionstr  =   "";
while(TRUE){

I modified the init.d script and put init above the variable declarations, it did not make a difference.

Answer 1

When you run a command from cron, the environment is not the same as when it is run from the bash command line after logging in. I would suspect in this case that the sh is not able to understand swapi.php as a PHP command.

Do a

which php

to see where your php binary is and add this to your init.d script

PHP=/usr/bin/php 
...
$PHP $LDIR/$EXEC >> $LDIR/swapi.log & MYPID=$!

Probably not that important but you may want to redirect the output from the cron line

0 * * * * /path/to/script 2>&1 >> /dev/null

for instance.

Answer 2

Make sure your script has the correct execution permissions, the right owner, and the first lines should look like this:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php

Answer 3

The answer was that bash was staying open because my init.d script was not redirecting the stderr output. I have now changed it to

$LDIR/$EXEC &> $LDIR/swapi.log & MYPID=$!

And it now functions perfectly.

Thanks for the help everyone!