esmd(1M)																  esmd(1M)

NAME

       esmd - Essential Services Monitor (ESM) Daemon

SYNOPSIS

       retry_seconds]

DESCRIPTION

       The  Essential  Services  Monitor  (ESM) daemon, maintains the availability of essential system daemons by automatically restarting them if
       they terminate.	The ESM daemon monitors the Event Manager daemon, The ESM daemon is started by the init process when the  system  is  ini-
       tialized  to  run level 2 and continues to run until the system is shut down or returned to single user mode.  Only one instance of can run
       at a time.

       Configuration information is sent to the ESM daemon by a control program, which is run at key points in the  startup  and  shutdown  proce-
       dures.	As  startup or shutdown progresses, the control program updates the ESM state file, The control program then signals the daemon to
       reconfigure itself.

       On startup, state transitions occur after has started.  On shutdown, transitions occur after each of these  monitored  daemons  has  termi-
       nated.  After each transition, the ESM daemon determines which of the monitored daemons should be running and adjusts its monitoring activ-
       ities accordingly.

       The ESM daemon reports all state change information, including notice of failures and restarts, through the system logging daemon, syslogd.
       Messages are displayed on the system console during periods when syslogd is not running. See syslogd(1M) for more information.

       If  the	ESM daemon fails to restart a monitored daemon, it reports the error by posting a high priority message through syslogd, and makes
       no further restart attempts.  The system administrator should investigate the problem and restart the failed daemon.  The ESM daemon  peri-
       odically  attempts  to resume monitoring of the daemon, and posts an informational message when it succeeds.  If the monitored daemon fails
       again once monitoring has resumed, the ESM daemon again attempts to restart it.

       The ESM daemon can be forced to restart a failed daemon by sending a SIGHUP signal to the process.

       If there is a need to temporarily disable the ESM daemon for test purposes, in order to prevent the monitored daemons from being  restarted
       automatically,  send  a SIGSTOP signal to the process.  To reactivate the ESM daemon, send a SIGCONT signal to the process.  The ESM daemon
       should never be disabled on a production system.

       If the ESM daemon is terminated unexpectedly, it is restarted automatically by init.

   Options
       The command recognizes the following options:

       Limit the priority of any syslog messages posted by the ESM daemon to "alert."
	    If this option is not specified, posts an "emergency" message if it cannot restart a failed daemon.  A message  may  be  sent  to  all
	    users  currently  logged  in to the system.  The option should only be used if the system administrator is actively monitoring syslogd
	    messages.

       Specify the interval between attempts to begin monitoring a daemon
	    that has failed, and which has been unable to restart automatically.  The default period is 30 seconds.  Specifying a period  of  zero
	    disables retrying.

   Notes
       To use the start options, you must add them to the startup command in the file.	The daemon reports any invalid start options with a single
       generic message through syslogd.

   Restrictions
       The daemon terminates with an error message if it is started by any process other than init.

       The /sbin/init.d/esm program is intended to be run by the system startup and shutdown process and should not be run from the command  line.
       Only one instance of can run at a time.

RETURN VALUE

       The following exit values are returned:

       0 (Zero)  Successful completion.

       not 0	 An error occurred.

FILES

       Executable file

       Configuration control script

       Initialization process control file
	      dispatched by boot init

       Monitoring state file

       Receives esmd status messages

AUTHOR

       was developed by Hewlett Packard Company.

SEE ALSO

   Commands
       kill(1), evmd(1M), init(1M), syslogd(1M).

   Files
       inittab(4).

																	  esmd(1M)