DESCRIPTION

     The stalepid utility was developed to facilitate the startup of servers
     that write their process ID to a file and refuse to start if that file
     exists (e.g. when the process was last terminated by an unclean shutdown,
     or simply killed without given the chance to clean up the process ID
     file).  The stalepid utility is used to check for and possibly remove
     those stale process ID files.  Upon its invocation, stalepid checks for
     the following conditions:

     -   the file specified by the pidfile argument exists;

     -   it contains a single line, and the line contains a single number;

     -   there is no process with the process ID specified in the file, or if
         there is one, it is not named processname.

     If all those conditions are met, the stalepid utility will remove the
     file specified by the pidfile argument, thus allowing the next invocation
     of the server to proceed normally.

     The following options are available:

     -5      Invoke the ps(1) utility using System V syntax instead of BSD
             ps(1) syntax (not implemented yet).

     -b      Invoke the ps(1) utility using BSD syntax (the default behavior).

     -d      Display diagnostic information during the course of operation.

     -h      Display a short help message and exit.

     -V      Display program version information and exit.

ENVIRONMENT

     Not taken in consideration in the present version.

FILES

     None relevant in the present version.

BUGS

     Support for System V ps(1) syntax via the -5 flag is not implemented yet.

HISTORY

     The stalepid was developed by Peter Pentchev in 2003.

AUTHORS

     Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>.

BSD                            December 4, 2003                            BSD