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Some files (e.g. nfs, nfslock, bind) in my /etc/rc.d/init.d/ directory have in their comment header a line such as:

# probe: true

I found that those particular scripts has the probe verb i.e.:

service nfs probe

But this is due to the fact that the mentioned scripts has code that deals with the probe verb.

I find no mention of the # probe: true notation in chkconfig man page, nor in any related man pages. Googleing for it also didn't help.

Is there a real significance for that line, or is it pure documentation?

Chen Levy
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1 Answers1

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The "probe" tag is described here. Judging from the comments in /etc/init.d/named (from CentOS 5.3), it is used by linuxconf:

probe() {
        # named knows how to reload intelligently; we don't want linuxconf
        # to offer to restart every time
        /usr/sbin/rndc reload >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo start
        return $?
}

According to the linuxconf FAQ, Red Hat stopping using linuxconf after version 7.3, but they apparently haven't removed the probe configuration from some init scripts.

In short, unless you use linuxconf, the probe tag isn't used for anything important.

James Sneeringer
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