[[!meta title="Why CentOS does not stop your init script"]]

## Introduction

If you created a simple init script below **/etc/init.d**, which
gets started, but not stopped on reboot or system halt, this
article is for you.

## Background

I assume you ensured that the **chkconfig** information in the
script is correct and that you ran chkconfig $name on. The output
of chkconfig should look like this:

    [root@kvm-hw-snr01 ~]# chkconfig --list  | grep kvm-vms
    kvm-vms         0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
    [root@kvm-hw-snr01 ~]# 

Although this looks correct, there is a small block in **/etc/rc.d/rc**
that prevents your init script from being called on stop:

    # First, run the KILL scripts.
    for i in /etc/rc$runlevel.d/K* ; do
    
            # Check if the subsystem is already up.
            subsys=${i#/etc/rc$runlevel.d/K??}
            [ -f /var/lock/subsys/$subsys -o -f /var/lock/subsys/$subsys.init ] || continue
            check_runlevel "$i" || continue
    
            # Bring the subsystem down.
            [ -n "$UPSTART" ] && initctl emit --quiet stopping JOB=$subsys
            $i stop
            [ -n "$UPSTART" ] && initctl emit --quiet stopped JOB=$subsys
    done

So only if your script creates 
/var/lock/subsys/**yourscriptname** or /var/lock/subsys/**yourscriptname**.init,
it will be called on stop.

## Solution

You can include the following three lines into your script to get
your script stopped:

    broken_lock_file_for_centos=/var/lock/subsys/kvm-vms

    # In the start block
    touch "$broken_lock_file_for_centos"

    # In the stop block
    rm -f "$broken_lock_file_for_centos"


[[!tag localch net unix]]