how to identify when boot occurs

Hi out there

I need to find a way to identify - from a service - if there server just is starting up or if it has been running and my service is being restarted - and some might ask why this is important - this is caused by some problems when handling tapes - we have a service which backups the transaction log on tape from a sybase database in MTF. But - we have a minor problem - when the server starts in the intial boot and the services are started in a more or less parallel order we get a conflict between RSM and our services when accessing the tape device. So therefore I need to find a way to identify if I am in a normal boot sequence when the service is starting or if it has been running and my service just has been restarted because of tape maintaince etc. Of course I could just take a look at "uptime" and wait five minutes or so - but isn't there a way to tell if we still are in the boot phase ?

regards /thomas iwang

 

why dont you just make your service dependant on RSM?

 

hi joe
thanks - the idea is ok - but - because the handling of tapes are very "time consuming" we risk to get the same contention problem when the tape is in the phase of rewinding. RSM returns a running before all devices are fully initialised - hereby will the start-up of services continue because it has acknowledged running and we will then get a contention problem when "our" service try to open the tape device also. So the easiest workaround was f.ex. to take boot time + 5 minutes or wait for RSM to be running + 5 minutes - but - cannot be that it is that hard to figure out where in the boot phase we are - when I look at unix where we have a simple - and quite elegant - concept of run-levels and rc-scripts which either are executed sequentielle or in parallel - and here I cannot even figure out if I am in a boot phase or running several hours....