signer

After upgrading the ODS suite from 1.1.3 to 1.2.0b1, the signer does not start after issuing the command 'ods-signer start'. Calling 'ods-signer stop' yields: 'Unable to connect to engine: connect() failed: No such file or directory'. Although the man page suggests that all errors are sent to stderr, no error is seen and exit code is 0.

Reviewing the syslog shows:

Oct 18 20:16:01 stella ods-signerd: SoftHSM: init: Could not open token database. Probably wrong privileges: /var/lib/softhsm/slot0.db
Oct 18 20:16:01 stella ods-signerd: SoftHSM: init: Wrong database schema version: /var/lib/opendnssec/softhsm_slot1.db
Oct 18 20:16:01 stella ods-signerd: setup failed: error initializing libhsm (errno 268435457)
Oct 18 20:16:01 stella ods-signerd: signer engine setup failed
Oct 18 20:16:01 stella ods-signerd: shutdown signer engine

This means that ods-signer does not start up but does not say so. This gives issues with init scripts that need to check if the signer is actually running.

Proposal: add a ods-signer 'status' or 'running' command that nicely checks if the daemon is running. The 'start' command can use this routine internally to report if its own work was successfully. Note: 'ods-control enforcer start' already does something like this.