The init script for mythbackend simply checks for the existence of the pid file. if the pid file exists, it assumes that mythbackend is running. This is not necessarily the case. If you have something like monit running to automatically restart in the event of a mythbackend crash, monit fails to perform a start of mythbackend because the init script exits with signal 1. I am fully aware that I could tell monit to "restart" instead of "start", but this is not a neat solution. It would be better for the init script to first check if there is in fact a mythbackend process before exiting with signal 1.
I will post a patch that I have created after modifying my init script to check for the existence of a process. Maybe someone can do a better job of the coding... This is not unique. In fact many of the init scripts perform a similar check. Can this or a more eloquent version of it be added to the standard package?
superm1 can you look at getting this packaged up if its suitable.