Lighttpd

I installed 1.4.18 on CentOS and I frequently run into the following problem:

I start lighttpd as follows:

1. service lighttpd start

The status code is 0, and I immediately check the status.

1. service lighttpd status
   when I get the message "lighttpd dead but pid file exists"

and sure enough there is no trace of the process "lighttpd"

The "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" does not have any information other
than messages of the form:

(log.c.75) server started

followed immediately by a log message of the form:

server stopped by UID = 0 PID = ....

although I never issued a "service lighttpd stop"

What is puzzling is that if I retry and then after one or more attempts the startup
succeeds and lighttpd stays up (forever, until I shut it down, of coz).

It seems that, in some cases, the lighttpd process starts and immediately exits without leaving an useful trace.

-- sashi