'man start-stop-daemon' gives: -R|--retry timeout|schedule ... schedule is a list of at least two items separated by slashes (/); each item may be -signal-number or [-]signal-name, which means to send that signal, or timeout, which means to wait that many seconds for processes to exit, or forever, which means to repeat the rest of the schedule forever if necessary. which is a very handy functionality for daemons that take a while to die under normal circumstances, but should be killed after a long timeout. However, the re-implmentation in rc-daemon.sh (sys-apps/baselayout-1.12.5) doesn't support this semantics. This is verified as follows: using the schedule form results in a division-by-zero error when s-s-d is run as 'start-stop-daemon' in an initscript, while it works correctly when s-s-d is run as '/sbin/start-stop-daemon'. uberlord, if this is something you're interested in fixing, I can work to submit a patch. It looks like it would be a bit of work, though, so I haven't yet gone to the trouble.
Why don't you try baselayout-1.13.0_alpha7 where this should already be fixed?
Fixed in baselayout-1.13.0_alpha9
*** Bug 197309 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
