In default configuration, /run/memcached/memcached.pid is owned by memcached user. If that users changes the content of the pidfile and then /etc/init.d/memcached stop is called, it can cause any arbitrary process to be killed. Lots of examples of this (and fixes): http://michael.orlitzky.com Why not dropping the possibility to configure the pidfile location and set it to /run/${RC_SVCNAME}.pid? This will then work even for multiple instances.
*thumbs up* Lots of good info here, too: https://github.com/OpenRC/openrc/blob/master/service-script-guide.md Some daemons make it hard to get this right, by dropping permissions *before* they write the PID file. This usually happens when e.g. they want to dual-purpose the PID file as a lock file, or to prevent multiple instances of the same daemon from running, or something like that. But I have no idea if it applies here. There's lots of other weird stuff in this service script that can probably go away, like local dir="$(dirname ${PIDFILE})" if [ ! -d "${dir}" ]; then einfo " Creating ${dir}" mkdir -p "${dir}" fi chown ${MEMCACHED_RUNAS} "${dir}" if [ -f "${PIDFILE}" ]; then einfo " Removing stale pidfile ${PIDFILE}" rm -f "${PIDFILE}" 1>/dev/null fi should be a single call to checkpath, but of course ideally should not be there at all (PID file should be where Tomas suggested, owned by root). And OpenRC cleans up the PID file for you. These things, if [ -n "${SOCKET}" ]; then CONNECTION="-s ${SOCKET}" can all be done at the top in a single line, declaratively, with ${parameter:+[word]} substitutions. And it's valid in any shell: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html Afterwards, I'm pretty sure you can delete the start/stop functions and let the defaults do everything for you.
