start and stop process by monit

[Kenneth Yip]

Dear all

I have some questions about how monit start and stop 
a monitored process - Does monit relies on the
return code to determine whether a process
startup / shutdown failed?

For example, if the return code of the startup
script is '1', but it actually did startup the process
to be monitored successfully, will monit consider the 
startup as failed?

Also, how monit detects a shutdown of a process
failed? Check whether the pid file still exists or
some other method?

I raised the questions because of an incident last night
where monit reported failure to shutdown a monitored
process. From the message log, monit only attempted to
shutdown the process once and after the shutdown failed,
it did nothing further. Monit have timeout on restart, but does it 
has timeout on stopping or starting services?

Regards,
Kenneth Yip