[maghuro]

Important

Local staging/review draft in the fork only. Upstream contribution guidelines require an issue before any PR.

Targeted at the maintained v1.x router-support line. This is the v1.x port of draft #9.

Summary

Prevent the Asuswrt-Merlin startup path from waiting forever when required paths or dnsmasq never become available.

• replace the unbounded directory wait loop with a timeout-aware helper;
• bound waits for /tmp and /proc to 60 seconds;
• bound the dnsmasq pidof wait to 60 seconds;
• treat normal pidof "not found yet" exit status as retryable while propagating real execution errors;
• return contextual startup errors instead of wedging ctrld indefinitely;
• add tests for success, probe failure and timeout behavior.

Scope

Independent from the Merlin dnsmasq/SDN work (#6/#7) and service lifecycle work (#8).