What is ejabberd doing between "started" and "running"?

I love how ejabberd is solid as a rock (running one instance for over 2 years without a restart). But when it does go down or even if you bounce it by hand, i always face the fact that it is a completely black box to me.

When i start an instance via ejabberdctl it takes a couple of second before it returns. Then i issues an ejabberdctl status and it usually tells me that the server has started, then blocks until it gives, i.e. it's not actually running. Sometimes this takes 30 seconds, sometimes several minutes. How do i get some insight what it's doing. Is there some maintenance i should be doing to get more reliable short startu开发者_如何转开发p?

How exactly are you starting it using ejabberdctl? Next time you start your instance, run ejabberdctl live and this will run it and connect your session to it. (Note that when you disconnect it kills this instance also). You should be able to see what is going on during this period of "starting" by watching the screen.