Comment 2 for bug 176934

I've had a look at the lsb-base package in Debian unstable and with lsb-base 3.1-24, this bug has been fixed.

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/l/lsb/lsb_3.1-24/changelog
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=416559

" * Don't remove the pidfile in killproc if a signal is specified; the
     specification does not specify this behavior, and it can cause
     problems with signals like HUP. (Closes: #416559)
   * And then, only remove the pidfile if the process is actually dead.
     (Closes: #410622)"

The fix in init-functions:

    if [ -z "$sig" ]; then
        pidofproc -p $pidfile "$1" >/dev/null || rm -f "$pidfile"
    fi