So the source code is available? In the garage, I only saw the deb files (and no tar.gz source). My installed version is: 0.9.6
$ smscon -stop ##expected output is like: INFO: Daemon smscon_daemon stopped [PID=6152]. INFO: Script smscon_script was not running. $ smscon -stop ##expected output is like: INFO: Daemon smscon_daemon was not running. INFO: Script smscon_script was not running. $ smscon -start ##expected output is like: INFO: Daemon smscon_daemon requested to start. INFO: Daemon smscon_daemon started [PID=7774]. #in the above case all should be well. But if output is different ## and has error message - and in your case it probably has - ## then enter: $ ps > ps.txt ## Please post the ps.txt file here.