"Pseudo resources" are those where the resource agent in fact does not actually start or stop something akin to a runnable process, but merely executes a single action and then needs some form of tracing whether that action has been executed or not. The portblock resource agent is an example of this.

Resource agents for pseudo resources can use a convenience function, ha_pseudo_resource, which makes use of tracking files to keep tabs on the status of a resource. If foobar was designed to manage a pseudo resource, then its start action could look like this:

foobar_start() {
    # exit immediately if configuration is not valid
    foobar_validate_all || exit $?

    # if resource is already running, bail out early
    if foobar_monitor; then
        ocf_log info "Resource is already running"
        return $OCF_SUCCESS
    fi

    # start the pseudo resource
    ha_pseudo_resource ${OCF_RESOURCE_INSTANCE} start

    # After the resource has been started, check whether it started up
    # correctly. If the resource starts asynchronously, the agent may
    # spin on the monitor function here -- if the resource does not
    # start up within the defined timeout, the cluster manager will
    # consider the start action failed
    while ! foobar_monitor; do
        ocf_log debug "Resource has not started yet, waiting"
        sleep 1
    done

    # only return $OCF_SUCCESS if _everything_ succeeded as expected
    return $OCF_SUCCESS
}