As of version 4.0, samhain allows to perform a wait on check operation which waits on the end of the current filesystem scan and indicates the result via the exit status:
samhain -w seconds
The argument for this option is the timeout. The maximum timeout value is 86400 (one day). A timeout of zero is interpreted as no timeout. A negative timeout is interpreted in the following way:
First, wait until the Samhain daemon has initalized.
Then, wait for the end of the filesystem scan with a timeout of (abs(seconds) - 1). I.e. a timeout of -1 will become 0, a timeout of -601 seconds will become 600 seconds.
The exit status has the following meaning:
0The deamon currently performs no file system scan, and no issues have been reported in the last scan.
1The deamon currently performs no file system scan, and one or more issues have been reported in the preceding scan.
2The wait operation has timed out while the deamon was performing a file system scan.
3An error has occured. Usually this would be either an access error (the wait operation needs at least group privilege), or a non-negative argument has been given and the deamon has not yet initialized (or isn't running).