Understanding Heartbeat's State

[Tony Willoughby]

I'm looking for the best way to obtain the state of heartbeat.

Here's why:  I use heartbeat in a system with two redundant cards
(running Red Hat 6.1).

The system has a CLI that will allow one to control heartbeat.  I'd like
to have a CLI command that initiates a failover between these cards. 
But, that CLI command should fail (not do the failover) if the primary
has not heard from the secondary (say it's not booted or not installed).

It seems I could do something with set_nstatus_callback(), but this
seems a little heavy for what I need.
Is there a way to learn the status of heartbeat through /proc or
/var/state? 

Thanks.

-- 
                      | 
Tony Willoughby       | Some nights I can't tell which finger the 
tonyw@pobox.com       | thumb pick goes on.
                      |                            -Warren Zevon