But on the other hand, the START value is still set to FALSE: [root@executenode]# condor_config_val START FALSE
Not sure about the rest of your post, but by default condor_config_val only checks the statis on-disk configuration. Try 'condor_config_val -startd' to check the config that the startd is actually running with. Also note that:
Successfully set configuration "START = TRUE" on master executenode.
probably means that you need to say 'condor_config_val -machine ... -startd', since the condor_config_val manpage states that the -[r][un]set options affect only specific daemons on the the given machine.
- ToddM