Let's encapsulate here another part of main, after binding listeners sockets
and before calling the master's code in master-worker mode. This block
contains the code, which applies verbosity settings, checks limits and updates
the ready date. It will take some time to figure out, which of these parts are
really needed for the master, or which ones it could skip. So let's put all
these for the moment in step_init_4() and let's call it for all modes.