Forum OpenACS Q&A: AOLserver 4 and daemontools

I'm having difficulty running AOLserver 4 with daemontools. It's very strange, breaking as soon as I add the -b switch to tell it to bind to a particular port. The 'run' script runs perfectly if I run it at the command line, and it runs ok with this as my runfile:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/aolserver40r2/bin/nsd -it /web/front-end/front-end-as4.tcl -u nsadmin -g web

If I use:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/aolserver40r2/bin/nsd -b 66.98.193.240:8080 -it /web/front-end/front-end-as4.tcl -u nsadmin -g web

Then it doesn't work (and I've tried moving the -b IP:port to different parts of the command line. % sudo svstat /service/front-end/ shows that it's continually trying to start something. Doing a ps and grepping for readproctitle doesn't show any error messages. I can't seem to find a log file where daemon tools is putting stuff. When I do a sudo ./run (either version) it works fine.

Thanks in advance for any assist.

Could be a permission issue, since it starts up fine as root, or maybe a mismatch between the -b switch and what is in the config file.

OTHO, how did you start/stop it with daemontools? I didn't catch that part.

Well one thing: where is the AOLserver log file? svc isn't going to have a log file, unless you set one up, and you need to run AOLserver with -ft to get that to work. An error need to show up somewhere. Even if the -b switch was incorrect AOLserver would still start up just fine, it just wouldn't listen.

Another thing: use -k to kill AOLserver unless you know -t works. If you want it to stop, do a -k and then a -d. You can also test by starting with a -o (once). Either the AOLserver error log or readproctitle will have an error for a restart, unless you have discovered a bug in nsmain. Don't know what would happen then.

I would report it to the AOLserver list, maybe someone else has seen similar behavior.

One more thing: if you are using a high port, why not login as nsadmin and start it up without sudo (./run, and maybe with -ft). Just hoping to expose an error somehow.

Deamontools must run aolserver in foreground mode (-f) not inittab mode (-i). Here's my run file.

#!/bin/sh

IP=192.168.1.250
port=8001
server=s${port}
serverroot=/devel/${server}

export AOLSERVER_HOME=/opt/aolserver4
exec 2>&1
exec $AOLSERVER_HOME/bin/nsd -fzt \
	${serverroot}/aolconf.tcl \
	-u ${server} -g ${server} \
	-b ${IP}:${port}

The standard logging will go to never-never land if you start nsd in foreground mode using daemontools but don't use multilog.

As for the problem at hand, I would suggest switching to foreground mode and then start the run script from the command line: /service/front-end/run.

This will print all log messages to STDOUT and gives you a change to examine the log.

I can also advise the use of multilog in combination w/ daemontools. Your error logs will roll when they get too large and you get specify how many old log files you like to keep around. See https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=120023 for instructions how to use multilog w/ AOLserver.

I'm not sure what the problem is here. I'm running AOLserver 4.x just fine under daemontools. It might be a permission issue.

/Bart

I have aolserver 4 running on both port 80 and 443 (ssl) using the -B flag and it starts and runs fine. Why you can't just use multiple -b options, though, makes no sense to me.

I don't use multilog, and I use the standard run script (plus the -B option).

The only problem I have is with restarting. cvs -t restarts fine, except the server complains it can't open ports 80 or 443. If I restart again it comes good. Or if I svc -d, wait for the log to show a complete shutdown then svc -u everything works correctly.

I haven't tried putting a delay into the run script itslef, but i don't think that would work. I think what I need is to write a script that does an svc -d, waits to see sutdown complete in the log, then does a svc -u.

If it did a -k should the server fail to stop in a reasonable time, all the better.

Of course we could jsut fix the nsd bug...

Is svc -du different to svc -t ?

svc executes the flags in the order of appearance. Thus 'svc -hdu' rolls the AOLserver log (when not using multilog), stops the server and restarts it again. The rolled log starts with the message that the server is shutting down followed by the restart.

Where as 'svc -dhu' will stutdown the server, send a SIGHUP which will be missed as the server is down and restart the server. In this case the server restarts but the log won't be rolled.

For the sake of completeness, when using multilog, AOLserver runs in foreground mode and won't write to a log itself. Instead the messages to STDOUT are piped to mutilog who writes it to a different log. Rolling a multilog is done w/ 'svc -a'.

I've ran AOLserver in both configurations. I favor multilog as it garantues that the logs won't exceed a set maximum amount of disk space. With a wrapper script in /etc/init.d both configurations can be controled with 'service <service0> {start|stop|restart|roll|stat}'.

/Bart

I sometimes want to restart the server when I'm behind a proxy on a box with no ssh ability.

I don't restart my server through the Admin pages as I have always ssh access. However, your problem might be a premission issue. As the daemontools documentation states svc runs only with the permissions of the user and its primary group. All auxiliary groups of the user are ignored.

This can have unexpected side effects such as being able to execute the run file from the command line w/o errors but not when using svc. Make sure that root:root has read access to your config.tcl configuration file and the file with the addresses and ports nsd should listen to.

If root:root can't read the address configuration file then nsd won't prebind any addresses and thus fail to listen to ports http and https. There is not error message in the log when nsd can't read the address configuration file. There simply isn't the usual prebind message.

I hope this helps.

/Bart