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This is an alternative method for keeping the AOLserver process running. The recommended method is to run AOLserver supervised.
This step should be completed as root. This can break every service on your machine, so proceed with caution.
There are 2 general steps to getting this working.
Install a script called
restart-aolserver. This
script doesn't actually restart AOLserver - it just kills
it.
Ask the OS to restart our service whenever it's not
running. We do this by adding a line to
/etc/inittab.
Calling restart-aolserver
kills our service. The OS notices that our service is not
running, so it automatically restarts it. Thus, calling
restart-aolserver effectively
restarts our service.
Copy this file into
/var/tmp/restart-aolserver.txt.
This script needs to be SUID-root, which means
that the script will run as root. This is necessary to ensure
that the AOLserver processes are killed regardless of who owns
them. However the script should be executable by the
web group to ensure that the
users updating the web page can use the script, but that
general system users cannot run the script. You also need to
have Perl installed and also a symbolic link to it in
/usr/local/bin.
[joeuser ~]$ su - Password: *********** [root ~]# cp /var/tmp/restart-aolserver.txt /usr/local/bin/restart-aolserver [root ~]# chown root.web /usr/local/bin/restart-aolserver [root ~]# chmod 4750 /usr/local/bin/restart-aolserver [root ~]# ln -s /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/perl [root ~]# exit
Test the restart-aolserver
script. We'll first kill all running servers to clean the
slate. Then, we'll start one server and use
restart-aolserver to kill
it. If it works, then there should be no more servers
running. You should see the following lines.
[joeuser ~]$ killall nsd nsd: no process killed [joeuser ~]$ /usr/local/aolserver/bin/nsd-postgres -t ~/var/lib/aolserver/birdnotes/nsd.tcl [joeuser ~]$ restart-aolserver birdnotes Killing 23727 [joeuser ~]$ killall nsd nsd: no process killed
The number 23727 indicates the process id(s) (PIDs) of the
processes being killed. It is important that no processes are killed by the second
call to killall. If there are
processes being killed, it means that the script is not
working.
Assuming that the restart-aolserver
script worked, login as root and open
/etc/inittab for
editing.
[joeuser ~]$ su - Password: ************ [root ~]# emacs -nw /etc/inittab
Copy this line into the bottom of the file as a template,
making sure that the first field
nss1 is unique.
nss1:345:respawn:/usr/local/aolserver/bin/nsd-postgres -i -u nobody -g web -t /home/joeuser/var/lib/aolserver/birdnotes/nsd.tcl
Important: Make sure there is a newline at the end of the file. If there is not a newline at the end of the file, the system may suffer catastrophic failures.
Still as root, enter the following command to re-initialize
/etc/inittab.
[root ~]# killall nsd nsd: no process killed [root ~]# /sbin/init q
See if it worked by running the
restart-aolserver script
again.
[root ~]# restart-aolserver birdnotes
Killing 23750
If processes were killed, congratulations, your server is now automated for startup and shutdown.