The nightd daemon is a easily-customized daemon which performs a
defined set of tasks on a nightly basis. The program behavior is
defined by the resource file, loaded at the start of execution. The
program can have any name, and loads the resource file with the name
~/.programrc; ie, the implementation used by elixir to control the
night elixir real-time systems is called 'ert' and it loads the file
~/.ertrc.
HOME /h/skyprobe
DATA_PATH $HOME/data
PID_FILE $HOME/.skyprobe.pid
LOG_FILE $HOME/sp_daemon.log
CCD_TEMP -20
EXPTIME 30
INIT_COMMAND sp_command cool $CCD_TEMP
INIT_COMMAND sp_command init $DATA_PATH/&DATE
MAIN_COMMAND sp_command expose $EXPTIME $DATA_PATH/&DATE/sp_&DATE_&TIME.fits
DONE_COMMAND sp_command warm
NIGHT_START 18:00
NIGHT_STOP 06:00
PERIOD 60
TIMEOUT 300
Above is shown a typical nightd configuration script. The nightd
configuration defines commands and execution time scales. The start
and end times of the night are defined by the entries NIGHT_START and
NIGHT_STOP. The nightd configuration script defines three classes of
commands: INIT, MAIN, DONE. The INIT commands are executed in the
order listed in the configuration script at the start of the night,
while the DONE commands are executed at the end of the night. The
MAIN commands are executed on a regular basis from START to STOP using
the interval defined by PERIOD (seconds). The program monitors these
processes and checks for completion within the TIMEOUT period;
otherwise, the command is sent the kill signal.
The entries PID_FILE and LOG_FILE are required entries. The PID_FILE
stores the process id, user and machine for the given nightd
implementation, and prevents multiple intances of the same process.
The LOG_FILE is used for all error messages. The other entries in the
configuration script define variables to be use elsewhere in the
script. There are a few special variables: \&DATE, \&TIME, ???, which
are expanded by nightd before the execution.
The nightd program takes several possible arguments on the command
line:
nightd start
nightd stop
nightd status
nightd config
The 'start' command starts up the nightd program. Currently, nightd
does not fork itself into the background, so it is necessary to place
it in the background manually (nightd start &). It is not necessary
to redirect the output; nightd will send all data to LOG_FILE if it
can be opened and written to. On start, nightd will check for the
existence of the PID_FILE and give an error to stdout (not LOG_FILE)
if it exists; only one implementation may run at a time. Currently,
nightd does not check for the existence of the process identified in
the PID_FILE. It is necessary for the user to confirm that such a
process exists on the named machine.
The 'stop' command halts execution of the given nightd program. It
uses the information in the PID_FILE to remotely log onto the machine
where the process is being executed and send the STOP signal. Nightd
will give an error if there is no PID_FILE, implying no currently
running nightd. It is necessary to have rsh access between machines
for this to work.
The status command shows the pid information for the currently running
nightd, or says that it is not running.
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