Re: daemontools

Volker Wysk <[email protected]> wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 25. Januar 2018, 13:43:45 CET schrieb Charles Cazabon:
> > My favourite way of running getmail - and other utilities that need to run
> > on a repeating basis - is daemontools' svscan/supervise programs.  I don't
> > include a service script (known as a "run" script with daemontools) in the
> > getmail package either, but it's trivial enough that probably no one would
> > need me to.
> 
> I've dug into daemontools. It's very simple and elegant. Guess it would be
> my favourite too - if I could get logging working.

There's a trick you probably missed in the daemontools documentation.

> The log script /etc/service/test/log/run runs only when started directly. It
> then logs the stdin to /etc/service/test/log/main/current.

daemontools only automatically starts the logging service if the main service
directory has the sticky bit set.

i.e. chmod +t /etc/service/test

I don't recall if that will take effect immediately.  You may have to cause
daemontools to stop the service, remove it, and re-add it.

> > Not everything should be "in the box".  The Unix tool philosophy is do one
> > thing, and do it well, and let the user hook different programs together
> > as they see fit, with simple, reliable interfaces.  getmail adheres to
> > that design philosophy.
> 
> Sometimes the software should encapsulate the complexity, and hide it from
> the user. Rather than hand it over to the user. Doesn't Daemontools do that?
> Systemd does that, AFAIK. 

A daemontools service run script for getmail would normally be something as
simple as:

  #!/bin/sh
  sleep 900
  exec getmail [options]

A systemd "unit file" for getmail doesn't seem quite so trivial to write, at
least to me.

Charles
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Charles Cazabon
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