Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Keeping a background Frontier 6/Mac server running smoothly
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 6/19/1999; 1:25:54 PM Topic: Keeping a background Frontier 6/Mac server running smoothly Msg #: 7581 Prev/Next: 7580 / 7582
A couple of weeks ago I installed a virgin copy of Frontier 6 on a Mac system running an old version of Mac System 7. I use the Mac to offload tasks from the NT server, things like batch-loading of the RSS files for My.UserLand.Com and sending Scripting News bulletins.This server is doing all its work in response to XML-RPC messages, and in timed processes running under the scheduler. Frontier has trouble doing this 7-by-24. It runs out of sockets, or crashes in a "GUSI" routine. Whatever. I'm not sure if the problem is in the TCP routines in the Mac, or in Frontier, and to a major extent it doesn't matter. I just want the server to run smoothly and now I think I have a formula that works, and want to share it.
An AppleScript
First, I wrote an AppleScript that watches to see if Frontier is running, and if not it launches it.
on idle tell application "Finder" if not (exists application process "UserLand Frontier™") then try open application "UserLand Frontier™" on error end try end if end tell return 10 --run once every 10 seconds end idleon run idle {} end run
This script is saved as a runnable application, with an alias in the Startup Items folder so it launches when the system boots. Every ten seconds it checks if Frontier is running and relaunches it.
A Frontier agent that runs every hour
Second, I wrote a Frontier agent that quits every five hours.
if not defined (scratchpad.cthoursrunning) scratchpad.cthoursrunning = 0 if scratchpad.cthoursrunning == 5 delete (@scratchpad.cthoursrunning) //signal to reset filemenu.save () filemenu.quit () msg ((5 - scratchpad.cthoursrunning) + " hours till we quit.") scratchpad.cthoursrunning++ clock.sleepfor (60 * 60) //sleep for an hourI put the agent at system.agents.quitter.
It works!
You can see that it works from the log on the home page of My.UserLand.Com. It's updating every hour. Now I can move on to tackle other problems.
There are responses to this message:
- Re: Keeping a background Frontier 6/Mac server running smoothly, Chris Hanson, 6/19/1999; 3:08:49 PM
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