How do I make a number of looping scripts execute at startup? - python-2.7

I have a few Python scripts, all of them involving while True: and a wait timer so they run at varying intervals. They do things like monitor a serial port and look for new versions of my code on a remote server. I haven't used cron because some require offsets (e.g run at ten seconds past the minute) and I wanted to keep things very simple.
Using rc.local, I run hook.py on startup. What can I put in hook.py to run a.py, b.py and c.py simultaneously and continuously? I tried subprocess (with shell = True) but I'm not sure the next line / next subprocess command will execute until the first one finishes - which will never happen. Plus it has some weird behaviour I'm struggling to debug (I can rw files using their absolute paths if I run the script directly; when subprocess runs them, it can't find the files).
Any suggestions? Just want something simple that can simultaneously execute several new python scripts. Platform is a Raspberry Pi.
Alternatively: if there's code I can put in rc.local that will spawn a new python process for all .py files in a specified directory, that would work too.

This sounds like it would be better suited for spawning via cron instead of an infinite while loops.
But if you want to continue running them in rc.local just put the & at the end of your command:
/usr/bin/python /home/you/command.py &
This runs the command in the background.
If you want to run all Python files in a given directory I would write a bash script like:
for file in /home/you/*.py
do
if [ "$?" == "0" ]
then
/usr/bin/python "$file" &
fi
done
We will need more information about your path issues to tell you more.

Related

autostart webserver and programm

I'm working on a Yocto based system. My problem is that I can't start my programm written in C++ and the webserver (node.js) at the same time right after the boot of my device.
I already tried this in /etc/init.d:
#! /bin/bash
/home/ProjectFolder/myProject
cd /home/myapp && DEBUG=myapp:* npm start
exit 0
I changed the rights after creating the script by
chmod +x ./startProg.sh
After that I linked it by
update-rc.d startProg.sh defaults
After reboot the system only starts the C++-programm. I tried some other possibilities like seperating the two comands in different shell-scripts, but that didn't work out any better.
Is there any option I missed or did I make any mistake trying to put those two processes into the autostart?
This of course isn't a C++ or Node.js question. A shell script is a list of commands that are executed in order, unless specified otherwise. So your shell script runs your two programs in the order specified, first myProject and when that's done npm will be started.
This is the same as what would happen from the prompt and the solution is the same: /home/ProjectFolder/myProject &

my system V init script don't return

This is script content, located in /etc/init.d/myserviced:
#!/lib/init/init-d-script
DAEMON="/usr/local/bin/myprogram.py"
NAME="myserviced"
DESC="The description of my service"
When I start the service (either by calling it directly or by calling sudo service myserviced start), I can see program myprogram.py run, but it did not return to command prompt.
I guess there must be something that I misunderstood, so what is it?
The system is Debian, running on a Raspberry Pi.
After more works, I finally solved this issue. There are 2 major reasons:
init-d-script actually calls start-stop-daemon, who don't work well with scripts specified via --exec option. When killing scripts, you should only specify --name option. However, as init-d-script always fill --exec option, it cannot be used with script daemons. I have to write the sysv script by myself.
start-stop-daemon won't magically daemonize the thing you provide. So the executable provided to start-stop-daemon should be daemonized itself, but not a regular program.

running parallel code on PC

I have fortran code that has been parallelized with OpenMP. I want to test my code on my PC before running on HPC. My PC has double core CPU and I work on Linux-mint. I installed gfortranmultilib and this is my script:
#!/bin/bash
### Job name
#PBS -N pme
### Keep Output and Error
#PBS -j eo
### Specify the number of nodes and thread (ppn) for your job.
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=2
### Switch to the working directory;
cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
### Run:
OMP_NUM_THREADS=$PBS_NUM_PPN
export OMP_NUM_THREADS
ulimit -s unlimited
./a.out
echo 'done'
What should I do more to run my code?
OK, I changed script as suggested in answers:
#!/bin/bash
### Switch to the working directory;
cd Desktop/test
### Run:
OMP_NUM_THREADS=2
export OMP_NUM_THREADS
ulimit -s unlimited
./a.out
echo 'done'
my code and its executable file are in folder test on Desktop, so:
cd Desktop/test
is this correct?
then I compile my simple code:
implicit none
!$OMP PARALLEL
write(6,*)'hi'
!$OMP END PARALLEL
end
by command:
gfortran -fopenmp test.f
and then run by:
./a.out
but only one "hi" is printed as output. What should I do?
(and a question about this site: in situation like this I should edit my post or just add a comment?)
You don't need and probably don't want to use the script on your PC. Not even to learn how to use such a script, because these scripts are too much connected to the specifics of each supercomputer.
I use several supercomputers/clusters and I cannot just reuse the script from one at the other, because they are so much different.
On your PC you should just do:
optional, it is probably the default
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=2
to set the number of OpenMP threads to 2. Adjust if you need some other number.
cd to the working directory
cd my_working_directory
Your working directory is the directory where you have the required data or where the executable resides. In your case it seems to be the directory where a.out is.
run the damn thing
ulimit -s unlimited
./a.out
That's it.
You can also store the standard output and error output to a file
./out > out.txt 2> err.txt
to mimic the supercomputer behaviour.
The PBS variables are only set when you run the script using qsub. You probably don't have that on your PC and you probably don't want to have it either.
$PBS_O_WORKDIR is the directory where you run the qsub command, unless you set it differently by other means.
$PBS_NUM_PPN is the number you indicated in #PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=2. The queue system reads that and sets this variable for you.
The script you posted is for Portable Batch System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Batch_System) queue system. That means, that the job you want to run on the HPC infrastructure has to go first into the queue system and when the resources are available the job will run on the system.
Some of the commands (those starting with #PBS) are specific commands for this queue system. Among these commands, some allow the user to indicate the application process hierarchy (i.e. number of processes and threads). Also, keep in mind that since all the PBS commands start by # they are ignored by regular shell script execution. In the case you presented, that is given by
### Specify the number of nodes and thread (ppn) for your job.
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=2
which as the comment indicates it should tell the queue system that you want to run 1 process and each process will have 2 threads. The queue system is likely to pass these parameters to the process launcher (srun/mpirun/aprun/... for MPI apps in addition to OMP_NUM_THREADS for OpenMP apps).
If you want to run this job on a computer that does not have PBS queue, you should be aware at least of two things.
1) The following command
### Switch to the working directory;
cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
will be translated into "cd" because the environment variable PBS_O_WORKDIR is only defined within the PBS job context. So, you should change this command (or execute another cd command just before the execution) in order to fix where you want to run the job.
2) Similarly for PBS_NUM_PPN environment variable,
OMP_NUM_THREADS=$PBS_NUM_PPN
export OMP_NUM_THREADS
this variable won't be defined if you don't run this within a PBS job context, so you should set OMP_NUM_THREADS to the value you want (2, according to your question) manually.
If you want your linux box environment to be like an HPC login node. You can do the following
Make sure that your compiler supports OpenMP, test a simple hello world program with OpenMP flags
Install OpenMPI on your system from your favourite package manager or download the source/binary from the website (OpenMPI Download)
I would not recommend installing cluster manager like Slurm for your experiments
After you are done, you can execute your MPI programs through the mpirun wrapper
mpirun -n <no_of_cores> <executable>
EDIT:
This is assuming that you are running this only MPI. Note that OpenMP utilizes the cores as well. If you are running MPI+OpenMP - n*OMP_NUM_THREADS=cores on a single node.

What is the difference between calling a script from the shell and using system()?

I have built a bash script to start up some processes in my system. It simply calls the process and associated config file. Same as I would call from the command line.
#!/bin/bash
# Start specified process in a new session
setsid $1 &>/dev/null &
So to start up someprocess, I would call from the command line:
root#supercomputer:~# start someprocess
This works like a charm. Every process, every time. But when I make a system call from a different running C++ process, someprocess never starts up.
system( "start someprocess" )
This approach for 90% of my processes, except for one. The only difference in the working and not working processes is that the non-working one uses proprietary libraries underneath. I recently added the setsid option to the bash script in hopes that starting a new session would help, but it made no difference. I've also tried popen, and execv. No change.
So my question is what is the difference between calling something with system() and just making that same call from the command line?
All processes are written in C++ on Linux.
.bashrc is only invoked if bash is run as interactive, non-login shell. If it's invoked as non-interactive shell, as when using system() on a script with a bash shebang, it only reads the configuration file pointed to by $BASH_ENV.
That means you have the following options:
add -l to the shebang - causes the shell to read ~/.profile at startup
set $BASH_ENV to the script you want sourced before calling system()
add -i to the shebang - invokes bash as interactive shell and causes it to read ~/.bashrc, but will also effect how bash handles input/output.
I'd recommend the first option.
You can find a detailed explanation of how bash reads it's startup files here. I'm not sure this will solve your problem completely, but it may at leas shed some light on that part of the issue.
Check the environment variables that are used in the system() call. For example, call system to print out some of the variables, and see if they match what you see from the command line.
Likely they are not being sourced correctly.

C++ Keep process alive after it kills its parent

I'm working on implementing a self-updater for a daemon on OS X. The update is published as a .pkg file, so what I'm trying to do is as follows:
When the daemon is notified that an update is available, it calls installer via the system() call to install the package. The package contains a newer version of the daemon, a preupgrade script that stops the daemon (launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/foo.plist), and a postflight script that starts it back up after the new version is installed. The problem I'm having is that the installer process is quitting prematurely. I suspect that it may be because the installer kills its parent process in order to update it, and then gets killed itself instead of continuing as its own orphan process. I've tried the following with no luck:
Postpending the installer command with '&' to run it in the
background
Wrapping the installer command with nohup
The install command completes consistently without error when I run it from the command line, and fails consistently when run from the installer. When called from the installer, I'm piping the output to a file, and sometimes it has nothing, and sometimes it shows the install getting to about 41% completion before output stops. Any ideas on how I can figure out what's happening to the process or make sure it stays alive without its parent?
When you call launchctl unload, it kills the entire process group (unlike a simple kill). You want to move your subprocess into a separate process group. The easiest way is with the C call setsid().
If you're in the middle of a shell script, you should look at the following approaches. I haven't tried these since I was dealing with a C program and could setsid():
Prior to calling the installer, use set -m. This is supposed to turn on monitor mode, which says "Background processes run in a separate process group and a line containing their exit status is printed upon their completion."
Try this sub-interative shell trick: New process group in shell script