VISITview Unix Server setup

07/08/2002

Starting the VISITview server

To start the VISITview server, change to the directory where you put the VISITview software and enter the command:

       java -cp ./ ViewServer

if you want to keep the logging information, then re-direct the output into a file. For example:

       java -cp ./ ViewServer >serve.txt 2&gs;i&1

Note: if you're using Java version 1.0 or 1.1, the java command should be replaced by the jre command.

Automatically starting the VISITview server

On our Unix machines, we usually do not run this as a daemon started by the system; rather, we have a crontab entry that checks every 15 minutes to see if the server is running -- if it is not, then it starts the server and sends an email message to someone. The crontab entry might look like:

0,15,30,45 * * * * /home/user/vview/makeserverrun >/home/user/vview/cout.txt

which runs the makeserverrun script. Here's our version of makeserverrun:

#!/bin/ksh
cd /home/user  # these two lines are there to set up the environment
. ./.profile   # needed to run Java
umask 002  # make sure that created files have rw-rw-r-- permissions

ps -fu user >/home/user/vview/ps.txt
value=`grep ViewServer /home/user/vview/ps.txt`
stat=$?

# the first 4 lines of the if block are there only to send an email notice
if [ $stat -ne 0 ]; then
    echo Subject: Restarted VISITview Server >/home/user/vview/mailmessage.txt
    echo Precedence: bulk >>/home/user/vview/mailmessage.txt
    echo The VISITview Server was restarted at `date` >>/home/user/vview/mailmessage.txt
    cat /home/user/vview/mailmessage.txt |mail user@ssec.wisc.edu
    /home/user/vview/doserver
fi

where the doserver script is:

#!/bin/ksh
cd /home/user  # again, just setting up the correct environment
. .profile     # for running
umask 002
cd /home/user/vview
nohup java ViewServer >server.txt 2>&1 &

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