I have a PHP script that has been running as a cron job. The script uses the DB to see if it has anything to do, and to make sure its brethren are not already running.
I'd like to run the PHP script as a daemon with upstart.
I've set up my /etc/init/super-mailer.conf file as this:
description "super mailer"
author "Rob Nugen"
start on startup
stop on shutdown
respawn
exec sudo -u www-data php -f /var/www/super-mailer/scripts/mailer.php
I execute sudo start super-mailer and it runs once.
It doesn't run again, though. Why not?
I've also tried replacing the exec sudo line with
script
sudo -u www-data php -f /var/www/clubberia-mailer/scripts/mailer.php
end script
Do I need to change my PHP script to loop? How do I tell upstart to keep starting the script?
A daemon is a type of program that does not stop until told so. However, your script terminates itself. So yes, you need to make a loop in your script, that will re-run it every time.
However, keep in mind that just making a loop and executing your script again and again, might make it consume many CPU cycles. So, you might consider calling a function like usleep in every iteration to make the deamon a little less CPU-consuming. So, for example, you let your script run every 2 seconds.
Related
I'm in a school project and we use a process of collecting tweets through a stream set up with PHP. I usually run it in background through the terminal with a command like:
nohup ./mystream.php 2>&1 &
This stream is supposed to be on at all times and thus I would like to make sure that this process starts up whenever the system reboots. How would I do that in Ubuntu?
You would make it part of a script that runs doing startup. We have done this with things like Upstart which replaces the sbin/init/ daemon. Here is an example script -
start on filesystem and net-device-up IFACE=eth0
respawn
exec /usr/bin/php -f /path/to/your/process.php
I have a simple question, i searched and I couldn't find a solution.
I have a simple shell script that run a small php code every 2 seconds, I wrote it and save as a file:
$ cat every-2-seconds.sh
#!/bin/bash
while true
do
php /home/account/domains/domain.co.il/public_html/my-php-script.php
sleep 2
done
Now, i need that this script will always run on background, but I also need that it will run on startup, Just like a service, it should always run in background, and I never want to start it manually (of course, if something happen and it will stop, i should be able to start it manually)
I heard about nohup, but its not a service right? and I can start it on startup.. :(
Can you help me on this??
You can make your script run with this line of code (assuming you are in the directory with your script)
nohup every-2-seconds.sh &
The & will run this as a background task and nohup will keep the process running even after you've disconnected from your session.
To handle starting it on reboot you need to add this command to your crontab
crontab -e
#reboot /path/to/every-2-seconds.sh > /dev/null
In the crontab you need to specify the full path. You can change /dev/null to the file you want output to go to (assuming you want the output)
I'm starting my php script in the following way:
bash
cd 'path'
php -f 'scriptname'.php
There is no output while the php script is running.
After a time, the php script responds with:
Killed
My idea is that it reached the memory_limit: ini_set('memory_limit', '40960M');
Increasing the memory limit seemed to solve the problem, but it only increased the edge.
What exactly does that Killed phrase mean?
Your process is killed. There could be a multitude of reasons, but it's easy to discard some of the more obvious.
php limits: if you run into a php limit, you'll get an error in the logfile, and probably on the commandline as well. This normally does not print 'killed'
the session-is-ended-issues: if you still have your session, then your session is obvioiusly not ended, so disregard all the nohup and & stuff
If your server is starved for resources (no memory, no swap), the kernel might kill your process. This is probably what's happening.
In anycase: your process is getting send a signal that it should stop. Normally only a couple of 'things' can do this
your account (e.g. you kill the process)
an admin user (e.g. root)
the kernel when it is really needing your memory for itself.
maybe some automated process, for instance, if you live on a shared server and you take up more then your share of resources.
references: Who "Killed" my process and why?
You could be running out of memory in the PHP script. Here is how to reproduce that error:
I'm doing this example on Ubuntu 12.10 with PHP 5.3.10:
Create this PHP script called m.php and save it:
<?php
function repeat(){
repeat();
}
repeat();
?>
Run it:
el#apollo:~/foo$ php m.php
Killed
The program takes 100% CPU for about 15 seconds then stops. Look at dmesg | grep php and there are clues:
el#apollo:~/foo$ dmesg | grep php
[2387779.707894] Out of memory: Kill process 2114 (php) score 868 or
sacrifice child
So in my case, the PHP program printed "Killed" and halted because it ran out of memory due to an infinite loop.
Solutions:
Increase the amount of RAM available.
Break down the problem set into smaller chunks that operate sequentially.
Rewrite the program so it has a much smaller memory requirements.
Killed is what bash says when a process exits after a SIGKILL, it's not related to putty.
Terminated is what bash says when a process exits after a a SIGTERM.
You are not running into PHP limits, you may be running into a different problem, see:
Return code when OOM killer kills a process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nohup
Try using nohup before your command.
nohup catches the hangup signal while the ampersand doesn't (except the shell is confgured that way or doesn't send SIGHUP at all).
Normally, when running a command using & and exiting the shell afterwards, the shell will terminate the sub-command with the hangup signal (kill -SIGHUP ). This can be prevented using nohup, as it catches the signal and ignores it so that it never reaches the actual application.
In case you're using bash, you can use the command shopt | grep hupon to find out whether your shell sends SIGHUP to its child processes or not. If it is off, processes won't be terminated, as it seems to be the case for you.
There are cases where nohup does not work, for example when the process you start reconnects the NOHUP signal.
nohup php -f 'yourscript'.php
If you are already taking care of php.ini settings related with script memory and timeout then may be its linux ssh connection which terminating in active session or some thing like that.
You can use 'nohup' linux command run a command immune to hangups
shell> nohup php -f 'scriptname'.php
Edit:- You can close your session by adding '&' at end of command:-
shell> nohup php -f 'scriptname'.php &> /dev/null &
'&' operater at end of any comand in linux move that command in background
Currently I have a parser.php which loads an xml file and inserts new data from the xml file into a mysql database. How would I go about refreshing this php file every 30 seconds so my mysql table always has fresh data? I think I could use short-polling to do this, but I'm guessing this is not the most efficient of options.
Thanks in advance
This is a non-PHP solution which will require you to have shell (SSH) access in order to run the script, however you can also run it through PHP with exec() if you want to. Shared hosting environments might present a challenge for this approach but as long as you can execute scripts under your user credentials you should have no problems running it.
First you will need to create a bash script with the following content and save it (I'll use the name parser.sh for the purpose of this example). You can then adjust the timeout in the sleep 30 line if you want to.
#!/bin/sh
while true
do
php parser.php
sleep 30
done
In order to run the script you'll need to give it execute permissions.
chmod +x parser.sh
Now you can use the nohup command with the ampersand (&) argument to ensure that the script will run in the background even when a termination signal is sent after, lets say, closing the shell (SSH). The ampersand is important!
nohup ./parser.sh &
Now you can use top or ps aux | grep parser to ensure that the script is running. As I already said before you can also use PHP exec() to start the process but shell is still the preferred and most reliable way to do this.
If you want to stop the background process which executes your script then you'll simply have to kill it. Just use ps aux | grep parser to find out the PID of the parser process (its in the second column to the left) and use it with the kill command.
kill 4183
You need to use a cronjob, but crons jobs runs every 1 minute or more.
Another way is to make a "daemon".
Very basic example:
<?php
while(true) {
// check if 30 seconds has passed.
// then execute some function...
};
?>
Then you need to execute this in your terminal:
$ php script.php &
This link should help.
Greatings!
I've created a php script that allows me to click a button to restart a PHP script. However, I'm not sure the best way to do it. Here's a snapshot of it: http://i51.tinypic.com/2niz32o.png
I currently have this:
if(isset($_POST['login_restart']))
{
$command = exec("/usr/bin/php /var/www/html/login_server.php >/dev/null &");
$pid = exec("nohup $command > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!");
$info = "Login server started...PID: $pid";
}
However, that doesn't seem to work. I need it so when the "Restart" button is pressed, it starts the login server, and keeps it running. I've been using the screen function in SSH, however, I don't want to have to keep logging into SSH to restart the login server. I want to somehow use a process ID so I can check to see if the script is running, and if it's not, it'll allow me to click the "Restart" button.
Thanks.
Is there a particular reason that you want to do this manually and not automatically? Is it not the case that the server should always be restarted?
My advice would be to automate this, either by using cron to check the status of your script at regular intervals, or bash infinite loop script immortality.
First create a launcher script to invoke your PHP for convenience, and call it run_login_server.sh (don't forget to chmod +x it so it can be executed):
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/php /var/www/html_login_server.php > /dev/null
Then create login_server_daemon.sh to run your script in an infinite loop (again, chmod +x it to make it executable):
#!/bin/bash
while :
do
./run_login_server.sh # or any command line to be executed forever
done
N.B. I have not backgrounded the php process in the above bash script. It works, because the bash loop will call php each time, and the loop will only iterate again once php has died. Just execute login_server_daemon.sh to start the loop (either through an init service or in a detached screen session like you are using now).
If your PHP scripts hang, or you want to reload them because you have updated your code, you can simply kill the looped process–run_login_server.sh and the bash loop will respawn it.
It's as simple as killall run_login_server.sh, which you could do via php's exec. Note that you need to be careful about the user permissions of who has executed what: if you execute login_server_daemon.sh as your_username but php runs as php_username then php will not have permission to killall your process.
Finally, if you can't choose between cron and the script approaches, here are some factors to consider:
The script should live forever, and will only die if 1) explicitly killed, 2) bash somehow trips and dies on a while loop, which I doubt would happen, and 3) a machine-wide catastrophe happens, in which case your little bash script stopping is the least of your worries. A bonus with the script is that restart is immediate after php (or whatever you want to call in the infinite loop) dies.
cron has a the problem that it can only check once a minute at its most frequent setting, if you really care about immediate recovery. It has the additional annoyance that if you decide to stop the script, you also have to remove it from your crontab or it will just come back to life.