Keeping a daemon running?

[Jorge Almeida]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 1:04 AM, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
> Jorge Almeida wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:

>> daemontools is the way, at least if you mean "services" rather than
>> daemons. If your service has an option of writing logs to stderr and
>> not to put himself on the background, than that's it. You might want
>> to have a look at www.thedjbway.org, which leads you by the hand.
>
> I think of "services" as being a Windows term and "daemon" as nix.
> daemontools looks good, reading up on it.

I think they use "daemon" for "service that goes to the background".
Just semantics, anyway.
For example, sshd has an option to not detach from the controlling
terminal, and it plays nice with daemontools (never ever failed on
me).

I just had a look at the mmonit page. It has lots of features but it
uses pid files; I suppose that makes it less reliable, but then I'm no
expert. I couldn't find clear documentation about the free form
language they use for the rc file, which reminds me of that language
Apple uses (or used?). I suppose it's ok, but I would not trust a
setup I don't fully understand.
>
> That link to thedjbway.org doesn't seem to be working.
>
Right, the domain seems to have expired. The home for daemontools is
http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html, but is not as beginner-friendly. I
may have most or all pages of thedjbway.org stored, if you're
interested I will send you a tarball (not before next week, though...)

Jorge