Automate Node-JS-Server on IBM i - node.js

i wrote a little Server with node.js on our ibm i.
To start the server i have to run this command:
5250> qsh
$ node /home/node/server.js
How can i automate this or run the Server with a CL-Script and how can i stop the Server then ?
thanks jo

One very simple way is to do it in a CL Program like this:
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(QIBM_MULTI_THREADED) VALUE(Y)
MONMSG MSGID(CPF0000)
QSH CMD('sh -c /myNodeDirectoryInIfs/myShellScript.sh')
Your shell Script may look like this then:
#!
cd /myNodeDirectoryInIfs/dist/build
node myNodeScript.js
To start it, you can do a SBMJOB on the above CL Program.
To End it, you need to end the submitted Job.
A better way of course is to use a Process Manager like pm2 for example.
If you are still interessted in doing that, please leave a comment.

Related

How to run two shell scripts at startup?

I am working with Ubuntu 16.04 and I have two shell scripts:
run_roscore.sh : This one fires up a roscore in one terminal.
run_detection_node.sh : This one starts an object detection node in another terminal and should start up once run_roscore.sh has initialized the roscore.
I need both the scripts to execute as soon as the system boots up.
I made both scripts executable and then added the following command to cron:
#reboot /path/to/run_roscore.sh; /path/to/run_detection_node.sh, but it is not running.
I have also tried adding both scripts to the Startup Applications using this command for roscore: sh /path/to/run_roscore.sh and following command for detection node: sh /path/to/run_detection_node.sh. And it still does not work.
How do I get these scripts to run?
EDIT: I used the following command to see the system log for the CRON process: grep CRON /var/log/syslog and got the following output:
CRON[570]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output).
So I installed MTA and then systemlog shows:
CRON[597]: (nvidia) CMD (/path/to/run_roscore.sh; /path/to/run_detection_node.sh)
I am still not able to see the output (which is supposed to be a camera stream with detections, as I see it when I run the scripts directly in a terminal). How should I proceed?
Since I got this working eventually, I am gonna answer my own question here.
I did the following steps to get the script running from startup:
Changed the type of the script from shell to bash (extension .bash).
Changed the shebang statement to be #!/bin/bash.
In Startup Applications, give the command bash path/to/script to run the script.
Basically when I changed the shell type from sh to bash, the script starts running as soon as the system boots up.
Note, in case this helps someone: My intention to have run_roscore.bash as a separate script was to run roscore as a background process. One can run it directly from a single script (which is also running the detection node) by having roscore& as a command before the rosnode starts. This command will fire up the master as a background process and leave the same terminal open for following commands to be executed.
If you could install immortal you could use the require option to start in sequence your services, for example, this is could be the run config for /etc/immortal/script1.yml:
cmd: /path/to/script1
log:
file: /var/log/script1.log
wait: 1
require:
- script2
And for /etc/immortal/script2.yml
cmd: /path/to/script2
log:
file: /var/log/script2.log
What this will do it will try to start both scripts on boot time, the first one script1 will wait 1 second before starting and also wait for script2 to be up and running, see more about the wait and require option here: https://immortal.run/post/immortal/
Based on your operating system you will need to configure/setup immortaldir, her is how to do it for Linux: https://immortal.run/post/how-to-install/
Going more deep in the topic of supervisors there are more alternatives here you could find some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_supervision
If you want to make sure that "Roscore" (whatever it is) gets started when your Ubuntu starts up then you should start it as a service (not via cron).
See this question/answer.

How to use pm2 with a nodejs app that uses readline for taking command line input?

I have a Node.js app that uses the node's native readline to be able to take command-line inputs.
When launching the app with pm2, the command-line input is unavailable.
Any ideas how to solve this issue? Other than using systemd and creating an init script myself?
Use pm2 to attach to your process and you will see readline, clearline and cursorTo working as expected.
First get your process id with:
$ pm2 id {your-process-name}
[ 7 ]
Let's say it's 7:
$ pm2 attach 7
if you check the pm2 website they clearly mention the following line: Advanced, production process manager for Node.js. So using it in this context is unnecessary as all pm2 does is start your 'node' process and allows you to manage it, the simple way is to use command line args while starting the process.
for example:
I myself use commander for this purpose. it manages all my command line arguments (u can see its usage). and with pm2 i use it like following:
pm2 start server.js --name production -- --env dev -p 3458
notice -- before --env, it is used to separate pm2 arguments from the arguments you want to supply to your process
p.s.
PM2 has more complex usage than this, in the terms of process management, i myself use it for production level deployment. If you want to take input from a user every time s/he starts your app, then you should stick with using node command only

Stopping nodejs process start by npm?

I am in the process of creating some scripts to deploy my node.js based application, via continuous integration and I am having trouble seeing the right way to stop the node process.
I start the application via a start-dev.sh script:
#!/bin/sh
scripts_dir=`dirname $0`
cd "${scripts_dir}/"..
npm start &
echo $! > app.pid
And then I was hoping to stop it via:
#!/bin/sh
scripts_dir=`dirname $0`
cd "${scripts_dir}/"..
echo killing pid `cat app.pid`
kill -9 `cat app.pid`
The issue I am finding is that npm is no longer running at this point, so the pid isn't useful to stop the process tree. The only workaround I can think of at this point is to skip npm completely for launch and simply call node directly?
Can anyone suggest an appropriate way to deal with this? Is foregoing npm for launching a good approach, in this context?
Forever can do the process management stuff for you.
forever start app.js
forever stop app.js
Try to avoid relying on npm start outside of development, it just adds an additional layer between you and node.
just use supervisor example conf is like
[program:long_script]
command=/usr/bin/node SOURCE_FOLDER/EXECUTABLE_JAVASCRIPT_FILE.js
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stderr_logfile=/var/log/long.err.log
stdout_logfile=/var/log/long.out.log
where
SOURCE_FOLDER is the folder for your project
EXECUTABLE_JAVASCRIPT_FILE the file to be run
you can check the post here

How can I get source code of nodejs from running app

I have accidentally delete source code of nodejs application, but this application is running, so how can I get source code back from running app?
I hope source code has been cached in some directory.
I was able to recover the full file by attaching the debugger (as TGrif suggested).
To actually recover the code:
Use setBreakpoint('app.js', 10), where 10 is a line of the code you know will be ran over again in the running process
Say pause, then next until it's paused on the script you want to recover.
Finally, say list(5000), where 5000 is an arbitrarily long number of lines to list.
You will now have your full script printed out, albeit with line numbers at the front, but you can use a site like this to remove them.
Hope this helps anyone who encounters this unique issue in the future, as this took me a couple hours to figure out.
There is maybe a way to retrieve some of your source code with the Nodejs debugger.
Assuming Linux OS, you need to get the process id of your application:
$ ps -e | grep node
Next you entering your app in debug mode with something like that:
$ kill -s USR1 PID
where PID is the pid of your node app.
Then your start the debug console:
$ node debug -p PID
If you have an app console, you'll see:
Starting debugger agent.
Debugger listening on port 5858
In your debug console you should see a debug prompt and you can get available commands with:
debug> help
I am able to show some of the running app source with the list command:
debug> list(NUMBER_OF_LINE)
where NUMBER_OF_LINE is the number of source code line you want to display.
I'm not sure this is a one shot try for you or not because my source code was not deleted.
Hope you can get some results.

How to run a nodejs script every second

I need to run my nodejs script for every second ,Similar to PHP cron jobs. I have tried some nodejs cron libraries like https://github.com/ncb000gt/node-cron but the issue was first run should be manual i:e I have to run the file with cron script for first time manually.
But in php cron jobs, they run by the server so if the apache server running script will automatically start and even if the script return an error for a cycle then script will run again from the beginning from the next cycle
So is there any way to achieve this in nodejs ?
You have two options:
using Node as a daemon, with something like Supervisord to run your node-cron script. This alternative is wasteful on resources such as RAM because Node and Supervisord are running all the time.
using the system's crontab, you can run your script like calling Node on the command line, such as * * * * node /path/to/your/script.js. This alternative is highly efficient but lacks some control, like being able to log the output in case of an error, although you could just pipe the output to a file: node script.js > logfile

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