Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Thompson, David H." <[email protected]> · Mon, 03 Apr 2006 15:35:02 -0400

We use a service called procServ which provides access to the ioc's
shell via telnet while it is running.  If for any reason the IOC dies
the procServ service will restart it.  We run about 40-50 soft IOCS and
they are all started using a script that runs out of init.d at boot
time.  Since the procServ restarts the IOC when it dies doing
maintenance on it is similar to doing maintenance on a vxWorks IOC, just
change the database, executable, sequencers or whatever and just type
exit at the IOC shell.

There are at least one or two others, I think J-Lab has one that does
something similar with a better user interface.  
Ours is at http://ics-web1.sns.ornl.gov/share/procServer.tgz.  I also
did a talk at the December 2004 epics meeting.
See also
http://ics-web1.sns.ornl.gov/softIOC/softIOC_maintenanceGuide.html

One other note, you will need to add a signal handler, SIG_IGN is fine,
for SIGHUP.  Otherwise, the exit of extra caRepeater tasks may kill it
on some hosts.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rod Nussbaumer [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 2:11 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: IOC shutdown signal(s)
> 
> Hi All.
> 
> I am trying to set up a Linux host running a soft IOC, where there is
a
> coordinated system of start-stop-restart commands available for
> maanaging the IOC as a system service. I would like to be able to
issue
> a signal to the IOC to shut it down in a way that is at least as
> graceful as typing 'exit' at the IOC shell. Which, if any, signal does
> this? Is there any reason a new IOC could not be immediately started?
> The EPICS database may change between runs. In fact, this is the main
> reason for performing the restart.
> 
> Does anyone have a system of 'init.d' scripts that does this, and that
> they would be willing to share?
> 
> Rod Nussbaumer,
> TRIUMF.

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System