Application auto-restart?

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jan 30, 2006, at 12:03, Ben Scott wrote:

> Sounds like init(8) to me.
>
> Add the "app" to /etc/inittab and you're done.
>
> No?

Yes.  Usually.

I've used inittab successfully for this task when building network 
appliances, keeping an ssh connection up, for example.

The trouble with inittab is it can be rather aggressive with its 
respawning.  For ssh on a fast machine this is no problem.  When it's a 
200MB Java application, constantly respawning a crashing app isn't 
always the best method.  Eventually inittab will back off and chill 
pretty well but sometimes, and maybe there's a way to configure its 
tenacity, it just doesn't.

Also, there's no way that I know of to tell inittab to anything other 
than respawn the process.  The script I posted is used on a machine 
where the serial port hangs up and the machine needs to be rebooted to 
get it to kick back to life.  BIOS bug, I suspect, but hardware and 
software come out of different budgets, and, well, don't ask...

-Bill
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