2

This is on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

So I've got a gulp script (running through Node) that works great when I execute it manually. It actually runs a "watch" on a directory so that if any of the files change it automatically runs a command. The initial issue I had was if I save a change that has a bug in it, the "watch" crashes.

I thought I could fix this by executing the gulp script through upstart and respawn it if it crashes. But when I run "start gulpwatch" or even "sudo start gulpwatch" it says it starts and gives me a pid but it actually just starts and crashes and doesn't maintain the "watch". This is confirmed in the syslog where I see the lines:

Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process (2653) terminated with status 2
2072 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process ended, respawning
2073 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process (2654) terminated with status 2
2074 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process ended, respawning
2075 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process (2655) terminated with status 2
2076 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process ended, respawning
2077 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process (2656) terminated with status 2
2078 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process ended, respawning
2079 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process (2657) terminated with status 2
2080 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process ended, respawning
2081 Mar 24 14:19:19 ubuntu init: gulpwatch main process (2658) terminated with status 2

Here is my upstart file

/etc/init/gulpwatch.conf
   start on runlevel [2345]
    stop on runlevel [016]
    respawn
    respawn limit 5 10

    exec "cd /opt/lib/vendor/node/;/usr/bin/gulp --gulpfile gulpfile.js"

When I run the two commands listed above "cd /opt/lib/vendor/node/" and "/usr/bin/gulp --gulpfile gulpfile.js" it works perfectly (but of course won't respan if it crashes due to a syntax error in the watch file).

Any idea why my upstart script isn't working??

5
  • Is that a stray ' after the gulpfile.js?
    – Nattgew
    Mar 24, 2014 at 21:43
  • Yeah it was but that wasn't in my actual code, still not working
    – asolberg
    Mar 24, 2014 at 22:12
  • According to the answer here, your exec needs to be inside a script/end script stanza.
    – Nattgew
    Mar 24, 2014 at 22:19
  • 1
    So I played with it some more, I changed out my gulp command for a simple echo "hello" >> /var/log/test.log command. It does NOT work when I call the command directly with exec but if I put the command in a shell script like /tmp/test.sh and then call exec /tmp/test.sh it DOES work. So if I don't want to make a separate file to run my command is that possible with exec?
    – asolberg
    Mar 24, 2014 at 22:42
  • BTW - the script tag didn't seem to have any effect either way
    – asolberg
    Mar 24, 2014 at 22:42

2 Answers 2

2

I figured it out. I needed to run chdir /opt/lib/vendor/node/ and then take that part out of the exec statement. Apparantly exec doesn't run any old shell commands, it only executes scripts (and arguments)

-1

You have to try executing the line before executing it through upstart script. I mean this line:

cd /opt/lib/vendor/node/;/usr/bin/gulp --gulpfile gulpfile.js

What did you get when you run it on the server? If you get an error instead of a success, solve it first.

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