$ ssh server sudo apt-get install dtach
$ alias serveremacs=’ssh server -t dtach -A emacs emacs’
$ serveremacs # start or connect to emacs on server

Cheers again for the info.

start on runlevel 2
start on runlevel 3
start on runlevel 4
start on runlevel 5

stop on runlevel 0
stop on runlevel 1
stop on runlevel 6

respawn
exec /command/svscanboot

Save this as /etc/event.d/svscan, this is what replaces inittab. After doing this, setting permissions according to the other files there, a quick reboot, and daemontools should be chugging along just fine.

I just recently setup another Linux box and ran into this, but otherwise I basically kept the same basic process, though I no longer use HAProxy because I’d use Apache’s mod_proxy_balancer now. I also use aptitude rather than apt-get now. I avoid building by hand if at all possible, I much prefer binary packages that are known to work. I didn’t run into any broken packages, but I did waste a few hours not realizing I needed more than just the squeakvm to start my services, took me a while to notice that the vm didn’t include any .sources files, once I installed the squeak package everything fired right up.

I was following this last night (with some ubuntu servers installed into VMware boxes). I’ve found that for ubuntu versions after 6.06, daemontools is broken (but I haven’t fixed it yet), since the Ubuntu developers have decided that inittab is in need of replacement and thus have replaced it! ( Cue head-scratching and lots of “what!?! no inittab?!?” :-/ )

Also, using apt(itude|-get) to retrieve and install squeak showers me with a whole bunch of essentially: “this is broken and will not be installed” (and this is from the squeak.org repo).

Still, building things by hand is good practice, right? ;-)

regardless, thanks for the info - very useful.

It’s better because it not only start or restart the services but also can send you email alerts under lots of conditions (cpu usage, mem, etc). In ubuntu is painless and it’s configuration very reasonable. It even has a web interface. Take a look I’ve found it really good.

for daemontools (and ubuntu), I found the following link:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/download.pl?arch=all&file=pool%2Fmultiverse%2Fd%2Fdaemontools-installer%2Fdaemontools-installer_0.76-9_all.deb&md5sum=39d30c5399c937a1836782d525d857fd&arch=all&type=main

seems to give the same error…

did you have the same (pb with /dev/inittab) ?

Thanks ;)

Ramon, what is the version you’re using ?

I also have 2 remarks:
I use ubuntu feisty right now…

-to make the apache rewriting works, I had to enable the proxy_http mod (a2enmod proxy_http), not only proxy. Otherwise I get a forbidden message (503).

-I also have a problem with daemontools (dependency problems avoiding the configuration of dameontools-run) (>=0.76.1). I think this is because in ubuntu (etc/inittab doesn’t exist…). I’ll see later anyway…

Are you using ubuntu or debian ?

wget http://ftp.sysif.net/debian/apt_key.asc

I get the error message:

Resolving http://ftp.sysif.net... failed: Name or service not known.

Why hasn’t anyone else experienced this???

Just a note: I had to enable also Apache’s proxy_http (a2enmod proxy_http).

Thank you!

Kurt Miebach

Very informative post! I just noticed you copy the SqueakV39.sources file to each directories but you don’t need it. For Unix squeak VM, you simply add one source in /lib/squeak/3.9.8 (with =/usr or /usr/local; I prefer to compile squeakvm by hand). So, every images without sources file in the directory will use this file. If you’ve got 50 images running with 50 .sources files, it yields to a 800MB unuseful hole on your disc.

I use Ubuntu too. It’s the best Linux I know. I still use Debian for 10 years for optimal server solution (my own server’s only 256MB RAM). I use Pavel KernelImage and it works very well. I do testing by playing with a personal modified Pier-Blog and the images reaches only 8MB.

Thanks for your enlightments. It will help every Seasiders.

The emacs tuitorial, IMO, is important because it focuses you on the essential commands. Aside from the basics like saving and opening files, the most useful commands are the movement and the cut and paste commands (kill and yank). When you get these down you don’t have to reach for the mouse and replace your hands on the keyboard, an operation which takes a suprising amount of time and mental attention. Your productivity goes way up, especially in combination with macros. The only other really useful emacs command that comes to mind is M-q, the word-wrap-this-paragraph command.

For example, the previous sources file was version 3.0, and all the squeak versions since, up to 3.9, made the changes file grow. The file got too big so a new sources file had to be cut, and now the changes file is tiny again.

Deploying them is necessary if you want to be able to get into your live images and debug problems that happen at runtime, and truthfully, one your own servers, I can’t see a reason not to deploy them.

Also, the image is the only thing strictly necessary to run, but you need to prep it to allow it to run without throwing errors.

Interesting. I’ve used full Emacs a few times in my career, but couldn’t get used to it fast enough to find it useful. For what I needed at the time I stuck with uEmacs. It seemed to have a simpler command set. I understand though that it’s a very powerful tool. You can get it to do a lot of things. I’ve heard of people using it for e-mail sending/receiving, full-screen debugging (with gdb), newsreading, web browsing, etc. in addition to editing code. I think it’s safe to say if you need a tool that manipulates/displays text, no matter the application, Emacs can do it. It’s just a matter of programming it to do the job, or finding a mod someone else has made for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an RSS feed reader for it as well.

Re: Squeak sources

It’s my understanding that the Sources file is where all the source code for the Squeak system, including your application code, is stored. If you’re deploying a Squeak image for something where you won’t need access to the existing source code in the future, then I’d say it’s safe to not include Sources. It’s certainly safe to not deploy Changes, since that’s just for backtracking in case you want to go back to older code. Changes is really only useful during development.