About

This page shows how to set up applications to run automatically upon machine startup. As the auto-start sequence is different for each Operating System, there is one section for Linux and one section for Windows.

Automatic Run on Linux

CDP Studio comes with functionality to manage CDP application start, stop, autostart and decommissioning on Linux, called 'App Manager'.

App Manager

The App Manager can be invoked by right-clicking a Linux device in the CDP Studio Deploy Configuration Devices tab and selecting 'Run Script' -> 'Run App Manager'.

Selecting that will present an interface to manage CDP Application(s) on the device. The interface can be resized to a larger size if required.

The following information is presented:

• Header: App Manager version
• Header: Which init-system is detected, either systemd or init
• Info / Body
• Footer: The current selection
• Footer: Instructions on how to do navigation and selection.

When App Manager starts up, it will search for applications in the paired user home directory, and present them in the body section of the App Manager. Selecting an application will present the operations that can be performed on that application.

The Select operation page shows the current Running state of the application, along with the current Autostarting state of the application. The operations to be performed are listed in the body section of the App Manager.

The following operations are available:

Manual Setup of Automatic Run

For cases where the AppManager is not suitable, we have listed some examples of how to manually do automatic startup handling on Linux below. To set up automatic run on Microsoft Windows, see Automatic Run on Windows below.

The examples refer to some variables that you should replace. The below table describes the variable and what it should be replaced with.

Determine init-system

To determine which init-system is being used, run the following command on the target, and note the output:

ps -o comm 1 | tail -1

If the output is 'systemd', see the next section called Using 'systemd'. If the output is 'init', see the section called Using 'sysvinit'. For anything else, see the last section called Using 'crontab'

Using 'systemd'

For a graphical application, put the following content into a file in '/etc/systemd/system/CDP.$app_name.service' (replace $app_name etc as explained in the table above)

[Unit]
Description=$app_name CDP Application
Requires=systemd-networkd.socket
After=systemd-networkd.socket

[Service]

Environment='DISPLAY=:0'
Environment='XAUTHORITY=/home/$username/.Xauthority'
Restart=always
ExecStartPre=/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online --interface=$network_interface --timeout=60
# Comment in below line to add extra sleep before starting application
#ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 0
ExecStart=$app_dir/$app_name
WorkingDirectory=$app_dir
Type=simple
User=$username
TimeoutStartSec=infinity

[Install]
WantedBy=
graphical.target

For a non-graphical application, remove the two 'Environment' lines above, and change 'graphical.target' to 'default.target'.

To enable the service (automatic startup), run:

sudo chmod +x /etc/systemd/system/CDP.$app_name.service
sudo systemctl enable CDP.$app_name.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

To disable the service, run:

sudo systemctl disable CDP.$app_name.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

To start the application run:

sudo systemctl start CDP.$app_name.service

To stop the application run:

sudo systemctl stop CDP.$app_name.service

Using 'sysvinit'

For applications using the sysvinit, put the following content into /etc/init.d/CDP_$app_name: (replace $app_name etc as explained in the table above)

#!/bin/sh
PREFIX="StartCDP: "
CDPDIR="$app_dir"
CDPAPP="$CDPDIR/$app_name"

do_start() {
    my_ip=$(ip -f inet addr show $network_interface | sed -En -e "s/^\s*inet[[:blank:]]([0-9.]+).*/\1/p")
    timeout=60
    echo "${PREFIX}Waiting for network (max 60 seconds)..."
        while ! ping $my_ip -c 1;
        do
          sleep 1;
          timeout=$((timeout-1))
          if [ $timeout -eq 0]; then
            break;
          fi
        done
# Comment in the below lines to sleep before starting the application
#    echo '${PREFIX}Waiting 0 additional seconds before starting app'
#    sleep 0
    echo "${PREFIX}starting"
    cd $CDPDIR
    if start-stop-daemon --start -q -o -b -p /var/run/$app_name.pid -m  -c $username --exec "${CDPAPP}"; then
        echo "${PREFIX}done"
    else
        echo "${PREFIX}error, could not start CDP Application ${CDPAPP}!"
    fi
}

do_stop() {
    echo "${PREFIX}stopping"
    if start-stop-daemon --stop -q -o -p /var/run/$app_name.pid --exec "${CDPAPP}"; then
        echo "${PREFIX}done"
    else
        echo "${PREFIX}error, could not stop CDP Application ${CDPAPP}!"
    fi
}

case $1 in
    start)
        do_start
        ;;
    stop)
        do_stop
        ;;
    restart)
        do_stop
        do_start
        ;;
    *)
        echo "${PREFIX}usage: ${0} [start|stop|restart]"
        ;;
esac

Make the script runnable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/CDP_$app_name

To make it start automatically, run:

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/CDP_$app_name /etc/rc.d/S99_CDP_$app_name

To remove it from automatic start, run:

sudo rm /etc/rc.d/S99_CDP_$app_name

To start the application manually run:

sudo /etc/rc.d/S99_CDP_$app_name start

To stop the application run:

sudo /etc/rc.d/S99_CDP_$app_name stop

To remove the script, run:

sudo rm /etc/init.d/CDP_$app_name

Using 'crontab'

Assuming we have an application deployed to Raspberry Pi (192.168.1.10), deployed to

/home/pi/TestSystem/TestSystemApp

In the following, type in the password for user 'pi' whenever prompted, and press the Enter key.

• Log into the Raspberry Pi using ssh from bash, or putty.exe: (default username/password for Raspberry Pi is: pi/raspberry)

  ssh pi@192.168.1.10

• Using your favorite text editor (f.e. 'nano') create startup script /home/pi/TestSystem/TestSystemApp/start.sh with contents:

  #!/bin/sh
  AppName=TestSystemApp
  echo "Starting $AppName"
  
  # Wait for a network connection
  while ! ping 8.8.8.8 -c 1; do sleep 0.5; done
  # while ! ping 192.168.0.1 -c 1; do sleep 0.5; done # For systems not connected to the public internet
  
  ./$AppName &

• Then make the script executable, performing:

  sudo chmod +x /home/pi/TestSystem/TestSystemApp/start.sh

• Now, to make the script auto-start during machine startup, add corresponding crontab @reboot line. Invoke crontab in edit mode, typing

  crontab -e

  and add following line at the end of crontab file:

  @reboot (cd TestSystem/TestSystemApp; ./start.sh)

Resilience Against Ungraceful Shutdown

Configuring automatic startup does not mean it is safe to simply unplug a device without first closing all CDP applications. This can result in empty or corrupt files if they were being modified at the moment of power loss. For increased safety, one can enable data journaling on the file system level in Linux. This will reduce file system performance, but also the risk of data corruption.

For example, on a Raspberry Pi with default configuration (using ext4 file system and keeping data on '/dev/mmcblk0p2' partition), run the command:

sudo tune2fs -O has_journal -o journal_data /dev/mmcblk0p2

After that reboot your device.

Automatic Run on Windows

A typical way to autostart an application on windows is to put a shortcut to it in the Windows 'Startup' folder. Below is an example of how to do this.

Assuming we have an application deployed to Windows, located in

C:\CDPStudioWorkspace\deployments\systems\TestSystem\TestSystemApp

• Log into the Windows computer.
• Open Windows explorer (Windows-key + E) in the folder where the TestSystemApp is deployed.
• In Windows Explorer, right-click the application, select 'Create Shortcut'.
• Right-click the shortcut and select "Copy"
• Press Windows-key + R and type "shell:startup", press Enter
• In the folder that opens, right-click and select "Paste"

The application will now start up each time that user logs in to Windows.

To remove the application from automatic run:

• Press Windows-key + R and type "shell:startup", press Enter
• In the folder that opens, delete the link to TestSystemApp