[erlang-questions] HEART

[Miles Fidelman]

> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 9:13 PM, Roberto Ostinelli <
> > wrote:
>
> >/  In non-erlang systems, I would have standard watchdogs that launch an
> />/  application on OS boot, and then monitor it and relaunch it if necessary.
> /
>
> The heart system in Erlang is a simple watchdog, mostly used if you nothing
> else that will restart your application. In an SysV init system, there is
> no automatic watching and restart. In RcNG in FreeBSD, there is no restart.
> In OpenBSDs rc, there is no automatic restart.
>

Wait a minute - isn't that what respawn does in a SysV init environment?

Of course that only works if the VM well and truly dies.  If it locks up, you still have a problem.

Anybody see a reason you couldn't:
1. start BEAM with respawn
2. start a separate watchdog process that periodically runs a few tests to see if BEAM is running properly,
and if not, KILLs the process - at which point respawn would take care of a restart.

Miles Fidelman


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra