I'm trying to modify a legacy Delphi 5 app so that it can be launched either from it's icon/via Explorer, or from the console (command-line). When it gets launched from the console, I want the program to detach itself from the console process, so that the console can continue to execute other instructions without waiting for my program to terminate.
I want to use it in a 'batch' file, such that I might have;
#echo off
rem step 1 - do some stuff here
rem
rem step 2 - launch my app
c:\myfolder\myapp
rem
rem step 3 - do some more stuff here
and that the console process moves on to step 3 straight after launching my app in step 2.
I'm sure I've done this before, many years ago, but I'm puzzled as to what exactly I did. I don't want to write a tiny console app 'launcher' for my main Windows app - I'm 95% sure that there was a way of doing this within a 'normal' Delphi GUI app.
I guess I could use vbscript or powershell or something to 'execute' my program with some kind of 'nowait' parameter but the client is familiar with batch files and I don't really want to upset the applecart by suggesting he change his scripts or install additional stuff - I'm making changes to the executable anyway and it would be great to tick this box for him too.
Anyone? :-)
I think the START command is the one you're looking for. It starts a process separately to the console and it's part of cmd.exe so no extra software required.
But I was of the opinion that GUI apps did this anyway. Maybe Delphi is different to MSVC.
Open up a console and type "start /?".
As itowlson states in the comments, GUI application do generally detach themselves. It's the actual cmd.exe shell doing trickery in that it waits for it to finish if it's running from a cmd file.
So "notepad" from the prompt will start it in the background but "notepad" within a cmd file will wait. Within the cmd file, you need to use:
start notepad.exe
or whatever your application is called (not notepad, presumably).
try: start "" c:\myfolder\myapp (with the empty quotes)
I think Microsoft has been solve this problem in Windows Power Shell.
In command prompt, even if you use "start ", you cant detach your process really from cmd. If you close the cmd, you will die, suddenly. But In windows Power Shell, you can detach your program or command from Power Shell as default.
So, if you prefer to use Windows Power Shell instead of Command Prompt, just do this:
PS: X:\> <your command>
Here's one way that I've found. It works quite cleanly and doesn't leave any extra cmd windows around (the recommendation to use start c:\myfolder\myapp does not work:
cmd /c dir && c:\myfolder\myapp
To quote the CMD help:
/C Carries out the command specified by string and then terminates
Note that multiple commands separated by the command separator '&&'
are accepted for string if surrounded by quotes.
Apparently it notices that the dir command terminates and exits, even though your app was launched on the same command. Chalk it up to one of Windows vagaries.
u should use the cd command example
cd/
cd myfolder
start myapp
exit
Related
I would like to start two different services in my Docker container and exit the container as soon as one of them exits. I looked at supervisor, but I can't find how to get it to quit as soon as one of the managed applications exits. It tries to restart them up to three times, as is the standard setting and then just sits there doing nothing. Is supervisor able to do this or is there any other tool for this? A bonus would be if there also was a way to let both managed programs write to stdout, tagged with their application name, e.g.:
[Program 1] Some output
[Program 2] Some other output
[Program 1] Output again
Since you asked if there was another tool... we designed and wrote a powerful replacement for supervisord that is designed specifically for Docker. It automatically terminates when all applications quit, as well as has special service settings to control this behavior, plus will redirect stdout with tagged syslog-compatible output lines as well. It's open source, and being used in production.
Here is a quick start for Docker: http://garywiz.github.io/chaperone/guide/chap-docker-simple.html
There is also a complete set of tested base-images which are a good example at: https://github.com/garywiz/chaperone-docker, but these might be overkill and the earlier quickstart may do the trick.
I found solutions to both of my requirements by reading through the docs some more.
Exit supervisord on application exit
This can be achieved by using a custom eventlistener. I had to add the following segment into my supervisord configuration file:
[eventlistener:shutdownevent]
command=/shutdownhandler.sh
events=PROCESS_STATE_EXITED
supervisord will start the referenced script and upon the given event being triggered (PROCESS_STATE_EXITED is triggered after the exit of one of the managed programs and it not restarting automatically) will send a line containing data about the event on the scripts stdin.
The referenced shutdownhandler-script contains:
#!/bin/bash
while :
do
echo -en "READY\n"
read line
kill $(cat /supervisord.pid)
echo -en "RESULT 2\nOK"
done
The script has to indicate being ready by sending "READY\n" on its stdout, after which it may receive an event data line on its stdin. For my use case upon receival of a line (meaning one of the managed programs has exited), a SIGTERM is sent to the supervisord process being found by the pid it leaves in its pid file (situated in the root directory by default). For technical completeness, I also included a positive answer for the eventlistener, though that one should never matter.
Tagged output on stdout
I did this by simply starting a tail process in the background before starting supervisord, tailing the programs output log and piping the lines through ts (from the moreutils package) to prepend a tag to it. This way it shows up via docker logs with an easy way to see which program actually wrote the line.
tail -fn0 /var/log/supervisor/program1.log | ts '[Program 1]' &
I've got an ant target ant server that runs a Java application which logs to the console. I need to run a new ant target ant server-gui which also logs to the console. But when I run ant server the logging prevents me from running any new ant targets.
When I enter ^c (which is the only way I know of to get out of situations like that) it kills the Java application. I need both to run. What keystroke will get me out of that "input" mode and able to run new terminal commands?
UPDATE: I haven't found a direct solution to getting out of that mode I mentioned, but opening a new tab/window in terminal does the trick. I can run as many any commands as I'd like that way. Still looking for a good solution to get out the "input" mode, though!
UPDATE 2: #abcdef pointed out another post that has an even more elegant solution.
There are a few ways to do this, assuming you are on *nix
1) Run the ant command with a & at the end to tell *nix to run the command in the background
2) Run the command with nohup at the beginning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nohup)
3) when the process is running press ctrl-z then enter the command bg. This manually forces the command to run in the background
I hope this helps you out
Not sure why when I execute a Python tools like pip or nosetests inside powershell, a separate popup command line windows will show, execute my command, then disappeared. This is annoying because I can hardly see the executable output, especially the last few lines before the popup close.
I assume there are some setting I can change to stop the popup?
I am using Powershell 2.0 in Windows 7.
Powershell is not cmd.exe, and it has a different console interface. More than likely, your py tools are writing to a non-existent shell window. You may be able to get around this by using the following syntax:
cmd /c script.py
What you do when you execute the python scripts directly from the PS prompt is fire-off a DOS shell for the period of time it takes for the command to complete. Since there's no 'pause' implemented, the shell window closes when the command completes.
A test script
# tester.py, just a test
print "This is a test script, that is all."
Output in PS:
C:\src\python
{powem} [36] --> .\tester.py
C:\src\python
{powem} [37] --> cmd /c .\tester.py
This is a test script, that is all.
mp
For someone has similar problem, please have a look at this answer, I think this solution eventually solved my problem. and in my case, I have to restart my computer to get it all working.
I'm trying to use Powershell ISE as a console app with little success. Comskip is a command line tool and I'm having a AHK script executing the Comskip commercial stipping normally through cmd.exe. Works fine, but lately I started using Unicode characters (star-rating) in the filenames and as you all know these won't display especially good in the console.
Investigation led me to Powershell ISE which is supposed to support Unicode. Running Comskip from ISE proved to be quite challenging. It works fine if typing in everything manually, but the problem starts when calling it from an another script.
Now the problematic part is if using the code calling the ordinary Powershell console it all went fine. But the same code calling the ISE fails and I can't see why. Can any of you? The error message I get doesn't give any explicit clues on what went wrong. The error message only says:
Usage: powershell_ise.exe or powershell_ise.exe fileName.ps1
The AHK line calling the ISE looks like this:
latest_file := "C:\Program\Comskip\q.ts"
Run, PowerShell_ISE.exe "C:\Program\Comskip\comskip.exe" -t --videoredo "%latest_file%"
Now if using the Powershell console the same code executes alright:
latest_file := "C:\Program\Comskip\q.ts"
Run, PowerShell.exe "C:\Program\Comskip\comskip.exe" -t --videoredo "%latest_file%"
How come I get these anomalies?
PowerShell ISE does not have ability to run commands like powershell.exe has. Reason for that is simple: ISE was designed as an interactive environment where powershell.exe had been thought out as something both for interactive and "batch" operations, like the one you tried to complete.
The error you get is IMO descriptive enough: you can only run PowerShell_ISE (no paramters) or specify .ps1 file that ISE will open once it started. In v3 there are 2 new added ( -NoProfile and -MTA) but still - nobody designed it as batch processing tool.. sorry.
I am using rebar for release build of erlang application, when I use start option to start the application it is running fine in background and It returns me the command prompt. I don't want to see all the background output, so I did not run using console option. But If I need any time what is going in background, to check the console due to any error, how do I get that running application's console?
I guess that you have made a release using Rebar and that you have started the node with the generated start script.
So the best way would be to use the start option 'attach':
./bin/mynode attach
It will connect to the shell through pipes so you will be in the actual node that are running so be careful with using Ctrl-c. (add the option "+Bi" to your vm.args file to restrict that..)
You can connect a remote shell to the node, provided it's been set up for distribution. Use the following command:
erl -sname rem -remsh node#host -setcookie the_cookie -hidden
Ctrl-G to enter JCL mode, then 'j' to list, then 'c' followed by a number to connect to the chosen job. See the eshell docs, specifically the JCL section.
Oh, or if by 'command prompt' you mean an OS shell rather than an Erlang shell, IIRC you need to start an Erlang node that is appropriately -name'd or -sname'd (whichever the node you want to connect to uses), then connect to that node ('r' in JCL mode), then connect to the job.