I just moved from .net development to LINUX MONO development... and i don have much experience with linux dev earlier..
I have a requirement to create a background service (like windows services) in mono c#.. is it possible..
And is it possible to access the LINUX native APIs from mono c#. (like winAPI calls from win c#)..
I use scripts, so I can capture the exit code and use it to perform automated updates and things. It also restarts itself if it crashes, and e-mails you when it restarts with the last x lines of the log file.
/etc/init.d/MyMonoApp
#!/bin/sh
#/etc/init.d/MyMonoApp
#
APP_NAME="MyMonoApp"
APP_PATH="/home/mono/MyMonoApp"
APP_USER=mono
case "$1" in
start)
echo "Starting $APP_NAME"
start-stop-daemon --start \
--background \
--make-pidfile \
--pidfile /var/run/$APP_NAME.pid \
--chuid $APP_USER \
--exec "$APP_PATH/$APP_NAME"
;;
stop)
echo "Stopping $APP_NAME"
start-stop-daemon -o --stop \
--pidfile /var/run/$APP_NAME.pid
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$APP_NAME {start|stop}"
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0
/home/mono/MyMonoApp
#!/bin/sh
#!/home/mono/MyMonoApp
APP_NAME=`basename $0`
APP_DIR=`dirname $0`
HOSTNAME=`hostname`
cd $APP_DIR
tail --lines=300 output.log | mail -s "MyMonoApp $HOSTNAME:$APP_NAME STARTED" "me@email.com"
exitcode=0
until [ $exitcode -eq 9 ]
do
startdate="$(date +%s)"
/usr/local/bin/mono MyMonoApp.exe $HOSTNAME:$APP_NAME > output.log
exitcode=$?
enddate="$(date +%s)"
echo "EXIT CODE = $exitcode" >> output.log
cp -f output.log output.log.1
elapsed_seconds="$(expr $enddate - $startdate)"
echo "Elapsed seconds $elapsed_seconds"
subject="EXIT CODE: $exitcode"
echo "BASH: Exit Code = $exitcode"
if [ $exitcode -eq 6 ] #Restart
then
subject="RESTART"
elif [ $exitcode -eq 7 ] #Previous version
then
subject="PREVIOUS VERSION"
cp -fv MyMonoApp.exe_previous MyMonoApp.exe
elif [ $exitcode -eq 8 ] #Update
then
subject="SOFTWARE UPDATE"
cp -fv MyMonoApp.exe MyMonoApp.exe_previous
mv -fv MyMonoApp.exe_new MyMonoApp.exe
elif [ $exitcode -eq 9 ] #Shutdown
then
subject="SHUTDOWN"
fi
if [ $elapsed_seconds -ge 10 ] #been running for longer than 10 seconds
then
tail --lines=300 output.log | mail -s "MyMonoApp $HOSTNAME:$APP_NAME $subject" "me@email.com"
sleep 1 # tiny delay to let things settle
else
sleep 5 # delay to protect against eating the CPU resourses
fi
done
Note: if you close the app using the init.d script, it will kill the process, rather than signal it to cleanly close.
For 1. - yes it is possible to create background service in mono c#. Service is in fact a program that runs in background takes no input from keyboard and mouse, and does not output to directly to the user's screen.
After you create such program you can just run it with nohup ./programname &
to set it to work into background and ignore the hangup signal (that is sent to your running processes when you log out).
If you want to integrate it better, then you must write some additional scripts for stopping, starting, restarting it, etc (depending on your chosen linux distribution).
As for LINUX (Unix api), you can use the Mono.UNIX library that is included with mono. Although as a general rule you should try to stick with portable solutions instead of stuff like Mono.UNix or p/invoke whenever possible.