OS X Server; standalones as OS X services

[Dar Scott]

On Thursday, July 11, 2002, at 03:41 PM, Bill Vlahos wrote:

> Considerations
> 1. There is a built-in application called WatchDog which can be 
> configured to autorestart an application if it should crash 
> thereby assuring that your program would always be running. This 
> would be similar to running as a service under Windows for all 
> practical purposes.
Will this start it the first time, that is, at boot?  Is this on 
regular ol OS X, too?

> 2. GUI based applications require a display card which is an 
> option for XServe so it may not be included in all XServe 
> installations.
Will GUI be ignored if there is no card or will it break something?

> 3. If a server app has a GUI the server needs to come up fully to 
> the desktop which means that the server must log in automatically 
> and then call the screen saver to provide the security lock. 
> Revolution can certainly build non-GUI apps and they would not 
> have this requirement.
With Windows 2000 I have been able to run Rev-based services with a 
GUI or with the GUI ignored.

How do I make a non-GUI app with Revolution?  I always get a stack 
showing.

> 4. Apple's server software in built in two parts. 1. A faceless 
> non-GUI server app. and 2. Administrative front end which 
> communicates over interfaces such as SSH, telnet, terminal, etc. 
> and can be run on the server itself as well as a remote computer. 
> This is probably a good model to follow and Revolution makes this 
> pretty easy as it is cross-platform by nature.

Cool!  I'm already splitting mine in two.  I'm using tcp/ip for 
communication.

My admin half is a GUI.  Based on what you are recommending, maybe 
it (or a version) should also run over telnet or terminal.

Wow!  Thanks for all the info, Bill!

Dar Scott