NAME
mathopd - Advanced Hypertext Tranfer Protocol Server
SYNOPSIS
mathopd [ -ndtv ] [ -f config_file ]
OPTIONS
-n If this option is supplied, Mathopd continues to run in the
foreground after initialization. This is useful for debugging
purposes.
-d If this option is supplied, Mathopd starts up in debugging mode.
Debugging can be turned on and off while the server is running;
see the section on signals below.
-t If this option is supplied, Mathopd will write diagnostics to
the standard error channel as well as the error log. The option
is named after the tee(1) program.
-v If this option is supplied, Mathopd prints its version number
and exits.
-f config_file
Use the configuration file specified by config_file. If the -f
option is not used, Mathopd expects a configuration file from
standard input. This is mainly for historic reasons; there is no
reason why one should not use the -f flag. mathopd.conf(5)
describes the syntax of the mathopd configuration file.
SIGNALS
While the server is running, is reacts to certain signals. If a PIDFile
is specified in the configuration file, you can send signals to Mathopd
using something like
# kill -<signal> ‘cat /var/run/mathopd.pid‘
from the command line, assuming the PIDFile is /var/run/mathopd.pid.
A list of signals and their effects follows.
SIGHUP If this signal is received, Mathopd will reopen its access and
error log files. See the section on log files below.
SIGTERM SIGINT
These signals have identical effects: they stop Mathopd
immediately, that is, all connections are closed and all server
sockets as well. Note that the fact that SIGINT stops the server
means that you can stop Mathopd by pressing Ctrl‐C (or whatever
key has the interrupt function) if it was started with the -n
flag.
SIGQUIT
This signal toggles the debugging flag: if debugging was turned
off before this signal was sent, it will be turned on, and vice
versa.
SIGUSR1
This signal disconnects all clients, if any from the server. New
connections can still be made after this.
SIGUSR2
This signal closes the server socket(s). No more connections
will be received after this. Requests that are active at the
time of the signal will be completed. After all active requests
are timed out or done, Mathopd will exit. Use this signal for a
’graceful exit’.
EXIT
Mathopd will exit voluntarily (as opposed to crash :) for a few
reasons:
- after reception of a SIGTERM or SIGINT signal
- when no active connections and no active servers remain; this
will be the case some time after delivery of SIGUSR2, or (rather
perversely) if Mathopd was started up with a configuration file
that did not contain any Server keywords
- if it cannot open the Log, ErrorLog, or PIDFile; this can only
be the case when the server is started up; if Mathopd fails to
open a logfile while it is running, it will continue to use the
logfile that it already opened (see below)
- when it can not write to the access or error log; for example,
if the disk partition that contains the access or error log gets
filled up, Mathopd will die when it tries to write there.
LOG FILES
Each hour Mathopd will re‐open its access and error log, as if it had
received a SIGHUP signal. For example, if you have the following in
your configuration file
Log /var/mathopd/accesslog
ErrorLog /var/mathopd/errorlog
and rename /var/mathopd/accesslog to /var/mathopd/accesslog.old,
Mathopd will continue to log in accesslog.old, but will switch to
accesslog at the start of the next hour (with one exception: if Mathopd
cannot open a new accesslog for any reason, it will *still* continue to
log to accesslog.old.) Something similar applies to the ErrorLog.
There are two exceptions to the above: if the value of Log or ErrorLog
is either "/dev/stdout" or "/dev/stderr", then the log will not be
rotated: mathopd will not try to re‐open these files. This is because
/dev/stdout and /dev/stderr will be gone once the server has started
up.
The name of the Log, ErrorLog and ChildLog will be ’strftime‐
expanded’. This means that any occurrence of, say, ’%Y’ in the name
will be expanded to the current (4‐digit) year.
For example: suppose the configuration file reads as follows
Log /var/mathopd/log.%Y%m%d
In that case, Mathopd will open /var/mathopd/log.20031204 when it is
started up on 4 Dec 2003, and will automatically close that file and
open /var/mathopd/log.20031205 at the start of the next day.
For more information on the % constructions, see the manual pages for
date(1) and strftime(3).
AUTHOR
Mathopd was written and is copyright by Michiel Boland.
Man page contributed by Juergen Daubert.
SEE ALSO
mathopd.conf(5)
Jan 06, 2004 mathopd(8)