Launching Xibo Client with crontab

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1

Hello Xibo Community,
I am working on a simple shell script that checks to see if the Xibo Client is running, and if it is not, to then start it. The purpose is to have the script run via cronrun every so often to start the client again in the event of a crash. My script works great, until I try to run it with cronrun. When executed by cronrun the Xibo client will not start. I put a couple simple echo dumps to log files to ensure the sections of the script are working, which they are. However the client itself will not start. I suspect this has something to do with the relative paths in the python script of the Xibo client. I am running this in a ubuntu 12.04 environment and have checked all the appropriate permnissions. Below is a copy of the shell script I am running.

#!/bin/sh
SERVICE='XiboClient.py’
cd /opt/xibo/pyclient/client/python
echo “ran script” >> cronrunreport

if ps ax | grep -v grep | grep $SERVICE > /dev/null

then
skip

else
/usr/bin/python XiboClient.py
echo “tryed to run Xibo” >> cronrunreport

fi

Any help would be appriciated, Thank you.

2

There’s a run_always.sh script that ships with the client for exactly that purpose.

You run that once, and if the Player crashes it will be restarted automatically. No need to involve cron

3

Excellent, thank you Alex. I am trying to solve an Issue that I have with Xibo when I experience a power failure to my displays. The outcome is Xibo coming out of fullscreen and the ubuntu box locking up completely (I cant even SSH in). I have to manually power down the computer, and power it back on to solve this. Have any insight you can offer?

Edit: I wanted to add that sometimes the Machine does not lock up, but Xibo still comes out of fullscreen. Since these are hooked to displays with no mouse of keyboard it is very difficult to get Xibo back to fullscreen again, without a reboot.

4

If the box locks up completely then there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do in software to recover that.

The Player will go back to full screen automatically on layout change - or at least it should do.

You might try running the Player directly from an Xsession rather than loading the full Ubuntu desktop and window manager. That way there’s nothing for it to loose focus to. Search on custom Xsession to find out how to do that.

The Python client is no longer developed or supported so it is what it is.

5

Thanks a bunch Alex!
Great idea running in the Xsession, this solved all of my issues! Only one problem left now, when xibo starts from the xsession it does not fill the screen (even though i have it running fullscreen) my xsession code is pretty simple:

#! /bin/bash

gnome-wm &
/opt/xibo/pyclient/client/python/run_always.sh
logout

any suggestions?

6

You probably don’t need to run gnome-wm at all at a guess.

If it still isn’t going full screen after that, and you have definitely configured it that way then I’m afraid I’m out of suggestions.

7