Octopus Administrator's Guide
Octopus Operations

The Octopus Daemon/Service Process

When the Octopus daemon/service is active, one instance of Octopus is always running to perform operations. When the Octops program is executed, this instance will appear as SERVICEOCTOPUS in the process display.

The functioning of an Octopus daemon/service is described below.

Startup

When Octopus starts as a daemon/service, it will search the nucleus.ini file for section headers beginning with the word OCTOPUS. If one or more of these exist, and the OCTOPUS section contains the parameter setting Autostartup=TRUE, the daemon/service will start one instance of Octopus for each. If a distributed architecture is implemented, it will also start an Octopus Agent on each Node defined in the NODES list in the OCTOPUS section(s).

Shutdown

When the Octopus daemon/service receives a system shutdown command, it will terminate all Octopus instances and Agents that it has started. An Octopus or Agent that has been started manually will not be stopped by the daemon/service.

Registering Changes to Octopus Configuration

When OCTOPUS sections are added to or removed from the nucleus.ini file, the Octopus daemon/service can be notified. When Octopus is informed of the changes, it will re-read the nucleus.ini file and update its list of active processes, resulting in:

• Addition of new sections, followed by attempts to start the corresponding processes
• Termination of any processes corresponding to sections that have been removed
• The restarting of any processes that should be running.

The Octopus instance must be shut down using the OctoShutdown command before using the methods below to register the configuration changes.

Changing Configuration (UNIX)

There are three possible ways to inform the Octopus daemon about changes to Octopus configuration:

• If only one Octopus instance has been changed, issue the octostartup command to restart that instance.
  

-or-

• Log in as ROOT, then send the following command to octopus -D (that is, the SERVICEOCTOPUS as indicated by the OCTOPS program)

kill -HUP

-or-

• Issue the following command (executable by any user):

octohup

Changing Configuration (Windows)

There are four ways to inform the Octopus service about changes to Octopus configuration:

1. If only one Octopus instance has been changed, issue the octostartup command to restart that instance.
   

2. Use the Windows Control Panel to access the Services applet:

Windows 2000: Start > Settings > Control Panel >Administrative Tools > Services

On the Services applet, right-click the Octopus service, choose Pause, then right-click Octopus again and choose Resume.

-or-

3. Issue the following commands from the command line (or via a script running on the same computer as the service):

NET PAUSE OCTOPUS

NET CONTINUE OCTOPUS

-or-

4. If the Windows Resource Kit is installed, issue the following commands:

SC \\server-name PAUSE OCTOPUS

SC \\server-name CONTINUE OCTOPUS

where server-name is the host name of the computer on which the Octopus program resides.