heart(3erl)
NAME
heart - Heartbeat monitoring of an Erlang runtime system.
DESCRIPTION
This modules contains the interface to the heart process. heart sends periodic heartbeats to an external port program, which is also named heart. The purpose of the heart port program is to check that the Erlang runtime system it is supervising is still running. If the port program has not received any heartbeats within HEART_BEAT_TIMEOUT seconds (defaults to 60 seconds), the system can be rebooted. Also, if the system is equipped with a hardware watchdog timer and is running Solaris, the watchdog can be used to supervise the entire system. An Erlang runtime system to be monitored by a heart program is to be started with command-line flag -heart (see also erl(1)). The heart process is then started automatically: % erl -heart ... If the system is to be rebooted because of missing heartbeats, or a terminated Erlang runtime system, environment variable HEART_COMMAND must be set before the system is started. If this variable is not set, a warning text is printed but the system does not reboot. However, if the hardware watchdog is used, it still triggers a reboot HEART_BEAT_BOOT_DELAY seconds later (defaults to 60 seconds). To reboot on Windows, HEART_COMMAND can be set to heart -shutdown (included in the Erlang delivery) or to any other suitable program that can activate a reboot. The hardware watchdog is not started under Solaris if environment variable HW_WD_DISABLE is set. The environment variables HEART_BEAT_TIMEOUT and HEART_BEAT_BOOT_DELAY can be used to configure the heart time-outs; they can be set in the operating system shell before Erlang is started or be specified at the command line: % erl -heart -env HEART_BEAT_TIMEOUT 30 ... The value (in seconds) must be in the range 10 < X <= 65535. Notice that if the system clock is adjusted with more than HEART_BEAT_TIMEOUT seconds, heart times out and tries to reboot the system. This can occur, for example, if the system clock is adjusted automatically by use of the Network Time Protocol (NTP). If a crash occurs, an erl_crash.dump is not written unless environment variable ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS is set: % erl -heart -env ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS 10 ... If a regular core dump is wanted, let heart know by setting the kill signal to abort using environment variable HEART_KILL_SIGNAL=SIGABRT. If unset, or not set to SIGABRT, the default behavior is a kill signal using SIGKILL: % erl -heart -env HEART_KILL_SIGNAL SIGABRT ... If heart should not kill the Erlang runtime system, this can be indicated using the environment variable HEART_NO_KILL=TRUE. This can be useful if the command executed by heart takes care of this, for example as part of a specific cleanup sequence. If unset, or not set to TRUE, the default behaviour will be to kill as described above. % erl -heart -env HEART_NO_KILL 1 ... Furthermore, ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS has the following behavior on heart: ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS=0: Suppresses the writing of a crash dump file entirely, thus rebooting the runtime system immediately. This is the same as not setting the environment variable. ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS=-1: Setting the environment variable to a negative value does not reboot the runtime system until the crash dump file is completly written. ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS=S: heart waits for S seconds to let the crash dump file be written. After S seconds, heart reboots the runtime system, whether the crash dump file is written or not. In the following descriptions, all functions fail with reason badarg if heart is not started.
DATA TYPES
heart_option() = check_schedulers
EXPORTS
set_cmd(Cmd) -> ok | {error, {bad_cmd, Cmd}}
Types:
Cmd = string()
Sets a temporary reboot command. This command is used if a
HEART_COMMAND other than the one specified with the environment
variable is to be used to reboot the system. The new Erlang
runtime system uses (if it misbehaves) environment variable
HEART_COMMAND to reboot.
Limitations: Command string Cmd is sent to the heart program as
an ISO Latin-1 or UTF-8 encoded binary, depending on the
filename encoding mode of the emulator (see
file:native_name_encoding/0). The size of the encoded binary
must be less than 2047 bytes.
clear_cmd() -> ok
Clears the temporary boot command. If the system terminates, the
normal HEART_COMMAND is used to reboot.
get_cmd() -> {ok, Cmd}
Types:
Cmd = string()
Gets the temporary reboot command. If the command is cleared,
the empty string is returned.
set_callback(Module, Function) ->
ok | {error, {bad_callback, {Module, Function}}}
Types:
Module = Function = atom()
This validation callback will be executed before any heartbeat
is sent to the port program. For the validation to succeed it
needs to return with the value ok.
An exception within the callback will be treated as a validation
failure.
The callback will be removed if the system reboots.
clear_callback() -> ok
Removes the validation callback call before heartbeats.
get_callback() -> {ok, {Module, Function}} | none
Types:
Module = Function = atom()
Get the validation callback. If the callback is cleared, none
will be returned.
set_options(Options) -> ok | {error, {bad_options, Options}}
Types:
Options = [heart_option()]
Valid options set_options are:
check_schedulers:
If enabled, a signal will be sent to each scheduler to check
its responsiveness. The system check occurs before any
heartbeat sent to the port program. If any scheduler is not
responsive enough the heart program will not receive its
heartbeat and thus eventually terminate the node.
Returns with the value ok if the options are valid.
get_options() -> {ok, Options} | none
Types:
Options = [atom()]
Returns {ok, Options} where Options is a list of current options
enabled for heart. If the callback is cleared, none will be
returned.
Opportunity
Personal Opportunity - Free software gives you access to billions of dollars of software at no cost. Use this software for your business, personal use or to develop a profitable skill. Access to source code provides access to a level of capabilities/information that companies protect though copyrights. Open source is a core component of the Internet and it is available to you. Leverage the billions of dollars in resources and capabilities to build a career, establish a business or change the world. The potential is endless for those who understand the opportunity.
Business Opportunity - Goldman Sachs, IBM and countless large corporations are leveraging open source to reduce costs, develop products and increase their bottom lines. Learn what these companies know about open source and how open source can give you the advantage.
Free Software
Free Software provides computer programs and capabilities at no cost but more importantly, it provides the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. The importance of free software is a matter of access, not price. Software at no cost is a benefit but ownership rights to the software and source code is far more significant.
Free Office Software - The Libre Office suite provides top desktop productivity tools for free. This includes, a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation engine, drawing and flowcharting, database and math applications. Libre Office is available for Linux or Windows.
Free Books
The Free Books Library is a collection of thousands of the most popular public domain books in an online readable format. The collection includes great classical literature and more recent works where the U.S. copyright has expired. These books are yours to read and use without restrictions.
Source Code - Want to change a program or know how it works? Open Source provides the source code for its programs so that anyone can use, modify or learn how to write those programs themselves. Visit the GNU source code repositories to download the source.
Education
Study at Harvard, Stanford or MIT - Open edX provides free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley and other top Universities. Hundreds of courses for almost all major subjects and course levels. Open edx also offers some paid courses and selected certifications.
Linux Manual Pages - A man or manual page is a form of software documentation found on Linux/Unix operating systems. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and even abstract concepts.
