Running Orion as system service

Once installed, there are two ways of running Orion Context Broker: manually from the command line or as a system service (the later only available if Orion was installed as RPM package). It is not recommended to mix both ways (e.g. start the context broker from the command line, then use /etc/init.d/contextBroker status to check its status). This section assumes you are running Orion as system service. From command line alternative, check this document.

You will typically need superuser privileges to use Orion Context Broker as a system service, so the following commands need to be run as root or using the sudo command.

In order to start the broker service, run:

/etc/init.d/contextBroker start

Then, to stop the context broker, run:

/etc/init.d/contextBroker stop

To restart, run:

/etc/init.d/contextBroker restart

You can use chkconfig command to make contextBroker automatically start/stop when your system boots/shutdowns (see chkconfig documentation for details).

Configuration file

The configuration used by the contextBroker service is stored in the /etc/sysconfig/contextBroker file, which typical content is:

# BROKER_USER - What user to run orion-broker as
BROKER_USER=orion

# BROKER_PORT - the port/socket where orion-broker will listen for connections
BROKER_PORT=1026

# BROKER_LOG_DIR - Where to log to
BROKER_LOG_DIR=/var/log/contextBroker

# BROKER_PID_FILE - Where to store the pid for orion-broker
BROKER_PID_FILE=/var/log/contextBroker/contextBroker.pid

## Database configuration for orion-broker
BROKER_DATABASE_HOST=localhost
BROKER_DATABASE_NAME=orion

## Replica set configuration. Note that if you set this parameter, the BROKER_DATBASE_HOST
## is interpreted as the list of host (or host:port) separated by commas to use as
## replica set seed list (single element lists are also allowed). If BROKER_DATABASE_RPL_SET
## parameter is unset, Orion CB assumes that the BROKER_DATABASE_HOST is an stand-alone
## mongod instance
#BROKER_DATABASE_RPLSET=orion_rs

# Database authentication (not needed if MongoDB doesn't use --auth)
#BROKER_DATABASE_USER=orion
#BROKER_DATABASE_PASSWORD=orion

# Use the following variable if you need extra command line options
#BROKER_EXTRA_OPS="-t 0-255"

All the fields except BROKER_USER and BROKER_EXTRA_OPS map to one of the options described in command line options, as follows:

  • BROKER_PORT maps to -port
  • BROKER_LOG_DIR maps to -logDir
  • BROKER_PID_FILE maps to -pidpath
  • BROKER_DATABASE_HOST maps to -dbhost
  • BROKER_DATABASE_NAME maps to -db
  • BROKER_DATABASE_RPLSET maps to -rplSet
  • BROKER_DATABASE_USER maps to -dbuser
  • BROKER_DATABASE_PASSWORD maps to -dbpwd

Regarding BROKER_EXTRA_OPS, it is used to specify other options not covered by the fields above, as a string that is appended to the broker command line at starting time. Note that this string is "blindly" appended, i.e. the service script doesn't do any check so be careful using this, ensuring that you are providing valid options here and you are not duplicating any option in other BROKER_* field (e.g. not set BROKER_EXTRA_OPS="-port 1026" as BROKER_PORT is used for that).

Regarding BROKER_USER, it is the user that will own the contextBroker process upon launching it. By default, the RPM installation creates a user named 'orion'. Note that if you want to run the broker in a privileged port (i.e. 1024 or below) you will need to use 'root' as BROKER_USER.

Checking status

In order to check the status of the broker, use the following command with superuser privileges (using the root user or the sudo command):

/etc/init.d/contextBroker status

If broker is running you will get:

Checking contextBroker...                         Running

If broker is not running you will get:

Checking contextBroker...                         Service not running