Service is now reliable

(2008-07-17) The service is now running well.  The code crashes or timesout every few days but the error handling below handles the exception and it just keeps on going. My Windows service is still not reliable.  After a few days it seems to just stop in a normal fashion.  I suppose the only thing to do is to keep monitoring.  It currently looks like this (today I have added an error message to exception handling and moved the sleep to be inside the exception handler):

#
# This is the file to run as a daemon.

LOG_FILE = 'C:\\daemon_error.log'

begin
  require 'win32/daemon'
  require 'process_files'

  include Win32

  class DemoDaemon < Daemon
    def service_main
      File.open(LOG_FILE, "a"){ |f| f.puts "Service 2008-07-07 is running #{Time.now}" }
      s = ProcessFiles.new()
      while running?
        begin
         s.getAndProcessOnce
         sleep 10
        rescue Exception => ex
           File.open(LOG_FILE, "a"){ |f| f.puts "Service had an exception #{Time.now} #{ex.class}:#{ex.message}" } 
        end
        #File.open(LOG_FILE, "a"){ |f| f.puts "Service is running #{Time.now}" }
      end
    end

    def service_stop
      File.open(LOG_FILE, "a"){ |f| f.puts "***Service responded to stop and stopped #{Time.now}" }
      exit!
    end
  end

  DemoDaemon.mainloop

rescue Exception => err
  File.open(LOG_FILE,'a+'){ |f| f.puts "***Service Failed #{Time.now} due to #{err.class}:#{err.message}" }
end

I will just have to wait and see if this works more reliably. I have waited and it is looking good! I have some plans to put in a drb client and then allow me to have a local ruby shoes interface to see how it is working.

Scripting Mathematica

Update 2008-07-02

i have been trying to script a mathematica notebook that I have created that creates documents.  I found it not as straightforward as it seems.

 

I started with at test notebook:

My method of getting this scriptable was to save as a .m file.

Then edit it with notepad by removing some of the comments (* to this:

(* ::Package:: *)

(* ::Input:: *)
(*This is a comment.*)

(* ::Input:: *)
(*a = {1,2,3}*)

(* ::Input:: *)
Export[NotebookDirectory[] <> "test.gif",Plot[Sin[x],{x,0,10}]]

(* ::Input:: *)
Exit[]
(**)

Then run it from a batch file like this:

F:
CD "\2008\Mathematica Auto"
"C:\Program Files\Wolfram Research\Mathematica\6.0\math"  <"F:\2008\Mathematica Auto\test.m"

When I ran this didn't work as I couldn't use NotebookDirectory so I had to make the directory explicit:

(* ::Package:: *)

(* ::Input:: *)
(*This is a comment.*)

(* ::Input:: *)
(*a = {1,2,3}*)

(* ::Input:: *)
Export["F:\2008\Mathematica Auto\test.gif",Plot[Sin[x],{x,0,10}]]

(* ::Input:: *)
Exit[]
(**)

And this did run although not very elegant and I don't have a solution for running complex notebooks yet.  When you try and load a notebook Mathematica says it wants a front end.  It may be easier to script this inside Mathematica front end.