Re: calling ConTeXt as a background process

[Henning Hraban Ramm <hraban@fiee.net>]

Summary so far:

* Machine: virtual server on Debian 5.0 (x86_64) (I thought it was  
Ubuntu, because I run that on my other Linux machines, sorry).
* Webserver: Django 1.2/fcgi (Python 2.5) behind Nginx

I can run ConTeXt without any problems from the shell, also as the  
same user that runs the server process.
 From the shell it doesn't matter if I call it as "context" (that's a  
shell script calling mtxrun), "mtxrun", other shell script or simple  
Python script.

I want to run ConTeXt from the server process (at the end I want it to  
run via Celery/RabbitMQ, but that doesn't matter at the moment), but  
it hangs at the texlua process and doesn't do anything.
- With an unmodified mtxrun that hangs at its external "uname" call  
(gets "defunct"); I patched it to just take "x86_64" instead of  
calling uname.
- After that it doesn't matter how I call ConTeXt, it always hangs at  
texlua.
- I tried os.system (that directly uses C's system call) and several  
variants of subprocess.Popen
- I tried calling setuptex as well as setting PATH, TEXROOT and  
TEXMFOS for the environment of the process and checked that they exist  
in the call.
- Calls of several linux tools via os.system or subprocess.Popen worked.

I suspected SElinux settings, Taco hinted at AppArmor, but both aren't  
active, as far as I can tell.

So, the problem is with the web server and texlua. Django/fcgi  
unfortunately swallows error messages (known problem of the fcgi mode).

Next I'll try a different server setup. Unfortunately Apache with  
mod_wsgi or mod_python is too heavy for my virtual server (with Nginx  
I can run more that 5 Django sites, with Apache I had massive  
ressource problems with 3-4).
Green Unicorn (http://gunicorn.org/) looks good for my purpose.

Sorry for the OT thread, I suspected the problem being more in the  
LuaTeX area.


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

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