Monit - script not being executed as expected

Question

I'm working on a Windows 7 machine, having a VM for Ubuntu (image disk: 12.04-desktop-i386.iso).

On the VM I installed Monit 5.3.2, and configured some processes and applications. So I created a script to run my application. This application should display some content on the screen (Im basically displaying two images, using Feh).

The thing is: if I call my script through the command line, it runs ok, and display the images. But if I run through monit, it seems to be running ok, but it doesn't display the images.In the case I try to debug it (remote debug), then I can see the images. So I was supposing this could be some kind of configuration, but didn't find out what (even using the option -I wou'ldn't work).

I"m showing below more details:

-Piece of script on Monit----

check program runMediaHandler with path "/usr/bin/runMediaHandler.sh"
 if status == 1 then alert

-runMediaHandler.sh ----

#!/bin/bash
java -jar /home/thais/Desktop/MediaHandler_RC2.jar

Summarizing:

1.What works:

• if I run java directly: java -jar /home/thais/Desktop/MediaHandler_RC2.jar

• if I run the script directly: runMediaHandler.sh

• if I remote debug putting a breakpoint where the image should be displayed

2.What does not work:

• putting that piece of information on Monit to "check program", writen above (even if calling monit -I start runMediaHandler)

Thank you in advance,

Thaís

Answer 1

thank you a lot for your efforts helping me! In the end I tried a few steps that made my program work

1 - not sure if necessary, but I executed the command line (according to monit manual) to make monit run on the foreground:

/usr/bin/monit -Ic /etc/monit/monitrc

2 - I changed my script to set a display and to execute with my user. See how it's now:

#!/bin/bash    
export DISPLAY=:0.0
su -c "java -jar /home/thais/Desktop/MediaHandler_RC2.jar" thais

Answer 2

Without knowing exactly how your program operates, I would guess this is a permissions issue. Monit is starting the script as root rather than as your local user. To see if this is the root of the problem, try modifying your script to run as myuser (change to your local username as appropriate):

#!/bin/bash
su -c "java -jar /home/thais/Desktop/MediaHandler_RC2.jar" myuser

Answer 3

Perhaps monit does not have your Java installation directory in its $PATH.

Answer 4

According to its webpage, Feh is an X11 application, meaning that it displays on an X server. Generally, X servers have two methods of allowing access to the display: one called XAuth which uses a token file (called .Xauthority) placed in the home directory of the person currently using the display (either by running startx or logging into a display manager like xdm or kdm), and a less secure host-based access control system.

If your program is running as root, then if you set the HOME environment variable to the directory of the user currently logged into the display, your program will read the .Xauthority token from their home directory and be able to display on the screen.

Otherwise, to enable the older host-based authentication, you can run

xhost localhost

in an xterm to allow any program run by any user on the computer to use the display until the display is reset.