Changing CAE configuration

General

The exact behaviour of CAE is controlled by a configuration file named CinnamonAsyncEngine.config.xml that resides in the CAE program folder, typically, but not necessarily on the Cinnamon server. The configuration file is loaded when CAE is started. In the configuration file, all plugins that are used are referenced and configured.

Each plugin reference in the configuration addresses a certain plugin class in one of the assemblies (.net / mono libraries). All assemblies that are referenced in the configuration must be present in the program folder, otherwise CAE will fail initializing the plugin.

CAE and all standard plugins are compatible with .net and mono, and can run on Linux or Windows (and probably iOS - untested).

NOTE: Plugins other than the standard ones might be restricted to not run on all platforms, for example, because there is a dependency not available on one of the platforms.

Running CAE

On the server running CAE, the configuration is typically such that CAE is started on system boot. This is also the default configuration when running CAE on the Cinnamon Server according to the installation instructions.

CAE is built in a way that it is very robust against crashing plugins. Typically, CAE will log the issue and continue. However, in some rare cases, or due to causes external to CAE, CAE may cease functioning. To make sure it remains available, the standard installation uses supervise contained in the daemontools package on Debian systems. supervise watches a process, in this case CAE, and restarts it when it stops.

To run supervise to watch CAE, execute the following command:

supervise /opt/cae/bin &

The ampersand (&) character at the end of the command line instructs Linux to run the command in the background. Even if CAE logs to the shell, you can close the session and CAE will continue running.

Reloading the configuration file

Since the configuration file gets loaded on CAE start, reloading the file can be achieved by restarting CAE. This is also valid if CAE should be restarted after the executable or the libraries have changed.

Since CAE is watched by supervise which restarts CAE if it stops, CAE can be restarted by stopping it - supervise will then restart it automatically. To find the CAE process, use the following command on a Linux server:

ps aux | grep mono

This will return a result similar to the following:

The value in the red box is the process id. Stop CAE with the following command, using the process id you retrieved:

kill <process id>

Using the command

ps aux | grep mono

again will show you whether supervise has successfully restarted CAE.