Re: Keeping offlineimap running indefinately

["David L. Emerson" <demerson3x@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Daniel,

It sure seems odd that cron can't restart it, but I'm not really cron 
user so I can't comment. offlineimap frequently crashes on me, though, 
so I wrote a fancy bash script to restart it. It essentially does this:

while ! offlineimap; do sleep 1; done

I'm hard-pressed to remember whether I've had trouble with this method 
with network timeouts (which have occurred) or other issues. At any 
rate, I've been using this script for over a year, and the vast 
majority of the time it just works, sometimes restarting offlineimap 
dozens of times per day due to crashes.

Of course I am still using offlineimap 5.99.4, and I'm not sure if 
recent changes would prevent this from working; but there is definitely 
a lock file in my metadata folder that prevents a second instance from 
starting.

Good luck, (maybe someone with more knowledge will step in :)
David.


On Saturday 27 September 2008 1:28 am, Daniel Skinner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been using offlineimap for a while now to sync two IMAP boxes - 
> it's a fantastic tool.
> 
> I am looking to keep these mailboxes permanently and frequently 
> sync'd. 
> 
> I have tried cron but if offlineimap aborts from some reason (I am not 
> sure why it does, I think it might be a network timeout), the lock
> file will prevent cron from restarting the process.
> 
> What is the best way to get offlineimap running permanently and to 
> automatically get it back on its feet if any type of exception occurs?
> -- 
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> *Daniel Skinner*
>