Starting Panda Server

The Panda socket server is normally automatically started at boot time or when the zpkg-daemon script is run. The server is started and stopped by the script etc/panda-server installed in /opt/etc/init.d.

The server can optionally be started from the command line, in which case the following arguments are supported:

-h

This option shows the help text for server, listing all the available command line options.

-p port

This specifies the socket port to be used for configuration commands. The default value is 8888.

-d port

This specifies the socket port to be used for data capture. The default value is 8889.

-R

This can be specified to allow socket reuse via the SO_REUSEADDR socket option.

-c config-dir

This specifies the directory where the config, registers, and description files will be loaded from. This argument must be specified.

-f persistence-file

This specifies where the persistence state will be loaded from on startup and saved during operation. See the -t option below for notes on how this file is updated. If this is not specified then the persistence state will not be saved.

-t [poll] [“:” [holdoff] [“:” backoff]]

This option sets three parameters (in seconds) controlling the pacing of writes to the persistence file. The behaviour of the system is as follows: every poll seconds the internal state of the server is checked for configuration changes. If a configuration change is checked then there is a pause of a further holdoff seconds before the updated state is written. Finally, there is a pause of backoff seconds before polling for internal changes resumes.

Default values are: poll = 2, holdoff = 10, backoff = 60. The somewhat complex syntax show above allows all or any of these values to be set with a single -t option. For example, -t:20 specifies holdoff = 20, other values unchaged.

The intention of this timed behaviour is to reduce file write impact while still keeping on top of changes. With default settings all parameters will be written to the persistence file within 72 seconds.

-D

This option requests that the server is run as a daemon. This is the normal mode of operation when running as a server, but is generally omitted for debug.

-p pid-file

If specified the given file is written with the process ID of the server, and will be deleted on exit.

-T

This mode is used for config file validation only: the server exits immediately after loading configuration files.

-M MAC-list

If specified then the given file is used to initialise up to four MAC address registers. The file consists of any number of comment lines (comment lines start with # in the first column) together with four MAC address lines, each of which is either blank (newline \n only) or is a six octet MAC address written as 2 digit hex numbers separated by colons.

-X port

If specified the server will attempt to connect to an extension server running locally and serving on the specified port.