Keep-It-Up-X

Keeping applications up-and-running

Configuring KIU is really simple. If you launch KIU for the first time, it will create a folder called "KIU StartUp Items" in you Preferences folder. You can find this folder in your home directory under the Library folder. There's also a "KIU WebLaunch Items" folder and a "KIU WebLog Items" folder, which are described in the remote management section . To make it a little easier for you, you can open all these folders using the "Open Itemfolders" menu.

If you put an alias of an application in the "KIU StartUp Items" folder, or one or more aliases of documents belonging to the application, KIU will monitor this application ("monitored application") and relaunch it if it quits or crashes, re-opening the documents. KIU can check up to 75 aliases. Don't put both an alias to an application and aliases to documents of that application in the KIU Items.

KIU will launch all aliases in alphabetical order, which allows you to influence the launch order. Multiple documents belonging to the same application should be in close alphabetical proximity if you want to be able to predict launch order.

If the name of an alias in the KIU folder ends with a ".1" (e.g. myserverapp.1), this application will be kept in front of all other applications. This improves the performance of the selected application (only valid for Classic Applications) or simply ensures that the selected application is always visible.

After adding more aliases in the "KIU StartUp Items", you need to choose File->Rescan Itemfolders, in order for KIU to notice the changes in the folder.

All you still have to do, is to add KIU in Login Items in "System Preferences->Login". At startup/login, KIU will be launched, and KIU will launch the "monitored applications", opening the selected documents.

Trouble getting things to work ? Check the KIU log file for error messages or consult the KIU FAQ and KIU troubleshooting for additional help.

Keep-It-Up preferences

The preferences dialog offers several options:

1. General Options

KIU is often used for Macs that are accessible by the general public to ensure that certain applications (e.g. a demo, kiosks, ..) keep running even if the user quits them. By using a password, you can prevent KIU itself from being quit. If you enable "Ask password on quit", KIU will refuse to quit unless a correct password is supplied. On restart/shutdown, this password is not needed. When "Ask password on quit" is enabled, the Quit Keep-It-Up menu item will be grayed out. Use the PW Quit menu item to quit KIU in this case. Beware, an experienced user may be able to bypass this system and quit KIU anyway.

You can also protect the preferences dialog using the same password.

2. Delay Options

Activate KIU after ... minutes of idle time

If one of the "monitored applications" is no longer running, because it "unexpectedly quit" or because the user quit it, KIU will attempt to relaunch this application and open any documents that were in the "KIU StartUp Items" folder. As a consequence, when you're sitting at your computer, you would never be able to quit such an app, because it would be relaunched immediately. To avoid this, KIU will not become active until a certain time has elapsed in which the user performed no keyboard/mouse interaction. This time is user configurable.

Launch each app with a delay of ... seconds

After launching an application, KIU will delay the launch of the next application by a certain amount of time. If you have 2 applications A and B that depend on each other and you need to make sure A is fully initialized before B is launched, increasing this delay will do the trick.

Delay before restart

KIU can restart your Mac (see below).The Mac will wait for this period before it actually restarts the computer, putting up a notice to warn anybody sitting at the computer that a restart is imminent. You can now still quit KIU to prevent the restart.

3. Relaunch & Restart Options

KIU will relaunch each individual application only a limited number of times,to avoid getting into an endless relauching loop if an application crashes over and over again. You can set this limit as high as you want. When the limit is exceeded, KIU can either:

simply ignore the application and no longer try to relaunch it
restart the macintosh, which might clear the error conditions that made the application crash

Whenever KIU needs to restart the Mac, it can do so by using one of two methods, both having specific advantages and disadvantages:

Clean Restart:	Forced Restart:

First all applications are terminated, then the computer is restarted. Unfortunately, if an application puts up a dialog when asked to quit, it can block the restart process indefinitely.	First an attempt is made to terminate all applications in a normal way. After a given time period KIU will Force Quit any applications that are still running, allowing the restart to proceed. You should set this time period high enough to give all applications ample time to quit (recommended:180-300 seconds)
Advantages: this is a safe way to restart without any data loss	Advantages: always works, even if some application doesn't quit. This ensures your Mac always restarts and becomes available again. If availability of your server is very important, select this method.
Disadvantages: the restart may get blocked, probably leaving your server in an undesirable state.	Disadvantages: some unsaved data may be lost from applications that are Forced Quit.

The restart happens in 5 phases:

phase 0: KIU notifies anybody sitting at the computer that a restart is in progress.

phase 1: KIU asks all applications to quit and waits 10 seconds

phase 2: (optional, only if some apps did not quit yet). Every minute, KIU will ask each remaining application to quit. As a side effect, your Mac may beep every minute. Phase 2 lasts until all applications have quit (Clean Restart) or for the given time period (Forced Restart).

phase 3: KIU Force Quits any remaining applications.

phase 4: KIU restarts or shuts down the computer.

Notice that once that phase 1 has begun, the restart can only be stopped by quitting KIU.

Schedule

When you select "Schedule" from the File menu, you can specify 2 scheduling options:

First of all you can set KIU to disable any application relaunching during 2 periods of the day. Check the appropriate checkbox to activate this option. Set the periods by clicking on the 'begin' and 'end' time displays (00:00 in the boxes). You can reset a period by setting the begin time equal to the end time

Secondary, you can also tell KIU to restart the computer on a regular time basis. You may have all kinds of reasons to do this, e.g. because sometimes your server becomes too slow if it isn't restarted from time to time. Check the appropriate checkbox to activate this option. Set the days of the week on which you want the computer to be restarted and click on the "at 00:00 " time display to set the correct hour.

The scheduled restart uses the same restart method selected in the "Restart Preferences". Read the section Restart Options in this manual for a detailed description of the restart process.

Note: the restart will not happen if the computer is not "idle" at the time of restart because somebody is using the Mac.

Log File

KIU always keeps a log file of all relaunches, restarts, errors, etc... If you have any trouble with KIU, always check the log file for clues.

You will find this "KIU logfile" in the Preferences Folder. You can view this log file by selecting "Open Log File" from the file menu. This will launch BBEdit and open the log file, so you must have BBEdit on your harddisk.
If you want to use another text editor, create a file using your favorite text editor and use exactly the same name as the original logfile. Now replace the original logfile with the one you just created.