Ralph — prepare

ralph-prepare sets up Supervisor and tmux so Ralph survives VPS restarts and can be monitored easily. Run from the web project folder.

When to use

  • First time setting up Ralph on a new VPS
  • After deploying to a new server
  • When you want Ralph to auto-restart after a crash

What it does

  1. Creates /etc/supervisor/conf.d/ralph.conf
  2. Creates .ralph/ralph-ctl.sh — start / stop / restart / status / logs
  3. Sets up a tmux session name for easy reattaching

Supervisor config (key settings)

SettingValueWhy
autostartfalseRalph does NOT start on boot — must be started manually
autorestartunexpectedOnly restart if Ralph crashes (exit ≠ 0). Normal finish → stays stopped
stopsignalINTGraceful shutdown so Ralph can clean up
stopwaitsecs1202 min for graceful stop
stdout_logfile{PROJECT_DIR}/.ralph/live.logRotated at 50MB × 3 backups

Control script commands

.ralph/ralph-ctl.sh start     # Start Ralph
.ralph/ralph-ctl.sh stop      # Stop Ralph
.ralph/ralph-ctl.sh status    # Check status
.ralph/ralph-ctl.sh logs      # Tail live output

Switching from nohup to Supervisor

If Ralph is currently running via nohup:

  1. Find and kill the nohup process: kill $(pgrep -f ralph_loop)
  2. Wait for it to stop
  3. Start via supervisor: .ralph/ralph-ctl.sh start

tmux fallback

If sudo / Supervisor not available, fall back to tmux:

tmux new-session -d -s ralph -c {PROJECT_DIR} '.ralph/ralph_loop.sh --live --verbose'
tmux attach -t ralph

tmux sessions do NOT survive VPS restarts. Only Supervisor (or systemd) survives reboots. To make tmux survive: @reboot tmux new-session -d -s ralph -c {PROJECT_DIR} '.ralph/ralph_loop.sh --live --verbose' via crontab -e.

Hard rules

  • Run from the project directory (uses pwd to detect paths)
  • Supervisor requires sudo
  • The ralph program name must be unique — for multiple projects use ralph-{projectname}
  • Ralph's SESSION_CONTINUITY=true means it resumes after restart (no progress loss)