"user manual"
Contents
1. 1 before disabling the software Rebound doesn t recover after an application crashes It is possible for applications to fail in ways that do not cause actual crashes Our application timer technology gives Rebound another method of detecting application fail ures An application must be specifically written to support Rebound s application timers Contact your application s developer to see if they offer Rebound support Rebound uses the same software as our Rebound product so if your application supports Rebound s application timers it auto matically supports Rebound as well If you are running an application which includes support for Rebound s application timers make sure its timer is being set Open the Rebound control panel and click on the Rebound Page 23 Application Crashes tab The timer should be shown in the list at the bottom of the panel If it does not appear check your application s user manual to configure this support Rebound restarts my computer when I run some applications or tasks v Some long operations will take control of the computer and not give time to any other processes including the Rebound Extension The Rebound unit interprets this as a crash Increase the value of the Restart if system doesn t respond slider Some applications including some disk utilities and games will take control of the computer for very long times If you need to2. Version 2 0 User Manual by Jamie Green Rebound designed by Amar Singh Rebound software by Richard Elmore Critical mass Jonathan Feinstein Copyright 1999 2001 Sophisticated Circuits Inc All rights reserved MANPKRB 0201 Service requirements In the event of equipment malfunction all repairs should be performed by our Company or an authorized agent It is the responsibility of users requiring service to report the need for service to our Company or to one of our authorized agents Service can be obtained at Sophisticated Circuits Inc PO Box 727 Bothell WA 98041 0727 425 485 7979 FCC statement This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device PowerKey Rebound PKRB M pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules These limits are designed to provide reasonable pro tection against harmful interference in a residen tial installation This equipment generates uses and can radiate radio frequency energy and if not installed and used in accordance with the FOR HOME OR OFFICE USE instructions may cause harmful interference to radio communications However there is no guar antee that interference will not occur in a particular installation If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measure
3. Install Location The Bronze Install Select a location for the Rebound manual and supple mental files from the Install Location pop up menu The Rebound Extension and control panel will be installed in the active system folder Click Install The Installer will ask if it can quit any open applications before it begins Make sure you don t have any unsaved documents then click Continue When the installation is complete the Installer will restart your computer Rebound O You can also select Custom Install from the pop up menu to install optional components See the Read Me Rebound docu ment for more information on these components 9 After your computer has started up select Control Panels from your Apple menu and open Rebound A dialog box will appear Please enter your activator code or click the Open Demo button to use the Rebound software in demo mode Activate 10 Type your activator code into the field in this dialog box This code can be found in your Rebound packaging or if you purchased a Rebound 2 0 upgrade in the e mail order confirmation Rebound starts watching for system crashes as soon as you enter your activator code The next section shows you how Rebound works and how you can change its settings Rebound Page 7 Using Rebound Page 8 As soon as you finish installing Rebound it will begin mon itoring your system
4. continuously monitors your Mac system to make sure it is running normally If the system or an application crashes Rebound restarts it automatically Many popular server applications integrate Rebound support to give addi tional protection Once you install Rebound you can sleep well knowing your server will stay up and running System requirements Rebound works with any desktop or server Power Macin tosh computer equipped with a ADB port It also works with later 68040 Macs that respond to the keyboard com mand control powerkey restart command Q For older ADB Mac models which do not respond to this command consistently we recommend PowerKey Pro with the Server Restart Option PowerKey Pro has the ability to turn off its outlets effectively pulling the plug to restart your server O For newer Macs with a USB port try our newest product Kick off It offers the same proven crash detection technology as Rebound and PowerKey Pro and connects to your USB port Rebound uses the same patents pending technology as our PowerKey Pro family of smart power strips to monitor your computer If it crashes Rebound automatically sends the command control powerkey signal to restart your server The Rebound software requires Mac OS 8 5 1 or later It supports Balloon Help Apple Help Apple Events and AppleScript Page 4 Rebound Installation PowerKey Rebound detects crashes using b
5. disappears causing an application has unexpectedly quit error message to appear Monitor timers in supported applications If this box is checked Rebound will monitor applications which include Rebound support This will let Rebound Rebound Page 11 respond to failures which don t necessarily cause the appli cation to completely crash A In order for Rebound to monitor an application s timer the application must have support built in Many popular server applications already include Rebound support and more are added regularly A current list can be found at our web site www sophisticated com When an application fails This section of the Application Crashes panel contains a pair of radio buttons that lets you choose how Rebound will attempt to recover from crashes If you select Restart system immediately Rebound will restart the computer when an application crashes It will first attempt to initiate a Finder restart and the Finder will attempt to quit all open applications If an application fails to quit the Rebound hardware will then perform a hard restart after a delay specified by the Restart if system doesn t respond slider in the System Crashes panel If you select Attempt to relaunch application Rebound will first attempt to relaunch the application which crashed before it resorts to restarting the system Application crashes can potentially leave the system in an unstab
6. respond as you specified in the Application Crashes panel This test will not simulate a full application crash in an application without support for Rebound s application timers For these appli cations Rebound only responds to application has unexpectedly quit messages Page 18 Rebound Using Rebound with AppleScript Advanced users can control all of Rebound s features with AppleScript or any other OSA compliant scripting language such as UserLand Frontier To work with Rebound s set tings place a tell block in your script as follows tell application Rebound Extension end tell Application properties The Rebound Extension contains several properties which can be read or modified These properties correspond to the settings in the Rebound control panel version Version of the Rebound software System Crashes panel properties sys limerEnabled Set to true or false to enable or dis able system crash detection crashDetectTimeout Value of the Restart if system doesn t respond slider in seconds restartInterval Value of the Time allowed for system to restart slider in seconds restartCount Value of the Number of restart attempts slider Rebound Page 19 Application Crashes panel properties appCrashDetectEnabled Set to true or false to enable or dis able application crash detection app IimersEnabled Set to true or false to enable or dis able application tim
7. system timer When the timer reaches zero the hardware will attempt to restart the computer To do this it sends a command control power key signal just as if you d typed it on a keyboard Detecting application crashes Rebound includes two types of application crash detection The first will detect any crash which causes an application has unexpectedly quit message to appear To do this the Rebound software watches as applications are opened and quit If one quits abnormally the Rebound software will notice and can respond as you specify in the Application Crashes panel The second type of application crash detection monitors applications which include Rebound support This lets Rebound respond to failures which don t necessarily cause the application to quit Rebound This type of detection works in a similar manner to the system timers described in Detecting system crashes above An application with Rebound support periodically resets an application timer in the Rebound software If the application fails its application timer will count down to zero When it reaches zero the Rebound software will respond O You can see the application timers working in the application status section of the Rebound control panel A list of applications which support application timers can be found on our web site at www sophisticated com or check with your application s developer to see if
8. Event ID Tick and put the desired value as a long integer into the direct object parameter Applications will usually not need to view appTimers them selves but if you do wish to do this you can deal with them like any other element of an application AppTimers have name and value properties You cannot set the properties of an appTimer but you can get them To set your appTimer use the tickleAppTimer command described above get name of every appTimer get value of app Timer My Application Q For development information on supporting Rebound see the PowerKey Software Developer s Kit in the Rebound installer and on our web site at www sophisticated com Page 22 Rebound Troubleshooting Rebound doesn t restart my computer after the system crashes Some crashes which appear to be system crashes are actually caused by applications Though the system may be unre sponsive other processes are still running normally See Detecting Application Crashes on page 16 for more infor mation I disabled my Rebound software but my computer keeps restarting every few minutes If the Number of restart attempts slider is set higher than 1 the Rebound hardware will wait for the Rebound software to reestablish communication at startup Since the software has been disabled this won t occur and the Rebound hard ware will restart the computer again To avoid this problem always set this slider to
9. ay Thursday and Saturday set rebootDays to 2 16 64 82 rebootTime Time of day to periodically restart the server in seconds after midnight Using the properties You can examine and modify these values by using Apple Script s get and set commands For example to change the value of the Restart if system doesn t respond slider to ten minutes execute the following command inside your tell block set crashDetectTimeout to 600 A It is possible to set values between or outside the marks on the control panel s sliders but they will snap back the next time the user modifies them from the Rebound control panel Rebound Page 21 AppTimer elements Rebound s application crash detection works by creating appTimers for each application being monitored Each appli cation sets its appTimer periodically to keep it from reaching zero If an appTimer does reach zero Rebound assumes the application has crashed and restarts the system You can use Rebound s application crash detection to mon itor custom scripts databases or applications you have written To do this your application should periodically send a tickleAppTimer AppleScript command tickleApp Timer 300 The Rebound software will automatically create a new app limer for your application if necessary and repeated commands will update that timer O You can also set your appTimer with a simple Apple Event bypass ing AppleScript Use Event Class PKPr and
10. been relaunched recently i e within the relaunching interval described above This alerts you to applications which may be crashing frequently Rebound Page 13 The Other panel When you click the Other tab a panel appears with con trols for customizing all of Rebound s extra features Create alog entry when Wf the system crashes Wi application crashes timed restarts L an application is launched or quit Wf the Rebound Extension opens or quits C Relaunch open applications after crash kf Periodically restart the system 5S M T Ww TF 8 Every O Mf of oof of A at 12 00 aM E Create a log entry when Rebound supports our new monoLog software to make a log of system activity These check boxes let you configure what types of activities Rebound will add to the log Click the View Log button to open monoLog O You can also use monoLog to notify you when important activities occur See the monoLog User Manual for more information Relaunch open applications after crash If this box is checked Rebound will relaunch every applica tion that was running before a crash when it restarts the system This bookmarking feature is more flexible than Page 14 Rebound Mac OS Startup Items folder since it returns your com puter to the state it was in before a crash A The bookmarking feature will relaunch applications but it will not open documents that may have been open be
11. d below for more information Restart if system doesn t respond This slider lets you set how long the Rebound hardware will wait before deciding that the system has crashed Rebound Page 9 A If an application runs certain long uninterruptible tasks the normal communication between the Rebound software and hardware can be temporarily stopped To keep Rebound from misinterpreting these pauses as crashes you can set this slider to a higher waiting time Be careful not to set this waiting time too low The lower the waiting time the more likely a long task will be misinterpreted as a crash Time allowed for system to restart If the Number of restart attempts setting see below is higher than 1 this slider lets you set how long the Rebound hardware will wait to reestablish communication with the software after a restart Normally the Rebound software reestablishes communica tion as the system finishes restarting If the system crashes again during restart the Rebound software won t be able to do this This slider lets you set how long the Rebound hardware will wait before it decides something is wrong and tries to restart the computer again Number of restart attempts A This slider lets you set the number of times the Rebound hardware will attempt to restart the computer if it crashes again during the restart process This feature works in conjunction with the Time allowed for system to restart s
12. er monitoring appRelaunchCount Value of the Attempt to relaunch appli cation count field set to 0 to enable the Restart immediately button appRelaunchWindow Value of the Attempt to relaunch appli cation interval field in seconds Other panel properties sysCrashRestartPriority Priority of system crash log mes sages appCrashPriority Priority of application crash timed appTimerExpirePriority restart log messages timed restart appRelaunchPriority messages use the same priority as appCrashkRestartPriority application crash restart messages appLaunchPriority Priority of application launch quit appQuitPriority log messages appForceQuitPriority daemonLaunchPriority Priority of Rebound Extension daemonQuitPriority started and quit log mes daemonQuitAEPriority sages Q See the monoLog User Manual for a description of priority levels of log messages To disable any of these log messages set its priority value to 1 Page 20 Rebound bookmarkingEnabled Set to true or false to enable or disable relaunching of open applica tions after crashes rebootDays Days to periodically restart the server set to 0 to disable periodic restarting O rebootDays is a bitmask field each day of the week has a value Sunday 1 Monday 2 Tuesday 4 Wednesday 8 Thursday 16 Friday 32 and Saturday 64 To set the days for restarting add the values for the desired restarting days For example to restart on Mond
13. for crashes Rebound is designed to work unobtrusively in the background you will never see any sign that it is working until your system crashes The Rebound control panel Rebound s default configuration should work in most sys tems but you can customize its settings using the Rebound control panel This control panel is installed in the Control Panels folder and can be accessed from the Apple menu When you open the control panel a window appears with three tabs Click on a tab to reveal its configuration panel Rebound ki Monitor system for crashes Restart if system doesn t respond for I I l I ot imin 2 7 10 15 20 30 45 40 Time allowed for system to restart l l l l l l l l l min 2 z3 4 a r 10 15 20 30 45 60 Number of restart attempts Rebound The System Crashes panel When you click on the System Crashes tab a panel appears with controls for customizing Rebound s system crash detection System Crashes Wi Monitor system for crashes Restart if system doesn t respond for l I I I I I Y 10 15 20 30 45 60 Monitor system for crashes If this box is checked Rebound will monitor your system and attempt to restart it when a crash is detected Uncheck this box to turn Rebound s system crash detection off O It is a good idea to uncheck this box before doing any unusually processor intensive task such as a long calculation See Restart if system doesn t respon
14. fore the crash A For security reasons the bookmarking feature is disabled when running in Mac OS 9 multiple user mode Periodically restart the system If this box is checked Rebound will automatically restart the system at the same time of day on any day s of the week you specify As with application crashes Rebound will first attempt to initiate a Finder restart and the Finder will attempt to quit all open applications If an application fails to quit the Rebound hardware will then perform a hard restart after a delay specified by the Restart if system doesn t respond slider in the System Crashes panel O Some applications suffer from slow memory leaks or fragmenta tion of memory Over time these can accumulate and reduce the performance and stability of your server Periodically restarting your computer during times of low usage can reduce the chance of a crash occurring during times of high usage Rebound Page 15 Page 16 How Rebound Works Detecting system crashes The Rebound hardware monitors your system by periodi cally communicating with the Rebound software Every few seconds the software resets a system timer in the hard ware which then counts down each second As long as the system is running normally the software will keep resetting this timer and it will never reach zero If the system crashes the Rebound software will stop run ning and won t be able to reset the
15. le state If the application keeps crashing after being relaunched it probably means that something else is wrong with the system In this situation Rebound can fall back and restart the entire system You can configure when Rebound will resort to restarting the system by typing values into the two fields below this radio button The first value is the number of crashes that will cause Rebound to restart the system A value of 1 here is equiva lent to selecting the Restart system immediately button The second value and associated pop up menu is the interval in which these repeated crashes must occur If an application crashes once every few days Rebound will Page 12 Rebound simply relaunch it but if it crashes repeatedly over a short period Rebound will restart the system Application status The third section of the Application Crashes panel con tains a list of currently running applications and their statuses The list shows all running applications including invisible applications that are part of Mac OS in the order they were launched The second column shows the current value of the timer for each application which supports Rebound s application timers This timer counts down each second until the next time it is updated by the application See Detecting applica tion crashes on page 16 for more information The third column shows the number of times each applica tion has
16. lider above After detecting a crash and restarting the system the Rebound hardware will wait for the Rebound software to reestablish communication signi fying a successful restart If this doesn t happen within the time allowed the hardware can try again up to four more times If this slider is set higher than 1 and you disable the Rebound Extension you may experience unwanted restarts Be sure to set this slider to 1 before disabling the Rebound software Page 10 Rebound The Application Crashes panel When you click on the Application Crashes tab a panel appears with controls for customizing Rebound s applica tion crash detection This panel is divided into three sections The first lets you enable application crash detection the second lets you configure crash recovery and the third shows you the current system status Application Crashes Wi Monitor for crashes in any application Wi Monitor timers in supported applications When an application fails Restart system immediately Attempt to relaunch application and restart system if application fails 2 times within Minutes Applicat ion Timer Value Relaunches Folder Actions monolog Extension Rebound Extension Finder My web Serwer MailSeryv Fro Monitor for crashes in any application If this box is checked Rebound will monitor all running applications for crashes This will detect any time an applica tion
17. ncluding translation to another language or format without the express written consent of Sophisticated Circuits Inc Trademarks PowerKey and PowerKey Rebound are registered trademarks and Kick off and monoLog are trade marks of Sophisticated Circuits Inc Apple the Apple logo AppleScript Mac OS Mac Macintosh and PowerBook are registered trade marks and Balloon Help Finder and iBook are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc Frontier is a trademark of UserLand software Page 2 Rebound Introduction DY Ste TCGUITCMNCING ssas pee eyes pees yan st oe es 4 Installation Hardware installation 0008 5 Software installation aoa onda bu ee pee ache and ete 6 Using Rebound The Rebound control panel 8 The System Crashes panel 9 The Application Crashes panel 11 The Other Mae laxnxcee eens ne bere Rae 14 Advanced topics How Rebound works Detecting system crashes 16 Detecting application crashes 16 Testing Rebound Testing system crash detection 18 Testing application crash detection 18 Using Rebound with AppleScript Application properties 19 AppTimer ClGMCNls cacscascenanota stews 22 Troubleshooting 23 How to contactus aaa 25 Rebound Page 3 Introduction Thank you for purchasing PowerKey Rebound Rebound
18. oth hardware and software working in combination The software gives the hardware the feedback it needs to determine whether or not the system has crashed so you must install both to use Rebound Hardware installation The Rebound hardware connects to your comput C er s Apple Desktop Bus ADB port as labelled with the symbol to the right to communicate with the software It has a pass through connector allowing you to connect your keyboard and possibly other devices in a chain Refer to the diagram below 1 Shut down your computer normally 2 Disconnect your keyboard cable from the ADB port on the back of your computer 3 Connect Rebound s short cable to the ADB port on the back of your computer A Rebound Page 5 Page 6 4 Connect your keyboard cable into Rebound B A keyboard is not required for Rebound to work If you are using Rebound on a server with no keyboard you may skip this step 5 Start up your computer normally Software installation 6 Insert the Rebound CD into your CD drive and double click the icon labelled Installer The Installer window will open Rebound 2 0 3 Installer Easy Install Click the Install button to install Rebound 2 0 3 monoLog 1 1 3 Disk space available 266 Approximate disk space needed 3 763K Install Location The folder Rebound Folder will be created on the disk The Bronze
19. run one of these programs you should temporarily uncheck the Monitor system for crashes box This can be done automatically with AppleScript See Using Rebound with AppleScript on page 20 for more information An error message appears at startup every time Rebound restarts my computer saying the computer was shut down improperly This is a standard message that appears in Mac OS after a crash occurs You can disable this message in the General Controls control panel Uncheck the Warn me if computer was shut down improperly box My log shows that Rebound restarted due to a system crash imme diately after startup Rebound can t add an entry to your log while the computer is crashed so it adds one after it restarts the computer The monoLog software must be running before Rebound can add its entry so the monoLog Extension started entry will appear before the crash or any other entry Page 24 Rebound How to Contact Us Mailing Sophisticated Circuits Inc PO Box 727 Bothell WA 98041 0727 Shipping Sophisticated Circuits Inc 19501 144th Ave NE Ste D1000 Woodinville WA 98072 Phone Voice 425 485 7979 Sales 800 769 3773 Fax 425 485 7172 Internet Web http www sophisticated com E mail info sophisticated com sales sophisticated com support sophisticated com Rebound Page 25
20. s C Tested To Comply With FCC Standards e Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna e Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver e Connect the equipment into an outlet on a circuit different from that to which the receiver is connected e Consult the dealer or an experienced radio TV technician for help Shielded cables and I O cords must be used for this equipment to comply with the relevant FCC regulations Changes or modifications not expressly approved in writing by Sophisticated Circuits Inc may void the user s authority to operate this equipment Industry Canada statement This Class B digital apparatus meets all requirements of the Canadian Interference Causing Equipment Regulations ICES 003 Class B Cet appareil num rique de la Class B respecte toutes les exigences du R glement sur le mat riel brouilleur du Canada ICES 003 Class B Europe EU declaration of conformity Rebound conforms to the following European Directives and Standards Application of Council Direc tives 73 23 EEC 89 336 EEC Standards to which Conformity is declared EN60950 EN55022 EN50082 1 Copyright notice The PowerKey Rebound documentation program product design and design concepts are copyright 2000 Sophisticated Circuits Inc All rights reserved Your rights are subject to the copyright laws of the United States of America Under the copyright laws this manual may not be copied in whole or part i
21. they sup port Rebound Rebound Page 17 Testing Rebound Testing system crash detection To simulate a system crash hold down the command key and press the power key A small window will appear with nothing but a gt symbol in it This window is the Mac s built in mini debugger and while it is open no other software can run The Rebound software will not be able to update Rebound s system timer and in a few minutes Rebound will restart the computer There are also several test applications available which purposely cause a variety of system crashes We offer one called Crash Test which is available in the Rebound installer and on our web site www sophisticated com Some crash utilities purposely quit all applications before crashing These utilities have less real world validity real crashes aren t so polite and actually disable some crash detection tools including Rebound The Rebound software will display a warning dialog if another application attempts to make it quit Testing application timers A To simulate a failure in an application with support for Rebound s application timers bring that application to the foreground and type command option escape You will be asked if you wish to force the application to quit click Force Quit Since the application wasn t able to quit normally its Application Timer will continue counting down Rebound will think the application has crashed and
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search