OpenOS provides a variety of tools for running programs automatically. This document describes all of those tools, how to use them, and their comparative advantages and disadvantages. Note that some of these options were not available or as robust an option in older versions of the operating system. The 1.7.2 development builds (across all supported minecraft versions) have full support as documented here. The next general available OC 1.7.3 will include all of the development build fixes.
Before we cover the access points for running programs automatically, this document reviews background vs foreground, blocking calls, threads, and event registrants (listeners and timers).
A foreground interactive program interrupts or delays OpenOS from loading the shell. This type of modal process is a natural fit for programs that need to wait for user input. For developing background processes, OpenOS provides threads and event registrants (listeners and timers). When designing a custom startup program, a user is at liberty to choose either background or foreground approach, as may suit their needs.
When building a background process you need to know what is a blocking call, and what is blocked when you call it. There are two distinct types of blocking calls: machine blocking and system yielding.
Machine blocking calls are a subset of component api, such as a filesystem file read, which cause the entire OpenComputer machine state to wait. These blocking calls are outside the control of the operating system, are truly blocking, and outside our control. Thus we generally are not referring to machine blocking calls when we discuss whether an operation is blocking or not. During a machine blocking call nothing in the system is running.
In contrast, the system call computer.pullSignal yields the current thread (event.pull and os.sleep also call computer.pullSignal). OpenOS creates a single init thread and runs all processes inside that one thread. If you create multiple coroutines and resume them in a continuous loop, once any single coroutine makes a system yield call – your loop would be blocked on that one coroutine. You would not see it yield back to you. For all intents and purposes, all coroutines in that thread are essentially suspended. When developing a background application this is a critical workflow to understand. If you need your application to sleep for 10s before resuming its work, and you call os.sleep(10), you block execution of the the foreground application (because are in the same thread). System yielding methods include: term.read, os.sleep, and event.pull.
Review the threading library api documentation here. Threads are ideal for developing a background application whose design, for the most part, can disregard the rest of the system.
The thread is programmed entirely from a single entry point. This paradigm can be easier to grasp, and allows the programmer to build the code as subsystem of its own. When the one and only thread function exits, the thread is dead and will not resume. Also note that when you create your thread (as described in the thread documentation) it will attach to the current process. A thread blocks its parent process from closing until itself closes. If you want to run a truly background thread, not attached to any process, call :detach().
OpenOS threads are "event cooperative"
Event signals are queued and are removed from that queue when you pull them. If you have multiple and distinct areas of code making pullSignal (or event.pull) calls, one process may rob signals that another process was expecting (event handlers registered via event.listen is not affected by this). Threads pull from their own queue (there is no additional memory cost for this, technically a thread is a registered event handler that is unaffected by signal robbers), and when designing your background application running on an OpenOS thread, you need not concern yourself with the rest of the system and the events it may care about.
OpenOS needs less than 130k of ram to boot and run the interactive shell. One stick of tier 1 ram provides 196k of ram, thus leaving you with more than 60k of “wiggle” room. This low memory state is already severe as it is. However, the boot process does not fully load the available system libraries. Loading the thread library allocates an additional ~20k, and each user thread costs ~5k. These are conservative measurements and, frankly, imprecise due to the nature of the Lua VM and how it allocates memory in chunks. I will admit, the threading library could be optimized for memory costs. However, the threading library has thus far been strongly focused on correctness and robustness. Future versions will likely have reduced cost. Ideally, your system has >100k free even with all the libraries you need loaded, and all of your programs running.
Event listeners and event timers are types of an event registrant.
Review the event library api documentation here. Event registrants are ideal for developing background “responders”; tasks that spin up for short lived jobs in response to some expected event signal.
The event handler function is a callback that is called every time the condition under its registration is satisfied.
handle_key_down() is called every time there is a key_down signal.
onTimeout() is called every 1s, and 10 times (see the event api for details).
The callback also has the option to return false (nil is not the same, specifically false) to unregister itself. Returning anything else, or nothing, does not unregister the callback. Timers auto self unregister when the times (3rd parameter) is met.
This reentrant behavior can be easy to use when your program needs to do a small reoccuring task based on event, but it can be difficult to build a long running background system that needs to complete various and disparate jobs. Event registrants may not be well suited for programs that may need to keep state or complete a long list of jobs, or are wholely unrelated to a system event. Obviously, these are not rules, just subjective considerations lacking any context of your specific needs.
Unlike threads, event registrations have a tiny footprint. The most basic registration event.listen("key_down", function()end) could be as cheap as 400 bytes (you might find that a huge cost, welcome to the Lua VM). OpenOS already employs many event registrations, and the system has been heavily optimized for reliability and memory cost around these.
In case you skipped it, read about blocking calls earlier in this document. As stated, OpenOS runs on the singular init thread, and all processes and event registrants made thereon are suspended when any actor in that thread makes the system yield call, computer.pullSignal (or any method that calls it, such as event.pull). Thus, it would be unwise to call os.sleep in your event registrant if you also expect the system to respond interactively with another foreground application, such as the shell.
The following access points are like “hooks”, or script locations, where you can start your background or foreground application during machine startup.
The last boot process to load is the OpenOS shell. The shell blocks until a tty output is available. This means that if there is no gpu or no screen, the shell startup will wait.
After a stdout for tty becomes available, the shell will finish loading and will execute /etc/profile.lua which loads aliases and sets environment variables. The last thing /etc/profile.lua will do is source your /home/.shrc file, which by default is an empty file. source does not run lua code, but instead runs each line in the file as a shell command. If you have a script you want to run when the shell loads, put the path to your script in your .shrc. .shrc is run each time the shell is loaded, which may be more than once per boot. The user could type 'exit', or ^d, or even send a hard interrupt signal and kill the shell (and the init process will load a new one).
I recommend editing /home/.shrc rather than /etc/profile.lua purely for organizational purposes.
/bin/rc can be used to enable boot level scripts. RC scripts are started even on systems with no shell, no gpu, no screen, no keyboard.
Relative to the root of any filesystem, you can create a file named autorun.lua (or .autorun.lua). When that filesystem component is first detected OpenOS will automatically run the file. Note that /home/autorun.lua is not at the root of rootfs. This also applies to the rootfs. This autorun will execute each and every time the filesystem component is added to the system (e.g. you can remove and re-insert a floppy disk with an autorun).
The feature is enabled by default, and can be disabled on a rw filesystem by either calling filesystem.setAutorunEnabled(false), or by modifying /etc/filesystem.cfg directly: autorun=false.
This option is really a non-option, documented here to disuade users with reasonable arguments against doing so.
OpenOS runs boot scripts (sorted by their filenames) in /boot/ for its core operations. While it is possible to install custom boot scripts along side the kernel boot scripts, it is quite unadvisable to do so.
Installing a custom boot script (in /boot/) poses the risk that your boot script may be run before core libraries are available. There is no guarantee that even invoking require in a boot script is safe in the current version OpenOS, or will be safe in future OpenOS updates (as I may change the boot order).
There may not be a fully initialized io, there may be an incomplete init process, there may even be incomplete lua libraries. Depending on the code you execute in your boot script, you may even unintentionally circumvent the event dispatching system causing the system to miss component updates. Yes, there is a lot that the boot process is responsible for.
With all of that said, here are a couple examples of /boot scripts that would probably work now and for the foreseeable future. Prefix your script filename 99_ so that it loads at the end of the boot sequence. If anything doesn't work like you'd expect (such as printing to stdout, or reading from stdin), it isn't a bug and isn't supported. In other words, use the /boot/ script directory at you own risk. If you need stdout, you can also wait for the term_available signal. Again, this is not an officially supported option.