FIFO and Pipes with Bluepill

[jamestaylr]

I am trying to use a FIFO (named pipe) with Bluepill.

In the console, if I directly run:

tail -f /srv/input.fifo | /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/bin/java -jar server.jar

The server starts fine and begins running. I can also redirect to the pipe, as expected:

echo 'Hello World' > /srv/input.fifo

And the server responds and behaves as intended.

I am trying to port this same functionality over to Bluepill, but I'm having some trouble. Here's the Bluepill application script:

Bluepill.application('server', log_file: '/srv/bluepill.log') do |app|
  app.process('server') do |process|
    process.pid_file = '/var/run/server.pid'
    process.working_dir = '/srv'
    process.start_command = "tail -f /srv/input.fifo | /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/bin/java -jar server.jar"
    process.daemonize = true
  end
end

Bluepill, from the log, reflects the start_command correctly:

WARN -- : [server:server] Executing start command: tail -f /srv/input.fifo | /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/bin/java -jar server.jar

But the server never starts running. ps aux | grep 'server' shows that it isn't running and pidof java returns nothing. Additionally, I can tell from the server's log that it never attempts to run.

If I remove tail -f /srv/input.fifo | from the start_command, the Bluepill process works as expected, although it obviously isn't using the pipe.

Out of desperation, I also tried setting an stdin attribute in the process file because this definition appeared in the repo's code (but not in the documentation), like so:

process.stdin = "/srv/input.fifo"

How can I get Bluepill to call the server using the FIFO?

I originally posted this on StackOverflow, but it hasn't gotten much attention. Given that the README shows a complex implementation with redirection and conditional operation (cd /tmp/some_dir && SOME_VAR=1 /usr/bin/some_start_command > /tmp/server.log 2>&1), this looks to me more like a bug with Bluepill. I see no mention of pipes in the documentation, so it could be that this functionality is not supported.

Let me know! Thank you!