Running

In this section, we summarize the ways in which Crowdsourcr can be invoked on both Linux and Windows. Some of the basics are already described in the Installation section.

The Crowdsourcr program is in the src directory and is invoked by

python app.py [options]

where python may be python3 if Python 2 is also installed. Note, that Crowdsourcr only runs under Python 3.

This is a description of the options app.py accepts:

--config=CONFIG_FILENAME

Filename for JSON file that contains the basic configuration settings such as Google authentication, AWS key and secret, port, environment (development (default) or production), and database. Default is config.json.

--drop=REALLYREALLY

This clears all of the data in the databases. Crowdsourcr will quit immediately after this operation. REALLYREALLY should be the literal string REALLYREALLY.

--daemonize=BOOL

Options are either True or False, defaults to False. This only works in Linux, and it runs Crowdsourcr in the background. It will kill other daemonized Crowdsourcr instances running on the same port. The log is stored in log/tornado.PORTNUM.log.

Daemonizer

The daemonizer works only under Linux. It manages instances described in config/daemons_config.py running as a background process. A benefit for running Crowdsourcr as a background process is that there is no need to fuss with multiple screen sessions for each process in a load-balanced set and that it stores the log in the filesystem.

The ./daemons script manages the daemons. When run by itself, it provides a description of its options. A few useful ways to invoke it include:

./daemons list

Prints a description of all the daemon configurations in config/daemons_config.py.

./daemons start DAEMON_NAME

Starts or restarts the daemon DAEMON_NAME. Be aware that if two daemon configurations have overlapping port numbers that this may have unexpected behavior. See the description of --daemonize for more information.

./daemons stop DAEMON_NAME

Makes sure that the daemon DAEMON_NAME is no longer running.

Windows Batch File

There is an example batch file in the root of the project called start_a.bat. It is designed for use with the nginx configuration given above. The batch file starts two Command Prompt windows, each with a running Crowdsourcr instance on a different port, one of which being responsible for payments.

Installation Concepts