Keep a bench up without a window

The console stops every device when it closes. A bench that must keep its instruments available — overnight, after a reboot, with nobody logged in — runs fleet run instead:

plesty-server fleet run --agent

It starts the working fleet — the devices ticked in the console’s Fleet column — and then checks every few seconds. A device found exited is started again, after a pause that doubles with each crash in a row (1, 2, 4 … up to 60 s) and resets once it runs again. A device you stopped yourself is left alone. --agent also serves the agent, so the bench stays reachable from other machines.

Ctrl-C, closing the terminal, or a service manager stopping it brings the devices down with it, so stopping the service stops the bench cleanly. --leave-running leaves them up instead — for restarting fleet run itself without disturbing the instruments.

Choosing the working fleet

Tick a device’s Fleet check box in the console, or leave part of the working fleet ticked when declaring it. A bench may declare a dozen devices and keep three running.

Start it with the machine

Register the command with the system’s service manager, as the user whose home holds the bench:

• Windows — a Task Scheduler task At log on or At startup, running plesty-server fleet run --agent.

• Linux — a systemd user service with ExecStart=plesty-server fleet run --agent.

• macOS — a LaunchAgent with the same command.

One-off, without the loop

plesty-server fleet up        # install what is missing, start the working fleet
plesty-server fleet status
plesty-server fleet down      # stop everything started here

fleet up exits with an error when any device did not come up, so a startup script can report it.

How the bench tracks processes it did not start itself, and stops them on each platform: Process management.