Automatic Reductions Using a Watched Workspace

Warning

A typical user will not need to use the watch command. It is included in the pipeline to allow for automatic/autonomous reductions as data is flowing into a directory. Most users will only need to use the reduce command.

With soxspipe, it is possible to create a ‘watched’ workspace. When data is added to a watched workspace, soxspipe will attempt to reduce the data automatically.

First, create the directory you are going to designate as the watched workspace:

mkdir ~/soxs_workspace

Now, change into that directory and ask soxspipe to ‘watch’ the directory:

cd ~/soxs_workspace
soxspipe watch start

The daemon is now running in the background, and you can check its status by running:

soxspipe watch status

If you start moving FITS files into this workspace, soxspipe will attempt to reduce the data automatically. Note that the pipeline is running in daemon mode, so nothing will be output to the terminal. However, the daemon log file can be found at ~/.config/soxspipe/daemon.log, and individual recipe logs can be found in their usual location beside the products in the workspace products directory.

The daemon will continue running even if you close the terminal with which you initiated it. To stop the daemon, run:

soxspipe watch stop