Application watchdog

CRON

Create a script, that will check how many instances of your presentation application are running.
The following example script will start the presentation if it isn't there. It will also kill one instance of it if there’s more than one running.

E.g. /assets/scripts/presentation-watchdog.sh

#!/bin/bash

case $(pidof APPLICATION_NAME | wc -w) in

1)      echo "$(date) - Restarting presentation" >> /assets/logs/presentation.log
    /assets/presentation/start-presentation.sh &
    ;;
2)      # all good
    ;;
*)      echo "$(date) - Too many dicks on the dancefloor, killing presentation" >> /assets/logs/presentation.log
    kill $(pidof APPLICATION_NAME | awk '{print $1}')
    ;;
esac

Now you only have to set up a cron job so the script is automatically called periodically.

Edit your crontab:

crontab -e

This config will call your script once every minute:

# min hou dom mon dow   command
  *   *   *   *   *     env DISPLAY=:0.0 sh /assets/scripts/presentation-watchdog.sh

Systemd service

You can create a systemd service for your application and let it care about restarting in case of an error. Read all about creating service units files here.

Create a new file for your app

sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/[YOUR-APP].service

Now copy these lines in there

[Unit]
Description=YOUR APP DESCRIPTION
After=getty@tty1.service

[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
Environment=XAUTHORITY=/home/tooloop/.Xauthority
#ExecStartPre=[OPTIONAL_COMMAND_BEFORE]
ExecStart=[YOUR_APPLICATION]
#ExecStopPost=[OPTIONAL_COMMAND_AFTER]
Restart=on-failure
TimeoutStopSec=1

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

Enable and start the service

sudo systemctl enable [YOUR-APP]
sudo systemctl start [YOUR-APP]

Now change the start and stop scripts accordingly

/assets/presentation/start-presentation.sh

sudo systemctl start [YOUR-APP]

/assets/presentation/stop-presentation.sh

sudo systemctl stop [YOUR-APP]

Now that systemd is taking care of starting your application service, you should remove or comment the call to the start script in ~/.config/openbox/autostart:

[…]
# sh /assets/presentation/start-presentation.sh &
[…]