Which services are required to run the SystemLink server?

[JKSH]

My Server is running Windows 10, 64-bit. After installing SystemLink, I set up permissions via the NI Web Service Configuration utility (I picked the "Simple Local Access" preset), and logged into the web app at http://localhost/. I was able to see 4 applications:

• File Viewer
• Repository Manager
• Systems Manager
• Tag Viewer

I played around with the SystemLink Client and with the Systems Manager. I saw that my server PC itself was visible under the Systems Manager. I clicked the "Restart" button in the web page, and sure enough, my server PC rebooted itself!

After the reboot, I logged into http://localhost/ again. However, only 1 application was available now: Systems Manager. The other 3 are missing.

I opened Windows Services, and noticed that the following 3 NI services had failed to start automatically:

• NI Minion Agent Service for Systems Management
• NI Salt-Minion
• NI Skyline Service Manager

I started these services, and logged into the web app again. Now, I can see 2 apps:

• File Viewer
• Systems Manager

How do I bring back Repository Manager and Tag Viewer?

[JoshuaP]

In order to run the SystemLink Server you need the following services running

• NI Skyline Service Manager
  • NI Skyline Service Manager spins up all of the additional processes needed for Systems Manager (note this will create several Python processes), Tags, Files, Repository Manager, and our databases like MongoDB and Redis that are used by those services.
  • On slower virtual machines with limited resources this service can timeout when starting and may need to be started manually after the system comes up.
• NI Web Server

NI Minion Agent Service for Systems Management and NI Salt-Minion are installed with the SystemLink Client and are only required to be running if you intend to manage the system from a SystemLink Server.  

Note I wouldn't recommend adding your server to itself in a production environment, since as you can see you have the ability to reboot and even add and remove software to it from Systems Manager, which could result in the server getting into a bad state.

One simple thing you can try to get the other services working is restarting the NI Web Server and then refresh your browser.  It's possible that when the web server came up it failed to connect to the services.  It should try to reconnect, but it is possible it got into a weird state.

If that doesn't work open up a command line console as admin and go to C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\Skyline and run NationalInstruments.SmConsole.exe.  Then type ps.  This should print out the status of the various Skyline services that SystemLink uses like the following if everything is running.

[JKSH]

Thanks for your insights, JoshuaP.

I was having trouble getting the NI Skyline Service Manager service up and running again. Every time I tried to start it, it would silently crash again within a minute.

It turns out that I was experiencing the same problem as the OP at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rabbitmq-users/sMubP52NfHs. Here's an excerpt from C:\ProgramData\RabbitMQ\log\rabbit@localhost.log: 

=INFO REPORT==== 20-Jul-2017::14:19:44 ===
Error description:
   {could_not_start,rabbit,
       {{badmatch,
            {error,
                {{{badmatch,
                      {error,
                          {not_a_dets_file,
                              "c:/PROGRA~3/RabbitMQ/db/RABBIT~3/recovery.dets"}}},

...

I had somehow ended up with a corrupted copy of C:\ProgramData\RabbitMQ\db\rabbit@localhost-mnesia\recovery.dets (it was 0 bytes). Each time I started NI Skyline Service Manager, it in turn tried to start the RabbitMQ service. However, RabbitMQ encountered the bad recovery.dets file and instantly crashed.

After I deleted recovery.dets, I was able to start the NI Skyline Service Manager again. As far as I can tell, my SystemLink is now working properly again.

This is a particularly tough issue, because the system fails silently, it persists between reboots and needs to be resolved by modifying non-NI files. SystemLink would benefit from a troubleshooting tool that can detect and resolve this -- a good start would be a tool to scan the RabbitMQ logs to detect errors.

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JoshuaP wrote:

Note I wouldn't recommend adding your server to itself in a production environment, since as you can see you have the ability to reboot and even add and remove software to it from Systems Manager, which could result in the server getting into a bad state.

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Understood. I was simply starting small and did all my testing (both Client and Server) on a single PC 🙂