Always-on services

What comes back after a resume or fork

boat stop makes a snapshot of the file system. boat resume restores that file system. boat fork makes a new sandbox from the latest snapshot. A resume takes a few seconds, for any amount of data in the sandbox. For what a snapshot saves, restore behavior, retention, and how to look at or download a snapshot, see Snapshots. A stop and resume is the same as a server reboot:

Process	After a resume
A systemd service that you enabled	Starts again by itself.
A process that you started by hand: a dev server, a background job, a tunnel, a browser session	Does not come back. Start it again, or make it a systemd service.

Run an always-on service

To make a process come back after stop, resume and fork with no action from you, run it as an enabled systemd service. The unit file is under /etc, which is in the snapshot. Thus a resumed or forked sandbox starts the service by itself.

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/my-app.service >/dev/null <<'UNIT'
[Unit]
Description=My app
After=network.target

[Service]
User=user
WorkingDirectory=/home/user/my-app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm run start
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
UNIT

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now my-app

Restart=always also starts the process again if it crashes.
To check the service, run systemctl status my-app.
To read its logs, run journalctl -u my-app.

Run these commands inside the sandbox. Use boat ssh, the command endpoint, or the command method of the SDKs. If the service serves HTTP, expose it with host <port>. After a resume, host on the same port gives the same URL and token. Thus links that you gave out continue to work. See Hosting.

Resume or fork

To continue earlier work, resume the sandbox. To branch earlier work, fork it. Both use the latest snapshot.

boat resume bx_f7k2q9hd
boat fork bx_f7k2q9hd

curl -sS -X POST "$BOAT_API_BASE/sandboxes/bx_f7k2q9hd/resume" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOAT_API_KEY"

curl -sS -X POST "$BOAT_API_BASE/sandboxes/bx_f7k2q9hd/fork" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOAT_API_KEY"

await sandbox.resume({ sandboxId: "bx_f7k2q9hd" });
const forked = await sandbox.fork({ sandboxId: "bx_f7k2q9hd" });

sandbox.resume("bx_f7k2q9hd")
forked = sandbox.fork("bx_f7k2q9hd")

Repeatable setup

For repeatable workflows, make your setup and start commands idempotent:

boat ssh "$sandbox_id" -- bash -s < ./setup.sh
boat ssh "$sandbox_id" "cd /home/user/ariana-ide-private && npm run dev"

curl -sS -X POST "$BOAT_API_BASE/sandboxes/$BOAT_ID/commands" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOAT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"command":"bash ./setup.sh","cwd":"ariana-ide-private"}'

curl -sS -X POST "$BOAT_API_BASE/sandboxes/$BOAT_ID/commands" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOAT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"command":"npm run dev","cwd":"ariana-ide-private"}'

await sandbox.command({ sandboxId, command: "bash ./setup.sh", cwd: "ariana-ide-private" });
await sandbox.command({ sandboxId, command: "npm run dev", cwd: "ariana-ide-private" });

sandbox.command(sandbox_id, CommandRequest(command="bash ./setup.sh", cwd="ariana-ide-private"))
sandbox.command(sandbox_id, CommandRequest(command="npm run dev", cwd="ariana-ide-private"))

For command timeouts and retries, see Background commands.

​What comes back after a resume or fork

​Run an always-on service

​Resume or fork

​Repeatable setup

What comes back after a resume or fork

Run an always-on service

Resume or fork

Repeatable setup