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Note: This is the bpi.form.phantom.menu prior to release 4.1 (May 2025). The new menu offers additional functions such as:
If you are looking for documentation for the new version 4.1 menu, it is published here: bpi.form.phantom.menu (version 4.1 and above) |
bpi.form.phantom.menu (pre version 4.1 May 2025)
The bpi.form.phantom.menu utility lives in the BPIFORMS account. It can be invoked at TCL by typing bpi.form.phantom.menu. The screen display will look something like this
Screen Shot of bpi.form.phantom.menu
A help screen can be invoked by typing h. You may navigate up and down using the appropriate keys then press spacebar to select one or more threads. The most common action will be ‘s’ to start a phantom and ‘k’ to kill a phantom. Additional functions are available and will be described below.
The numbered lines in the menu above are populated from records found in the BPI.FORM.PHANTOM.CONTROL file/directory that lives in your Blue Prairie Forms account (this is usually called BPIFORMS). You can modify existing BPI.FORM.PHANTOM.CONTROL records via the menu above by chosing v)iew then e)dit or you can edit them directly in the directory using your preferred text editor. To create new phantom threads, you will create a new record in BPI.FORM.PHANTOM.CONTROL by either copying and modifying an existing record or creating a new one from scratch.
Explanation
The example above has three phantom threads defined. As a phantom is started, its pid will appear in the pid column. This is the indication that the phantom is running. To get help for the menu, press h.
Navigation
| Key | Action |
| up arrow or U | will move the selection line up (note, up/down arrows are not mapped for all terminal types) |
| down arrow or D | will move the selection line down |
| spacebar | will select the highlighted line causing a > character to appear to the left |
| * | will select all or deselect all lines |
Actions
| Key | Action |
| S | will start the selected phantom(s) |
| K | will kill the selected phantom(s) by writing a record to a file that the phantom monitors (a signal) |
| L | show the log files for the selected phantoms. |
| C |
clear the queue for selected phantoms. |
| P | Ping the OpenOffice server for selected phantoms (to see if it is alive.) |
| < | Will send the test .odt document named in the thread’s BPI.FORM.PHANTOM.CONTROL record to the threads queue directory. If the phantom is running and all is well, the test document will be rendered on the OpenOffice server. If not, more in-depth diagnostics may be required. |
Administrative Actions
The following actions are shown in the help file and on the menu but will only function if the user id you have used to login is a member of the bpiformadm unix group. Normal users are not normally members of this administrators group. In addition, a param file controls which of these administrative actions are available and optionally, whether a password will be required to access the function.
| Key | Action |
| $ | Will ssh connect you to the OpenOffice server as the user defined for the selected phantom. Once connected, you are now logged into the OpenOffice server as that user. You can use any command for which you are privileged. Type exit at the shell prompt to close the connection and to be returned to the MultiValue host (the menu). |
| L | Will show the log being generated by the phantom. The level of detail written to a phantom’s log is determine by the ‘switches’ param in the BPI.FORM.PHANTOM.CONTROL record for a phantom. The -v switch controls level of verbosity. The number following the -v indicates the level of verbosity. The higher the number, the more verbose the detail in the log. (not currently supported in D3) |
| C | Clear the queue. This will remove all queued documents |
| P | Ping the OpenOffice server for selected phantoms (to see if it is alive.) |
| V | View and edit the phantom control record. Options for vi and your default editor (ED, JED, etc) are provided. |
| < | Will send the test .odt document named in the thread’s BPI.FORM.PHANTOM.CONTROL record to the threads queue directory. If the phantom is running and all is well, the test document will be rendered on the OpenOffice server. If not, more in-depth diagnostics may be required. |
| ? | List OpenOffice processes running on the OpenOffice server for the user associated with this phantom thread. |
| B | This will search the OpenOffice server looking for open office (soffice) processes owned by the users associated with selected phantoms and will attempt to kill -15 these processes on the OpenOffice server. This effectively, cleans up orphaned or hung OO processes. If you need to get more harsh, you can use the $ command and ssh to the server to investigate and kill processes as needed. |
Configuring the menus via the ini file
The menus may be configured using the parameters file. The menu param file is stored at BPIFORMS/bpi_forms/ini/bpi.form.phantom.menu.ini.
Here is an example where all functions are enabled with passwords for each function
menuLog=enabledmenuLogPassword=bluepincmenuSsh=enabledmenuSshPassword=bluepincmenuPs=EnabledmenuPsPassword=menuBump=enabledmenuBumpPassword=bluepincmenuView=enabledmenuViewPassword=menuEdit=enabledmenuEditPassword=bluepinc