This package provides functionality for automatically starting and stopping ROS, including a facility for re-launching the daemon job as your own user.

Username:           ros
Home Directory:     /var/lib/ros
Group:              ros
Shell:              /bin/sh

ros should be a member of group dialout in order to access serial ports.

chown -R ros:ros /var/lib/ros
chmod 2775 /var/lib/ros

ROS Log Dir:        /var/log/ros
ROS PID:            /var/run/ros/roscore.pid

Startup and shutdown is controlled by an upstart job.

sudo service start ros
sudo service stop ros

You can disable start on boot by:

echo manual | sudo tee /etc/init/ros.override

When the service is started, the default configuration is to launch ROS as user ros with the following setup:

source /etc/ros/setup.sh
source /etc/ros/envvars
export ROS_HOSTNAME=${HOSTNAME}
roslaunch /etc/ros/robot.launch

The files /etc/ros/setup.sh and /etc/ros/robot.launch are symlinks controlled by update-alternatives. You can load setup scripts and launchers like so:

update-alternatives --install /etc/ros/setup.sh ros-setup ${HOME}/my_catkin_ws/devel/setup.sh 20
update-alternatives --install /etc/ros/robot.launch ros-robot-launch ${HOME}/my_robot.launch 20

You can view what scripts and launchers are available with:

update-alternatives --list ros-setup
update-alternatives --list ros-robot-launch

And change the currently selected alternave with:

update-alternatives --config ros-setup
update-alternatives --config ros-robot-launch

ROS_LOG_DIR=/var/log/ros for the background daemon job. This path is owned by the ros user and group.

• Config file /etc/logrotate.d/ros
• Rotate logs daily *.log -> *.log.1 -> *.log.2 -> etc
• Compress the previous days logs daily *.log.2 -> *.log.2.gz
• Keep up to one weeks logs for an active rosmaster
• Archive inactive log subdirectories daily
• Remove archived logs older than one week
• Rotation currently done by copying and truncating the active log

Note: 01 Jan 2013 Sending SIGHUP to ROS does not cause it to write to a new log.
ros/ros_comm#45

Modelled after apachectl, this script allows ros to be started locally by users or system-wide by user ros.

If rosctl is run as user ros it will attempt to launch /etc/ros/robot.launch or the launch file specified in ROS_LAUNCH if it exists.

If gnome-session is running, the script will attempt to send desktop notifications via notify-send to the user that is logged in when ROS starts or stops.

Sub-commands

• start Start ROS (roscore + default launch file)
• stop Stop ROS (rosnode kill nodes then killall roslaunch)
• restart Start followed by Stop
• status Display the PID and user running ROS

In the near future running this as script as root will check/repair directory permissions and re-run itself setuidgid ros. Also, when run as root it should issue a warning and run initctl stop ros to prevent upstart from respawning. It may also be worth issuing a warning when run as ros and initctl status ros shows that upstart will respawn the process.

The intent is that may be parsed and edited by hardware vendor install scripts; a place to put customizations which does not require editing setup.bash.

The program rosctl was inspired by apachectl Package was influenced by the alternate approach used by Thomas Moulard on ros_comm_upstart Bill Morris on Turtlebot-Mfg