InDesign Server: Adminport and Heartbeat - How Does It Work?

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Hi my fellow ID server developers, 

I am trying to find information about the -heartbeatupdateinterval and -adminport parameters. The parameters are documented, but not now to acutally use the admin port. I found a couple of unanswered questions here in the forum, and there is an AIR application that seems to monitor the heartbeat, but I don't have an AIR development system. I've tried to telnet into the port to see if anything comes back at the specified interval, but I don't see any information on that port. 

I am using the Windows version of ID Server.

Any information you can provide is appreciated.

Thanks, 

Karl Heinz 

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I am not sure if we get your query completely. If you are looking for some info about the adminport and heartbeat usage as command line arguments, here are the details:

• ‘‐adminport’ or ‘/adminport’: This is the port number at which console opens a server socket & listens for administrative requests like kill, ping etc. It’s a mandatory argument if ping IDS feature needs to be used.
• ‘‐host’ or ‘/host’: This is the host name or IP address of system where IDS is launched. If not specified, then we try to get host address programmatically.
• ‘‐heartbeatupdateinterval’ or ‘/heartbeatupdateinterval’: This is the interval at which IDS application updates IDS console application with last activity timestamp. It is an optional parameter & it has a default value of 20 seconds.
  
  

Following are exposed as read only properties

• adminPort: Admin port number. It is ‐1 if no admin port is specified.
• hostname: host name of IP address of the system where IDS is running.
• heartbeatUpdateInterval: This is the interval at which IDS application updates IDS console application with last active timestamp.

Regards,

Srishti

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Srishti,

thanks for your reply. What you quoted is the information I already have from the InDesign server documentation and the JavaScript documentation. Maybe the missing piece is that I don't know what the IDS console is. How do I monitor the health of multiple instances of InDesign Server? 

I was hoping to write e.g. a Python program to do that, but I am not getting any information from the admin port. 

Thanks,

Karl Heinz

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

@Srishti Bali - Are you still monitoring this question? Please see my comments in my last reply. Is there any other information you can provide to help me with my task. As I mentioned in my original question, the SDK has source code for an AIR application, but with the EOL of Flash, it would be more useful to have this as e.g. a Java or C++ tool. I have not had access to a Flex development environment in probably ten years, so compiling and running this application is not an option for me. I am looking for an alternative. 

Thanks. 

[Jostify]

I am very interested in answers to the same questions, although we run IDS on MacOS. We would like to monitor our IDS instances – thru the built in heartbeat function if possible.

Me neither have understood how the IDS console works. When starting that application, nothing  visible is happening. So I guess it is a background service, but I havent found any documentation on how to use it. 

[Manan Joshi]

Hi @Karl Heinz Kremer,

Did you make any progress in this regard? I see this troubling other folks as well and with this scant documentation it's difficult to guide folks to the right path

-Manan

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

No, I did not get anywhere and never received any other information from Adobe. I moved on to other projects. 

[Manan Joshi]

That's not good. I don't know why some documentation is so hard to get.

-Manan

[Manan Joshi]

@Rishabh_Tiwari can you help us out on this one as well. With LBQ no longer shipped, can we get some information on how to access these admin features of InDesign Server from an application like a C++ or JAVA application.

-Manan

[Alo Lohrii · Accepted solution]

InDesignServer has some administrative features like "ping"(status) and "kill"(terminate instances), useful to check whether IDS is hung or is actually busy processing a job. In order to use these administrative features, you need to specify a mandatory "-adminport" parameters when starting IDS, the other two optional parameters are "-host" and "-heartbeatUpdateInterval".

Say for example you want to monitor the health of your running IDS instances, the parameter "-heatbeatinterval" is used to specify the time interval IDS keep a record of the last activity timestamp, it's an optional parameter as it defaults to 20 seconds

Example : 

InDesignServer -port 12345 -adminport 3002 -heartbeatUpdateInterval 5

To perform administrative tasks, create a socket and send a message, either "ping" or "kill"

Example : 

import socket

HOST = "localhost"  # server's hostname or IP address
ADMINPORT = 3002  # admin port number of the running IDS instance

with socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) as s:
    s.connect((HOST, ADMINPORT))
    s.sendall(b"ping")
    data = s.recv(1024)

print(f"Last activity timestamp : {data!r}")

Messaged receieved example : 

Last activity timestamp : b'2024-01-11 10:27:36'

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Thank you for the information. Unfortunately it took a little too long to be published - at least for me: I am starting a new job today that no longer involves the InDesign server. 

[Jostify]

Thanks for your answer Lohri. 
However, it would have been more useful for us If three years ago if Adobe had been quicker to answer.

[Tomas277708967609]

Hi, 

thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately we get this error ConnectionRefusedError: [WinError 10061] for now but we have the development version.

[Tomas277708967609]

Out conf: 

APP_PATH = "c:\\Program Files\\Adobe\\Adobe InDesign Server 2024\\InDesignServer.exe"
COMMAND_ARGS = "-port {port} -adminport {adminport} -heartbeatUpdateInterval 5 -console

def run_windows_process(port, adminport):
    if not os.path.exists(APP_PATH):
        raise FileNotFoundError(f"Executable not found at {APP_PATH}")

    arguments = COMMAND_ARGS.format(port=port, adminport=adminport)
    command = [APP_PATH] + arguments.split()

    try:
        process = subprocess.Popen(command)
        print("Process PID:", process.pid)
        return process.pid
    except PermissionError as e:
        print("PermissionError:", e)
        raise

But IndesignServer  ConnectionRefusedError: [WinError 10061]. Could you please help us?