Can or does speech-dispatcher recover from a crash

[Brett Bergquist]

Currently I have speech-dispatcher being started via the client library (C) and autospawn.   I recently ran into an issue where speech-dispatcher crashed because of a NULL pointer, which has been addressed, but there might be other issues lurking.   When speech-dispatcher crashed, our screen reader client application failed to output any more speech without us knowing about it.

Looking at the source, it appears the autospawn is a one time thing and there is no mechanism to determine that the process has crashed and restart.   I see that there is a systemd service that I might use, but I also note that the documentation says 

It used to be possible to run Speech Dispatcher as a system service under a special user (and still is, with some limitations), but this mode of execution is strongly discouraged.

I am having trouble finding where the limitations are documented and the discouragement reasons.   The reason why I would be interested in the systemd approach as I can have it restart the service as needed.

Note that this is a single user application (a kiosk) so I am not worried about any issues with different users.

Can anyone provide any insight of further documentation on the limitations?

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Brett M. Bergquist

Distinguished Member Technical Staff

EntryPoint Communications LLC

30 Waterside Drive, Suite 100

Farmington, CT 06032

Phone: (203) 206 3542

Email: bbergquist@epc-instore.com

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