Starting and stopping

Parseh is one small web server — serve.py — that serves every page of the toolbox at one address, https://localhost:7654/. While it runs, every device you have let in can use Parseh; when it stops, the pages stop answering until you start it again. Which devices those are — and which port — is Settings → Network, and a change there takes effect without a restart.

1. Starting it#

Then open https://localhost:7654/ in a browser. The Mac’s Parseh.command and Windows’ serve.bat open it for you. The first time, the browser warns about the certificate: Parseh made it for itself, so accept it — From a phone or another computer says why there is one at all.

On Linux and macOS ./serve.sh starts the server in the background: the terminal is yours again at once, and closing it does not stop Parseh. It waits until the server really answers, and then shows the first fourteen lines of what the server printed: the books it found, one line each, and after them the addresses it can be reached at — on a short shelf, like this one:

books:  english/my-first-book                English  (no narration)Parseh: serving /home/me/Parseh on 0.0.0.0:7654 (https)  https://100.101.102.103:7654/              (tailscale)  https://192.168.1.20:7654/                 (local network)  https://localhost:7654/                    (this machine)  /books/  /youtube/  /studio/  /exercises/  /anki/sync/  /settings/reachable from: this computer and a VPNthe certificate is Parseh's own: each browser warns once -- accept it,or tell a phone to trust the authority once, from /m/install/.Ctrl-C, or any of the page's stop buttons, to stop.running in the background: pid 4821,  log /home/me/Parseh/serve.logstop it with:  ./serve.sh stop      (or the stop button on any page)

On a longer shelf — some nine books or more — the books fill those fourteen lines, and some of the addresses, or all of them, fall below what is shown. Nothing is lost: the hub’s foot, under Reachable at, always lists every address, and so does the top of serve.log.

What the server goes on printing is kept in serve.log, in the Parseh folder, which each start begins afresh. When it is already running, ./serve.sh says so and leaves it alone:

already running: pid 4821 on port 7654use  ./serve.sh restart  to replace it, or  ./serve.sh stop

and when it cannot start — the port taken by another program, say — it says failed to start -- the log says: and shows the log.

On Windows the server runs in the window serve.bat opened: that window is its log, and closing it stops Parseh. The first double-click is a setup wizard.

Without the environment, Parseh still serves — the pages need nothing but Python — and says so as it starts: note: no 'ilya-frank' environment -- serving with /usr/bin/python3. Everything that rebuilds something then says, on its own page, what it needs; Installing Parseh puts it all in place.

2. Stopping it#

Almost every page has a button that stops the server:

It asks first, Stop the Parseh server?, and it warns you when Parseh is in the middle of something. A book being built, a backup being packed, a bundle going up: stopping the server cuts it off, so the question names what is still running before you answer it —

1 task is still running:  • Uploading “mini-en-full.zip” (8.7 MB)Stopping the server now cuts it off. Stop the Parseh server anyway?

— up to five of them, and … and 2 more after that (the studio’s pages name the first five and stop there, though the count above them says how many there are). Cancel leaves everything as it was. On the exercise decks’ pages the same question is a dialog of their own, with Cancel and Stop server — Stop server anyway when something is running. Even the reader, whose button has already asked really stop?, asks again when there is work in progress. The Working… indicator shows the same list at any time.

Once it has stopped, the page says so — Parseh stopped., or on the studio’s and the exercises’ pages Server stopped, You can close this tab — and every other page of Parseh, in every tab and on every device, stops answering. To start again, start it the way you started it before, and reload the page.

The hub’s Mobile layout has no stop button, on purpose: the mobile interface is for reading and studying, and shows nothing that administers the toolbox (Browser and Mobile). Switch to Browser to stop the server from the hub, or use any other page.

3. For the command line#

On Linux and macOS, ./serve.sh does more than start the server:

./serve.sh            # start it, in the background, on port 7654./serve.sh 9000       # ... on another port./serve.sh status     # is it running, and on which port./serve.sh log        # follow the log; Ctrl-C stops following./serve.sh stop       # stop it, as the page's button does./serve.sh restart    # stop it, then start it again./serve.sh cert       # a fresh certificate; then restart

python3 serve.py runs the same server in the foreground instead, until Ctrl-C. It takes a port too, and --local (this computer only), --host <address> (one address only), --http (no certificate) and --cert (make a fresh certificate, and exit). On Windows, serve.bat stop, status and cert are the same as these — the whole list is on the wizard’s page.