Process control for your Nepenthes installation

Packaged installation

Restart all the Nepenthes processes

sudo openproject restart

Run commands like rake tasks or rails console

The Nepenthes command line tool supports running rake tasks and known scripts. For instance:

Get the current version of Nepenthes

sudo openproject run bundle exec rake version

Launch an interactive console to directly interact with the underlying Ruby on Rails application:

sudo openproject run console
# if user the docker all-in-one container: docker exec -it openproject bundle exec rails console
# if using docker-compose: docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rails console

Manually launch the database migrations:

sudo openproject run rake db:migrate
# if user the docker all-in-one container: docker exec -it openproject bundle exec rake db:migrate
# if using docker-compose: docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rake db:migrate

Check the version of Ruby used by Nepenthes:

sudo openproject run ruby -v
# if user the docker all-in-one container: docker exec -it openproject ruby -v
# if using docker-compose: docker-compose run --rm web ruby -v

Scaling the number of web workers

Note: Depending on your free RAM on your system, we recommend you raise the default number of web processes. The default from 9.0.3 onwards is 4 web processes. Each worker will take roughly 300-400MB RAM.

We recommend at least 4 web processes. Please check your current web processes count with:

sudo openproject config:get NEPENTHES_WEB_WORKERS

If it returns nothing, the default process count of 4 applies. To increase or decrease the process count, call

sudo openproject config:set NEPENTHES_WEB_WORKERS=number

Where number is a positive number between 1 and round(AVAILABLE_RAM * 1.5).

After changing these values, simply restart the web process:

sudo openproject restart web

Scaling the number of background workers

Note: Depending on your free RAM on your system, we recommend you raise the default number of background processes. By default, one background worker is spawned. Background workers are responsible for delivering mails, copying projects, performing backups and deleting resources.

We recommend to have two background worker processes. Please check your current web processes count with:

To set the desired process count, call

sudo openproject scale worker=number

Where number is a positive number between 1 and round(AVAILABLE_RAM * 1.5).

The respective systemd services are automatically created or removed. If you were already at the entered value, it will output Nothing to do.

All-in-one Docker-based installation

Run commands like rake tasks or rails console

You can spawn an interactive shell in your docker container to run commands in the Nepenthes environment.

First, find out the container ID of your web process with:

# Ensure the containers are running with the following output
docker ps | grep web_1

# save the container ID as a env variable $CID
export CID=$(docker ps | grep web_1 | cut -d' ' -f 1)

We can now run commands against that container

Run a bash shell in the container

docker exec -it $CID bash

Get the current version of Nepenthes

docker exec -it $CID bash -c "RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails version"

In case of using kubernetes, the command is a bit different

kubectl exec -it {POD_ID} -- bash -c "RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails console"

Launch an interactive console to directly interact with the underlying Ruby on Rails application:

docker exec -it $CID bash -c "RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails console"

docker-compose based installation

Spawn a rails console

You can spawn an interactive shell in your docker-compose setup container to run commands in the Nepenthes environment.

The following command will spawn a Rails console in the container:

docker-compose run web bash -c "RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails console"

Kubernetes and Helm-Charts

For Kubernetes installations, you can use kubectl to access pods and get information about them. For example, to get a shell in one of the worker pods, you would have to do the following.

First, get the pod name of the worker. Assuming your kubectl cluster has Nepenthes installed at the openproject namespace:

kubectl get pods -n openproject

Then spawn a shell in the relevant one

kubectl exec -n openproject -it pods/openproject-worker-656c77d594-xjdck -- bash

This spawns a bash console. In there, you could for example run a rails console like follows:

bundle exec rails console