What is Supervisor & supervisord.conf

 supervisord.conf is the configuration file used by Supervisor, a process control system in Linux/Unix environments. Supervisor is used to manage and monitor processes, ensuring they start automatically, restart on failure, and stay running in the background.

Here’s a detailed breakdown:

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1. Purpose of supervisord.conf

• It tells Supervisor how to manage processes.

• Defines global settings for the Supervisor daemon.

• Specifies programs or services to start, stop, or monitor.

• Can configure logging, process limits, environment variables, and more.

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2. Key Sections in supervisord.conf

1. [supervisord]

   • Configures the Supervisor daemon itself.

   • Example settings: log file, pid file, child process behavior.

   [supervisord]
   logfile=/var/log/supervisord.log
   pidfile=/var/run/supervisord.pid
   

2. [program:x]

   • Defines a program or service to run under Supervisor.

   • x is the program name.

   • Common options:

     • command → command to start the program

     • autostart → start automatically when Supervisor starts

     • autorestart → restart on failure

     • stderr_logfile / stdout_logfile → logging

   [program:myapp]
   command=/usr/bin/python3 /home/user/app.py
   autostart=true
   autorestart=true
   stderr_logfile=/var/log/myapp.err.log
   stdout_logfile=/var/log/myapp.out.log
   

3. [include] (optional)

   • Allows including multiple configuration files.

   [include]
   files = /etc/supervisor/conf.d/*.conf
   

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3. How it works

1. Start Supervisor daemon:

   sudo supervisord -c /etc/supervisord.conf
   

2. Control processes with supervisorctl:

   sudo supervisorctl status
   sudo supervisorctl restart myapp
   

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✅ In short:
supervisord.conf is the master configuration file for Supervisor, specifying what programs to manage, how to manage them, and how Supervisor itself behaves. It’s widely used for keeping services like web apps, background jobs, or workers running reliably on servers.

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If you want, I can also make a sample supervisord.conf template for a Python web app so you can see a real-world example. Do you want me to do that?