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WebSummoner

Updating configuration and browsers

Updating the browser list is the most frequent maintenance task. Two paths: the fast one (restarts WebSummoner — fine for personal setups) and the zero-downtime one (recommended for production clusters).

The short way — cm update

Section titled “The short way — cm update”
Terminal window
./cm websummoner update

This downloads the latest WebSummoner release, pulls browser images, regenerates browsers.json and restarts WebSummoner. Useful flags:

Terminal window
./cm websummoner update --vnc                  # VNC-capable images
./cm websummoner update --last-versions 5      # keep N last versions (default 2)

To pull images and regenerate the config without restarting:

Terminal window
./cm websummoner configure --vnc --last-versions 5

The zero-downtime way — hot reload

Section titled “The zero-downtime way — hot reload”

  1. Edit browsers.json (add/remove versions) and pull any new images, e.g.:

    Terminal window
    docker pull websummoner/chrome:152.0

    The jq one-liner in Browsers configuration pulls everything the file mentions.

  2. Reload without restarting the process:

    Terminal window
    kill -HUP <pid>                  # when running as a binary
    docker kill -s HUP websummoner   # when running as a container

    (Use only one of the two commands.)

  3. Verify the reload took effect:

    Terminal window
    curl -s http://example.com:4444/ping
    # {"uptime":"2m46s","lastReloadTime":"...","numRequests":42}

/ping returns 200 OK when healthy, along with uptime, the last reload time and the total number of processed session requests.