14.2 TOA Preference Pane: Stay Alive (v2.0)

Owned by Thomas Staiger
Last updated: Jan 30, 2017 by Georg Deisting
3 min read


The Stay Alive tab of the TOA system preference pane can be used to select certain applications that should be automatically started and additionally should be "kept alive" at all times. This helps you to ensure that interruptions to your playout are kept to an absolute minimum.




Stay Alive UI

  • If – for example – the power fails at your playout center, once the power returns and the system restarts then the selected applications will automatically start as well. If you select just:out and just:connect from the list of applications then your playout will automatically start.
  • The "keep alive" function guards against unexpected application termination. Should just:out or just:connect crash at any time then they will automatically be restarted by the system and the playout will continue. This is particularly useful if you have a completely automated playout with limited human oversight (for example during the night) as without this "keep alive" function an unexpected termination of just:out or just:connect during such hours would result in complete loss of playout until human intervention.


Only the applications installed on the specific system are available for selection, any other applications in the list will be disabled in the Stay Alive preference pane.

Start an application using Stay Alive

  1. Make sure the application you are about to activate is currently not started.
  2. Activate the checkbox in front of the application to start it immediately and automatically after a restart or a crash.

Optional Required Path selection

Normally (when a volume is not specified) and an application is selected to use the Stay Alive feature, that application will always be started by the system ( first after booting, then automatically whenever the application terminates for any reason).

When a volume or folder is specified, those applications in the relevant group will only be started when the specified volume/folder is mounted and present. This may be useful if you have a NAS, SAN or other types of file systems that must be mounted during system startup that may take some additional time before they are available.

In this case it is important not to start any ToolsOnAir applications that may rely on data from these file systems until the volume is available. By specifying such volumes in Stay Alive you can make sure that any ToolsOnAir applications are not started until the relevant volume/file system is available.

Activate the Required Path checkbox and select a volume or folder which has to be available to start the selected element.

Optional Scheduled Restart selection

It is possible to schedule an automated restart all applications which are controlled by Stay Alive at a predefined time. Such a restart can be done as a kind of maintenance or to automatically restart just:out after a DST change. We recommend to restart just:connect every day and to restart just:out once per week.

Activate the Scheduled Restart checkbox and define the time and day the selected element should be restarted.


Restarting just:connect will not interrupt the play out but will close all user interfaces which are connected to one of the channels administrated by this just:connect. Restarting just:out will interrupt the playout for a few seconds. Use Tools On Air's failover:control and a redundant engine for continuous playout even while restarting the master playout engine.

Stop an application using Stay Alive

  1. Deactivate the checkbox in front of the application to stop it.
  2. A warning occurs, that turning off Stay Alive will end the selected application immediately.
  3. Click on YES to end the application immediately.


Make sure that the applications you are going to activate here in Stay Alive are quitted the same time you activate them. Activating an already started application will start a second instance of it which can cause any kind on issues.

Updating from an older version

When updating from an older version, deactivate all applications in Stay Alive first, then do the update and start just:out/connect and the UI first using the Dock. Process the System update if asked to do so. After that quit all apps and activate Stay Alive for the apps you would like to have restarted automatically.

→ Use the sidebar to navigate.