dsh-simple-restart
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A DeepSeek Harness plugin
that adds one row to Settings → General: a button that restarts the running
dsh web process with the same invocation it was started with.
It exists because a plugin change to a client bundle only takes effect after the host restarts, and doing that from a terminal means finding the terminal again. This package owns its own route and its own restart logic — no other plugin is involved.
Screenshots
The row in Settings → General.

A second click within 5s confirms; the hint line then reports the host pid stepping aside and the helper's pid.

What it does
- The row asks this package's own host route for a restart (a second click confirms; the armed state expires after 5s).
- The host checks its own safety rules, then spawns a detached helper and hands it the exact boot invocation — executable, argv, working directory.
- The helper waits until the listening port is free, starts the replacement, and then watches for up to 20s to confirm it bound the port.
- The host exits 500ms after the handoff. The browser page disconnects briefly and reconnects when the new process is up.
If anything goes wrong after the handoff, the helper writes a diagnosis to
$TMPDIR/dsh-simple-restart-<timestamp>.err.log (the replacement's own stdout/stderr
go to the .out.log beside it). The process that would otherwise log the
failure is the one that just exited — that is why the helper is a separate
program rather than a setTimeout in the host.
Why a helper at all
A process cannot replace itself: it can only stop, and something has to start the
successor after the listening port is free. Starting it earlier dies with
EADDRINUSE. So the restart is a handshake between two processes, and the second
one has to be detached — it must outlive the first.
"free" is tested by connecting to the port, never by binding it: a test bind
would itself hold the port at the exact moment the replacement needs it.
Requirements
| Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|
| DSH, web profile | The route is served by webServer; the settings row is a client-half slot. |
| Same-origin loopback caller | The route refuses anything else (see below). |
Not supervised by systemd — or allowRestart: true |
systemd's default KillMode=control-group kills the helper together with the unit, so a restart there would leave nothing running. |
| Not under a debugger | A debugger attached to this process cannot follow it across an exec-less restart. |
Install
Straight from GitHub — nothing to clone (pin a tag if you want a fixed release):
dsh plugin --profile web add "github:yizhixiaokong/dsh-simple-restart"
# pinned: dsh plugin --profile web add "github:yizhixiaokong/dsh-simple-restart#v0.1.0"
From a clone, when you want to edit the code:
git clone https://github.com/yizhixiaokong/dsh-simple-restart.git
cd dsh-simple-restart
dsh plugin --profile web add "$PWD"
From npm:
dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-simple-restart
All three end the same way, and none of them needs a manual registration step:
dsh plugin runs pnpm, then reads each installed dependency's
package.json; a package that declares dsh.bundle has its name appended to
dsh.profile.bundles, which is what mounts the
cordis.patch.yml beside it.
Now restart dsh web once from a terminal — the client bundle is baselined
at boot, so the button appears only after the next start. After that, the
button can do it.
To remove it:
dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-simple-restart
Usage
Settings → 通用 / General → 重启 dsh web:
- first click arms the button (
确认重启?), a second click within 5s performs it; - the hint line then shows the host pid that is stepping aside and the helper's pid, plus the diagnostics path;
- the page reconnects on its own once the replacement is listening.
Configuration
The row's config is passed to the host apply:
# in the profile's cordis.patch.yml, on the row this package contributes
- insert:
- id: simple-restart
name: dsh-simple-restart
config:
allowRestart: true # restart even when a systemd supervisor is detected
| Key | Type | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
allowRestart |
boolean |
false under a detected systemd supervisor, true otherwise |
Whether a restart is permitted where supervision was detected. Only set this where the unit is known to survive it (KillMode=process, or a supervisor that restarts the unit). |
HTTP API
One exact route, POST /dsh-simple-restart/api/restart. It is fenced before anything is
spawned:
| Check | Refusal |
|---|---|
| Method other than POST | 405 with Allow: POST |
Socket peer that is not 127.0.0.1, ::1 or ::ffff:127.0.0.1 |
403 |
Any forwarding header (forwarded, x-forwarded-for, x-real-ip) |
403 |
Missing Origin, or an Origin whose host is not Host |
403 |
systemd supervisor detected and allowRestart not true |
403 |
Debugger detected in process.execArgv |
403 |
| A restart is already scheduled | 409 |
// 202 Accepted
{
"ok": true,
"pid": 12345, // the host that is stepping aside
"helperPid": 12350, // the detached helper
"logOut": "/tmp/dsh-simple-restart-2026-09-15T10-00-00.out.log",
"logErr": "/tmp/dsh-simple-restart-2026-09-15T10-00-00.err.log"
}
Failures answer {"ok":false,"error":"…"} with the status from the table above.
The helper is spawned as node -e <program>, detached with stdio: "ignore" and
unref()ed, so it is out of this process's lifetime from the moment it exists.
It is given the boot invocation as data ({ file, args, cwd }), never by
re-running a shell command line: when the host was started as node …/bin.js
the absolute entry and its original execArgv/argv are reused; otherwise it
falls back to the dsh executable on PATH with the original arguments.
Limits and known behaviour
- Detached, not supervised. Once the helper is running, this package has no
further control over it. A restart of a process started with unusual wrapper
arguments (a shell function, a container entrypoint) falls back to running
dshwith the same argv — which is right fordsh web, not for every possible wrapper. - No port to wait for. If
Hostcarries no port, the helper simply waits 1.5s before starting the replacement. - Environment is inherited, including the current working directory.
- Diagnostics live in the temp directory and are never cleaned up; they are small, and finding them is the point.
Development
lib/index.js host half — route, guards, launch description, detached helper
lib/client.js client bundle — one General-settings row
cordis.patch.yml the single host row this package contributes
scripts/smoke.mjs offline checks (no harness, no restart)
npm test # node scripts/smoke.mjs
The smoke test materializes the client bundle against stub globals and applies the host half to a stub context. It never restarts anything. It checks that the client half fills exactly one settings seat, that the host registers exactly one route, and that both halves agree on that route's path — a mismatch shows up in the browser as a row that always says "请求失败" while the host log stays empty.
Repository notes
Versions are tagged to match package.json — this tree is v0.1.0.
The yizhixiaokong placeholder in package.json, CHANGELOG.md, the badges and the
install commands above stands for the GitHub account this repository is pushed
to; replace it before publishing. The commits here were authored under a neutral
dsh-plugins <noreply@example.com> identity so that no personal address ends up
in the published history; if you want your own name on them, set
git config user.name / user.email and run
git commit --amend --reset-author before pushing.
About the name
This plugin was developed under the working name dsh-restart-button. That name
is not available: it is published on npm by
jiqiu0709/dsh-restart-button
and used by several other GitHub repositories, so the package ships as
dsh-simple-restart. Renaming also removed a real collision — the route is now
this package's own /dsh-simple-restart/api/restart, instead of the
/dsh-restart/api/restart that other restart plugins register.
Getting listed in the marketplace
The plugin list at
awesome-dsh-plugin
is generated from one YAML file per plugin, and its CI checks a submission's
shape against this repository. The mechanical part is already satisfied here:
dsh.bundle is declared in package.json beside cordis.patch.yml, the
official @deepseek-ai/* packages are declared as peerDependencies, there are
no dependencies to install and no build step.
Mind what this plugin shares with entries already on that list: several of them
restart dsh web from inside the GUI. This one adds two things they do not
state — it refuses to restart under a detected systemd supervisor, whose default
KillMode=control-group would kill the helper along with the unit, and it tests
whether the port is free by connecting to it rather than binding it, so the
replacement never races the old process for the port.
Owner steps:
add the
dsh-plugintopic —gh repo edit yizhixiaokong/dsh-simple-restart --add-topic dsh-plugin;let the repository age past 1 day (the list's CI rejects younger ones);
open one PR adding
data/plugins/yizhixiaokong__dsh-simple-restart.yml:url: https://github.com/yizhixiaokong/dsh-simple-restart name: yizhixiaokong/dsh-simple-restart category: dev description: en: 'Adds a restart row to Settings → General that relaunches dsh web with the same invocation through a detached helper, refuses under a detected systemd supervisor unless allowRestart is true, and tests whether the listening port is free by connecting to it rather than binding it.' zh: '在「设置 → 通用」增加一行重启按钮:用相同启动参数、经分离的 helper 重新拉起 dsh web;检测到 systemd 监管时默认拒绝(除非 allowRestart 为 true);判断端口是否空闲用连接探测而非绑定。'
The storefront reads a screenshots.json next to package.json for its
screenshot strip; this repository declares assets/01-settings-row.png and
assets/02-confirm.png, in that order.
Publishing to npm
npm login --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org # a mirror accepts neither a login nor a publish
npm publish --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org
npm publish --dry-run prints the tarball contents without uploading anything,
and prepublishOnly runs npm test before either. The published package's
repository field points back here; that is what lets the plugin list link the
two and then offer the registry install form instead of the GitHub one.
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