Quick Guide to Watchdog

What is Watchdog?

The logical principle of Watchdog operation is that it establishes a communication channel with your cores (profiles) and the exchange. If Watchdog loses connection with your core, it will assume that the core has stopped/crashed/shut down/failed. In this case, Watchdog will send necessary commands to the exchange through the communication channel (instead of the "dead" core), using the keys stored in that profile, to close all positions and cancel all orders.

IMPORTANT: If you have entered long-term positions, Watchdog will close ALL open positions!

We strongly recommend watching the video that clearly demonstrates how to launch Watchdog. Technically, Watchdog is another core running with the --watchdog-mode parameter (similar to --no-update). When using this flag, the core will operate with a more "compressed" set of functions.

You can run Watchdog anywhere — locally or on a server, but keep in mind that Watchdog must operate in "Client" mode. This means it needs:

• client token
• core token
• VPS address where the monitored core is running

This first iteration may not be the best from an architectural standpoint, but we will improve it based on your feedback.

Step-by-Step Setup Instructions:

1. Create a separate copy of the MT folder specifically for Watchdog
2. Download the folder with the profile you want to monitor from the server
3. Place this profile folder in the "data" folder with Watchdog. Don't forget to add the corresponding .aes file for this profile to the data folder!
4. Launch MT from this folder, edit the profile to set "Client + Console" mode
5. Verify the correctness of the core token and IP address of the virtual machine where the core will run (for local testing, use address 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost)
6. Save the profile changes
7. For VPS: if Watchdog will run on VPS, copy the .aes file and the edited profile folder back to the VPS. For local launch on Windows, create a core shortcut and add --watchdog-mode to the end of the path. Important: don't forget the space after MTCore or MTCore.exe!
8. Launch the core you want to monitor and the client to connect to it
9. Upload the Watchdog build to the VPS and launch the core with the --watchdog-mode flag (on Linux, this is typically ./MTCore --watchdog-mode)
10. For testing, open a position and kill the core. Watchdog should quickly detect the core failure, close the position, and remove orders

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