Starting the daemon

The Laravel package ships an artisan command that launches the daemon with Laravel-wired logging, caching, and config:

php artisan opcua:session

That reads config/opcua.php's session_manager block and starts the daemon. Block until Ctrl+C or until the process is signalled.

Why the artisan command?

Three things php artisan opcua:session does that vendor/bin/opcua-session-manager doesn't:

1. Wires LoggerInterface from config('logging.channels.{name}') — daemon logs land in your Laravel log channels.
2. Wires CacheInterface from config('cache.stores.{name}') — daemon caches use Redis/database/file via Laravel's cache abstraction.
3. Resolves PSR-14 EventDispatcher — necessary for auto-publish.

Run the artisan command unless you have a specific reason not to (e.g. you don't want Laravel as a runtime dependency for the daemon).

Options

The command exposes six options. Everything else (socket_path, auth_token, allowed_cert_dirs, auto_publish, the auto-connect connection list) comes from config/opcua.php — there is no --socket-path, --auth-token, --allowed-cert-dirs, --auto-publish, or --no-auto-connect option.

Examples

Development

php artisan opcua:session

Pure defaults. Socket at storage/framework/opcua-session-manager.sock on POSIX or tcp://127.0.0.1:9990 on Windows.

Custom socket location

Set the socket path in config/opcua.php (or via OPCUA_SOCKET_PATH in .env):

'session_manager' => [
    'socket_path' => env('OPCUA_SOCKET_PATH', '/var/run/opcua/sessions.sock'),
],

There is no CLI override for the socket path — the value the daemon listens on comes from config.

Production-style

# config/opcua.php has socket_path, socket_mode, auth_token,
# allowed_cert_dirs, and auto_publish set. The CLI only tunes
# the per-run knobs:
php artisan opcua:session \
    --log-channel=opcua \
    --cache-store=redis

You'd put this in a Supervisor / systemd unit — see Production supervisor.

What happens at start

The command, in order:

1. Boot Laravel (config, bindings).
2. Resolve the log channel and cache store.
3. Construct SessionManagerDaemon with the wired dependencies.
4. Pre-connect configured connections if auto_connect is on — see Auto-connect below.
5. Bind the socket, set permissions, start listening.
6. Block in the event loop.

The first log line looks like:

[2026-05-15 10:00:00] opcua.INFO: SessionManagerDaemon started
  socket=/var/run/opcua/sessions.sock mode=0660
  timeout=600 cleanup=30 max_sessions=100 auto_publish=true

If you see this, the daemon is ready.

Auto-connect

By default, the daemon does not pre-connect to anything. The first IPC request that names a connection triggers the actual OPC UA handshake.

To pre-warm specific connections at daemon boot, mark them auto_connect in config/opcua.php:

'connections' => [
    'plc-line-a' => [
        'endpoint'     => 'opc.tcp://plc-a.factory.local:4840',
        'auto_connect' => true,
    ],
],

There is no --no-auto-connect CLI flag. To skip auto-connect temporarily, either set auto_publish to false in config/opcua.php (auto-connect only runs when auto-publish is enabled) or remove the auto_connect => true flag from the specific connections you want to skip.

Stopping the daemon

Send SIGTERM for graceful shutdown:

# By PID (if known)
kill -TERM <pid>

# Or use Supervisor / systemctl
sudo systemctl stop opcua-session-manager

On SIGTERM the daemon:

1. Stops accepting new connections.
2. Closes all OPC UA sessions cleanly.
3. Unlinks the socket file.
4. Exits with status 0.

SIGINT (Ctrl+C) does the same thing.

Restarting

The daemon is stateless across restarts as far as OPC UA is concerned — sessions are torn down on stop and re-established on the next request. Subscriptions are also lost on restart.

For production, run the daemon under a supervisor that restarts on crash. See Production supervisor.

Multiple daemons

Running multiple daemons requires multiple Laravel installations (or multiple distinct config/opcua.php files served from separate processes) — the daemon's socket path is per-config, not per-connection. The per-connection socket_path override is not consumed by the manager.

For multi-tenant patterns see Recipes · Multi-plant tenant.

Running outside Laravel

If you need to run the daemon without Laravel as a runtime dependency (e.g. in a separate, minimal container):

vendor/bin/opcua-session-manager \
    --socket-path=/var/run/opcua/sessions.sock \
    --timeout=600 \
    --auth-token="${OPCUA_AUTH_TOKEN}"

You lose the Laravel-side wiring — no Laravel log channels, no Laravel cache. The daemon falls back to a PSR-3-null logger and an in-memory cache. For most production needs the artisan command is the right choice.

Where to read next

• Auto-publish — the subscription bridge.
• Production supervisor — putting the daemon under a process supervisor.
• Monitoring the daemon — liveness, metrics, logging.