Best way to Expose IBC Command Server port?

[GonzRon]

what's the best way to restart IB_gateway - I've noticed that when the Market Data Farm is Off, or disconnects, it can't be restarted even by requesting new market data from inside ib_async. The gateway has to be restarted. I'd like to automate the restart via the IBC command Server, but what are best practices to enable and expose this port inside the docker container?

https://github.com/IbcAlpha/IBC/blob/master/userguide.md#command-server

[gnzsnz]

Personally i have not used command server, so i can't provide much guidance here.

to used it with ib-gateway-docker would require custom config, as there are no env vars defined for config.ini. if you feel like, you can create a pull request to include the environment variables for command server. you can use #147 as an example.

Regarding what i think is the question behind your question, who to reconnect to the API? i do that on the code. i use python and ib_async in particular. ib_async has a disconnect event that I use to re-try a connection and keep trying until connection is successful. this works pretty well with minimum code. this handles any data farm connection issue, including the daily reconnection, and ib-gateway daily restart without any issue.

[GonzRon]

I appreciate the comments.
I should clarify that the IBKR Gateway is starting in Paper Trading mode only.

Unfortunately, I do still see the issue. I have gateway set to auto-restart at 3:05AM every day.

In the morning when I come in, even with clients connected overnight, (but not requesting active data):

In my ib_async client, I do have events connected, and I see these log messages repeatedly because I am running in an Async event loop:

2103: self._handle_market_data_farm_disconnected,
2157: self._handle_market_data_farm_disconnected,

2025-01-15 08:30:28,662 - handle_market_data_farm_disconnected - WARNING: Sec-def data farm connection is broken:secdefil.
2025-01-15 08:32:23,267 - handle_market_data_farm_disconnected - WARNING: Market data farm connection is broken:usfarm.

As I mentioned, reinitiating client connections won't fix the issue. I did find this in IBC Docs, so I tried it in the VNC Window:

RECONNECTDATA
Tells TWS/Gateway to refresh all its market data connections. This is the same as the user pressing Ctrl-Alt-F.
RECONNECTACCOUNT
Tells TWS/Gateway to reconnect to the IB login server. This is the same as the user pressing Ctrl-Alt-R.

I grabbed a video capture of the process, through the vid cap, I was able to capture screenshots and read the dialogs, any idea why the shortcut dialogs disappear on their own?

Results:

• CTL-ALT-F pops up a dialog as well, that disappears immediately, appears to do nothing:
  

• CTL-ALT-R pops up a dialog with a progress bar that disappears very quickly, it appears to be performing some action, again, normally it disappears so you can't see or read the text in the dialog bar that pops up because it disappears too quickly:
  
  
  
  
  which results in nothing:
  

Neither of these shortcuts succeeded in fixing the issue. Only a restart works. Appreciate any help in figuring out what may be an environmental issue if this is something that others don't experience.

[gnzsnz]

I haven't faced this issue myself, so I can't provide much insight here.

This seems to be an issue with either ibgateway or IBKR server farms and not with this docker image. Based on your explanation a restart is only solving this problem temporary, so it's not really a solution. Although it might be good enough.

you can check here https://groups.io/g/twsapi/ or here https://groups.io/g/ibcalpha maybe somebody there have faced and solved this issue.

From an ibgateway point of view what can be done is what I stated before

to used it with ib-gateway-docker would require custom config, as there are no env vars defined for config.ini. if you feel like, you can create a pull request to include the environment variables for command server. you can use #147 as an example.