Some utilities are supplied in the VendRoot/bin directory:
compile_link Compiles a MiniVend vlink or tlink CGI link dump Dumps the session file for a particular catalog expire Expires sessions for a particular catalog expireall Expires all catalogs offline Does offline build of the database(s) update Does in-place update of the database(s) makecat Make catalog
Some example scripts for other functions are in the eg/ directory of the software distribution; see the readme file there.
Some thought should be given to where the databases, error logs, and session files should be located, especially on an ISP that might have multiple users sharing a MiniVend server. In particular, you might put all of the session files and logs in a directory that is not writable by the user -- if the directory or file is corrupted the catalog may go down.
To test the format of user catalog configuration files before restarting the server, you can do (from VendRoot):
bin/minivend -test
That will check all configuration files for syntax errors, which might otherwise prevent a catalog from coming up. Once a catalog configures properly, user reconfiguration will not crash it, just cause an error. But it must come up when the server is started.