# Using synctl with Workers - Synapse

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### Using synctl with workers

If you want to use `synctl` to manage your synapse processes, you will need to create an an additional configuration file for the main synapse process. That configuration should look like this:

    worker_app: synapse.app.homeserver

Additionally, each worker app must be configured with the name of a “pid file”, to which it will write its process ID when it starts. For example, for a synchrotron, you might write:

    worker_pid_file: /home/matrix/synapse/worker1.pid

Finally, to actually run your worker-based synapse, you must pass synctl the `-a` commandline option to tell it to operate on all the worker configurations found in the given directory, e.g.:

    synctl -a $CONFIG/workers start

Currently one should always restart all workers when restarting or upgrading synapse, unless you explicitly know it’s safe not to. For instance, restarting synapse without restarting all the synchrotrons may result in broken typing notifications.

To manipulate a specific worker, you pass the -w option to synctl:

    synctl -w $CONFIG/workers/worker1.yaml restart