Hi Michael,
I still know too less about Andy’s Openshift solution (I haven’t tried it personally so far), but maybe I can help answering some other questions:
Q2 Is there a server command or an admin query that will show what ports a running instance of BaseX is listening to?
I usually call "netstat -an" for that.
Q3 A search through the file system of the application shows that logs are being written to $APPLICATION_HOME/app-root/data/basex/data/.logs/ -- is there any way to find out from a running server what directory it's writing the logs to
Q4 Is there a command or admin-module query that indicates what directories BaseX regards as the base directory and the database directory?
You can use db:system() to get the value of the DBPATH option, and file:path-to-native to resolve it to the native, absolute path (provided that the requesting user has ADMIN permissions, or that you are using RESTXQ):
file:path-to-native( db:system()//dbpath)
Q5 OpenShift's documentation claims that it really wants application logs to go into $APPLICATION-HOME/app-root/logs/ -- is there any way to induce BaseX to write its logs there?
Hm, tricky. Once we have switched to standard loggers [1], this may get easier.
Hope this helps, Christian