[wpkg-users] /sendStatus command not working

Mon Feb 8 00:02:34 CET 2010

Rainer, thanks for your information, however I understand how WPKG
works, and the WPKG client 1.3.9 is definitely supposed to be able to
read from STDIN and support /sendStatus

21-Sep-2009 

WPKG Client 1.3.9 has been released.

Small summary (not to be complete):

*	32-bit and 64-bit client versions 
*	support for /sendStatus switch of wpkg.js 1.1.x (display the
progress in the message window) 

The question is, why doesn't it work? It certainly has nothing to do
with VC++. I'm thinking it is more to do with a service that our Group
Policy is blocking. Are there dependant services required?

Regarding logon/shutdown delay, this is most certainly a required
feature, for a number of reasons:

1) Much of our software requires a reboot. We simply cannot
automatically reboot production users during the day, no matter how much
"warning" you give people.
2) Much of our software takes 5-10 minutes to install, however the icons
sometimes become available before installation completes. Hence, users
can "run" the software before its finished installing, and it will
crash, sometimes ruining the actual installation.
3) Installing software slows down the computer and network connection,
thus interfering with production users.

I am curious if Windows 7 will support logon delay, or at least shutdown
delay. Status messages are more important if we use the Execute at
System start-up, but we could easily swap to Execute on shutdown.
However Execute on shutdown will of coarse only work with a shutdown
delay :)

We will be migrating our 300 users to Windows 7 in the near future, so
WPKG compatibility with that is quite an important factor... I guess we
need to start testing.

________________________________

From: Peter Gough [mailto:pmgough at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, 5 February 2010 6:55 PM
To: Rainer Meier
Cc: wpkg-users at lists.wpkg.org
Subject: Re: [wpkg-users] /sendStatus command not working

Many thanks for the clarification. I've played around again with this
today and it looks like adding '/sendStatus' to the command line options
in WPKG Client and setting the sendStatus value to 'true' in the
'settings.xml' file on the server gives me information messages together
with the regular message box.

This is on Windows XP SP3 clients using 1.3.6 WPKG Client.

I've tried updating my test clients to 1.3.9 but get an error messsage
relating to the WPKG service. I understand from previous correspondance
that there are known issues with this version on SP3 - hopefully these
will be ironed out at some stage in the future but I'm pretty happy for
the time being with what I've got working.

Many thanks for all of your hard work in providing WPKG; it really is
much appreciated!

Peter

On 5 February 2010 17:12, Rainer Meier <r.meier at wpkg.org> wrote:

	Hi Peter,

	On 05.02.2010 01:34, Peter Gough wrote:
	> I just wondered if you couid confirm what your users see on
the screen
	> when the workstation is shutting down. I've never been able to
get
	> anything to display apart from the alternating status messages
despite
	> trying to set this up as you have described.
	>
	> I've got this set in the Client's WPKG parameters:
	>
	> /synchronize /nonotify /quiet
	>
	> I've got the WPKG user interface dialog box unticked and I've
set
	> sendStatus value in the config.xml file on my server to
'true'.
	>
	> Any thoughts?

	First a few words for better understanding. WPKG is split into a
"Server" and a
	"Client" Part. The Server-Part is implemented in wpkg.js. Well,
actually it's
	not a real server but rather a script executed on the client.
The Client part is
	"WPKG Client" which just executes wpkg.js depending on your
settings. WPKG
	Client is optional and you might also invoke wpkg.js using any
other method.
	However WPKG Client offers a couple of nice features like
running wpkg.js at
	startup/shutdown or blocking user input during wpkg.js
execution.

	Such features need to be implemented on a quite low level in the
operating
	system. Currently logon delay only works on Windows prior to
Vista. The logon
	delay feature allows you to display messages (alternating) to
the user.

	It was intended to extend this static message display into a
dynamic status
	update shown to the user. However there are a couple of
technical limitations.
	First of all wpkg.js will have to communicate with WPKG client
in order to
	update the status displayed to the user. Remember: wpkg.js
executes the job and
	WPKG client prevents user input and displays messages.
	Unfortunately IPC technologies are quite limited from
WSH/JScript. So for the
	moment wpkg.js only supports writing the status updates to
STDOUT if /sendStatus
	is enabled (or sendStatus within config.xml is switched on).

	Honestly I am not fully sure if WPKG Client already supports
reading from STDIN
	and showing these messages to the user. Personally I prefer not
to block users
	and run WPKG silently in the background. Another reason for me
is that
	logon/shutdown delay is not something easily achievable by
standard API and as
	Vista shows it might be even blocked/prevented by the OS. I am
using /sendStatus
	usually when I run WPKG from a memory-stick to update offline
nodes. So I can
	see the progress of package installation within the console
window.

	So please note that config.xml controls behavior or wpkg.js but
sendStatus will
	only make wpkg.js to print status information to the console. If
this
	information is picked up and displayed to the user depends on
the method used to
	run wpkg.js (console, client application which picks up the
output).

	br,
	Rainer

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