Released: Network Shutdown

[maniac]

I tried this today running it from one of my CC3 servers, and it just hung for over 20 mins searching for stations. I know some were switched on and our network may not be perfect, but it's not that slow. Is there anything that may be causing that behaviour that I can remedy?

Mike.

[bizzel]

I tried this today running it from one of my CC3 servers, and it just hung for over 20 mins searching for stations. I know some were switched on and our network may not be perfect, but it's not that slow. Is there anything that may be causing that behaviour that I can remedy?

Mike.

The station search uses the WMI ping command on every station in the PackageControl folder. The timeout for each station is about 3 seconds. If you have many stations and almost all of them are off it'll take longer but not 20 minutes.

Did the progress bar move at all in that time? If not, it's hung before detecting online stations.

[maniac]

The station search uses the WMI ping command on every station in the PackageControl folder. The timeout for each station is about 3 seconds. If you have many stations and almost all of them are off it'll take longer but not 20 minutes.

Did the progress bar move at all in that time? If not, it's hung before detecting online stations.

Yes the progress bar did move, but it had only got to about half way after 20mins, and I wasn't prepared to wait much longer as it's quicker to shut them down using RM if it's going to take that long. There could be a large number of workstations in our package control that no longer exist, my AD is littered with them as our CC3 network is very old and has seen many many different network managers in its time. Maybe if I spend a little time tidying I might have more success!

Thanks

Mike.

[bizzel]

Yes the progress bar did move, but it had only got to about half way after 20mins, and I wasn't prepared to wait much longer as it's quicker to shut them down using RM if it's going to take that long. There could be a large number of workstations in our package control that no longer exist, my AD is littered with them as our CC3 network is very old and has seen many many different network managers in its time. Maybe if I spend a little time tidying I might have more success!

Thanks

Mike.

Okay Mike, thanks. At least I know it's not stalling totally. Yes, non-existent workstations will slow down the process quite a bit. I think I know a way to cut these times down by 4-5x though.

Although this is version 3 in name, it's only version 1 technically. Versions 1 and 2 were made by the guy who worked here before me and this is a ground-up rewrite. There are lots of improvements to come.

[markwilliamson2001]

You guys never heard of shutdown.exe??
I use this integrated into a batch script, which runs as a scheduled task on our servers. It runs at 10pm, (when school closes) so no-one should be here then, and if they are: TOUGH!

[maniac]

You guys never heard of shutdown.exe??
I use this integrated into a batch script, which runs as a scheduled task on our servers. It runs at 10pm, (when school closes) so no-one should be here then, and if they are: TOUGH!

Yes, but doing it that way relies on an up-to-date list of computer names in the batch file. I add and remove workstations to and from my network on a daily basis so this would be near enough impossible to keep up to date, I also have well over 400 workstations so the list would be long.

The brilliant thing about bizzels program is it's ability to use the RM ini files as a station list so a) any new workstations are automatically added, and b) I don't accidently shutdown my servers or staff workstations. For me (when I eventually get it to work that is) it provides the ideal solution.

Mike.

[bizzel]

Let's start with a nice bugfix release later this week. I've fixed the problem with the packagecontrol folder not being found, now to look at the slow scanning.

I'm also prepping a slightly newer release of EduSweep as well.

[powdarrmonkey]

You guys never heard of shutdown.exe??
I use this integrated into a batch script, which runs as a scheduled task on our servers. It runs at 10pm, (when school closes) so no-one should be here then, and if they are: TOUGH!

You have read the rest of this thread, right?

[markwilliamson2001]

I don't have daily updates of machines on my network, plus I do the install of all new machines, so is easy to add/remove machines from the list.

I had a script somewhere which used to query AD for computer objects, and pipe the results to a text file. I then used to paste this into excel, and add the shutdown part of the script to the computer name, then just dumped the completed results back into a text file saved as a batch file.

I nearly got round to totally automating the whole process...

[PiqueABoo]

Gosh documentation that exists! It's nicely presented and readable.. the only thing I'd add is a DNS caution (names need to point to the right addresses etc.)

Re. the potential future features emerging above, haven't done shutdowns but I nailed down most of that territory way back (recent example is whoison CL util in the Downloads forum). Best advice I can offer: Network scanners always need to be multi-threaded to get around latency (RPC timeouts being the worst offender in this specific case). It's worth going the extra mile when writing such code so you can easily reuse it for anything you want done to multiple boxes via the network.

[bizzel]

Best advice I can offer: Network scanners always need to be multi-threaded to get around latency (RPC timeouts being the worst offender in this specific case). It's worth going the extra mile when writing such code so you can easily reuse it for anything you want done to multiple boxes via the network.

Working on that part now. I'll add your idea about the DNS warning as well.