[Xymon] WinPSClient - Updates?

[Jason Richards Pagh]

How would I go about getting involved? I’d be willing to put some effort into this, but I’ve never contributed to a project in sourceforge, so I’m not sure if I have to be authorized of if anyone can do it.

I don’t have the familiarity with BBWin to determine what other functionality needs to be added to WinPSClient, but if you can point me in the right direction I can check it out. I’ve been working with PowerShell for a few years, so I’m pretty up to speed in order to be useful. :)

---

Jason Richards Pagh

From: David Baldwin <david.baldwin at ausport.gov.au<mailto:david.baldwin at ausport.gov.au>>
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 at 8:55 PM
To: Jason Richards Pagh <jasonrp at techheads.com<mailto:jasonrp at techheads.com>>, "xymon at xymon.com<mailto:xymon at xymon.com>" <xymon at xymon.com<mailto:xymon at xymon.com>>
Cc: David Baldwin <David.Baldwin at ausport.gov.au<mailto:David.Baldwin at ausport.gov.au>>
Subject: [Xymon] Re: WinPSClient - Updates?

Jason,

Thanks for the email.
So it looks like the WinPSClient hasn’t been updated in a few months. I had seen a thread from quite a while ago about some issues David was running into, but can’t tell if he’s still around and willing/able to work on it.

In principle I am interested, but don't have a lot of time to work on it at present.
I’ve been able to get XymonPSClient.exe (aka SrvAny) to run powershell natively as a 64-bit executable. The only change necessary to enable this was changing the PowerShell executable to running as %windir%\sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe. The sysnative portion prevents a 32-bit program (SrvAny) from being redirected to %windir%\SysWow64. (See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384187(v=vs.85).aspx<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384187%28v=vs.85%29.aspx>).

Thanks - I found the "sysNative" workaround a month or two ago also. Very useful for running PS scripts from BBWin since it is still 32-bit only.
I also found a better service wrapper than SrvAny, namely nssm (http://nssm.cc/). This has the ability to detect if powershell fails and restart it, which is something SrvAny lacks. It also comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, so when using the latter the sysnative piece isn’t necessary. I’ve only been working at this for a day or two, so it probably needs more testing, but it looks promising.

That's an awesome improvement. Definitely a big advance :)
Is there any work (design contemplation) about how xymonclient.ps1 could handle external scripts? I assume this was just a future phase and not so much a limitation or barrier that hadn’t yet been overcome.

I'd played around with things like start-job in PS, but I hadn't worked through all of the legacy reporting mechanisms from BBNT/BBWin (e.g. writing text files into directory - that's an easy one in practice) but more to the point worked out throttling mechanisms for long-running scripts that don't exit, etc. Had also considered just running external scripts as scheduled tasks, but not had time to investigate.

>From memory there were some other issues such as dealing with memory leaks (periodic service restart would solve that).

David.

--
David Baldwin - Senior Systems Administrator (Datacentres + Networks)
Information and Communication Technology Services
Australian Sports Commission          http://ausport.gov.au
Tel 02 62147830 Fax 02 62141830       PO Box 176 Belconnen ACT 2616
david.baldwin at ausport.gov.au<mailto:david.baldwin at ausport.gov.au>          Leverrier Street Bruce ACT 2617


________________________________
Keep up to date with what's happening in Australian sport visit www.ausport.gov.au<http://www.ausport.gov.au>

This message is intended for the addressee named and may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient please note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication or the information in it is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you receive this message in error, please delete it and notify the sender.
________________________________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.xymon.com/pipermail/xymon/attachments/20131113/ba61fed2/attachment.html>