3. The list of running apps does not show status nor is that a very reliable way of determining if an app is truly hung. Only thing I can think of here is a blind restart of IE on a periodic basis. Perhaps the IE SDK has a clue (don’t have this myself)
4. Then that’s easy; only two strings to search for. “511 Transit Departures” = success, “sign problem” indicates a known failure state while anything else is an unknown failure state. From: Jimmy Tran Sent: Friday, November 01, 2013 9:03 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? 3. Does a list of running apps still apply is IE is frozen/stuck/non-responsive. I guess that would need to be tested but I don’t know how to create such a failure. 4. If the page were to load, it would say “511 Transit Departures” in the header. If it doesn’t load, it would show the default page not found be IE when there is no network connectivity. If the 511.org site is down, or the specific page for that station is down, it would say “Sign Problem. Try calling 511 and say “Departure Times” I don’t have any control over the page, and I don’t know what language was used to build the page. As unfortunately, I don’t think the stakeholders know the answer to that either. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Daniel Chenault Sent: Friday, November 01, 2013 6:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? Okay, MUCH better. Since the need has shown itself to be mission-critical perhaps an app would be better than a script; provides more functionality to the developer. 1. As you say, from the system log 2. Ping the host. Fail is written to a local log for later transmittal. 3. Check running list of apps 4. Is there a word or group of words in the webpage that ALWAYS appears on successful load but NEVER appears in a failed load? More to the point, are you in control of the page’s contents? What language is used to build the page – perhaps the last command in the load could set a flag; then you can check for that. From: Jimmy Tran Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:39 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? So let me explain the situation. These are 40” displays connected to a w7 box all enclosed inside of a protective case. The displays are at train stations, bus stops, and light rail stations. If the machine were to be turned on, it would power up, wait for network connectivity and start a scheduled task which would load IE in kiosk mode. IE would have a specific home page set for that location. Then the page refreshes every 10 seconds to update the display. We have no control or access to the 511.org server who hosts the webpages and transit times. All we have access to is the standalone kiosk. The test is to determin iif the home page ever fails to refresh/reload. We just want to make sure if the page does not load for whatever reason it might be, that it is logged and documented. If it were to fail, it would be due to the following reasons: 1. Machine loss power – system up time would tell us that 2. 4g or wifi connection went out – currently no way to log this 3. IE process crashed – currently no way to log this 4. 511 page is offline – currently no way to log this. So to sum it up, I need to find a solution that can answer items 2,3, and 4. I figured a script running on the host that could somehow search the page for key words and if it fails, it records it to a txt file. Jimmy From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Stovall Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 7:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? What type of error? There's almost certainly a way to do what you're looking for with wget, or Powershell, or another scripting language, if what you're really trying to gauge is what the server is doing. I think that's the key question at the moment. Are you trying to record and interpret a particular client response, or are you actually looking to make sure the server is doing what it is supposed to be doing. (Or some combination of both, which might entail separate monitoring straegies.) On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 10:04 PM, Jimmy Tran <[email protected]> wrote: That was just a political requirement made by people who don't understand computers. I'm not sure if other browsers can run in kiosk mode. The main thing we need to know is if the webpage displays an error during a period of 7 days we need to be notified. What were you thinking? Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4 -----Original Message----- From: Richard Stovall [[email protected]] Received: Thursday, 31 Oct 2013, 6:57pm To: [email protected] [[email protected]] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? Let me rephrase the question. Does IE have to be the rendering engine? If yes, why? Are you testing IE's (a client's) ability to render a server response correctly, or are you really trying to monitor the server itself? There's likely a big difference here in terms of what is easy to do and what is not. On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 9:49 PM, Jimmy Tran <[email protected]> wrote: Yes Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4 -----Original Message----- From: Richard Stovall [[email protected]] Received: Thursday, 31 Oct 2013, 6:45pm To: [email protected] [[email protected]] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? Does IE have to be the rendering engine? On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Jimmy Tran <[email protected]> wrote: If there's a cost associated, that may be ok. There really isn't a budget allocated for this but if it's cheaper to buy a software than me writing some scripts that might be a better way to go. You provide some great keywords to do some searching on thanks! Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4 -----Original Message----- From: Ken Schaefer [[email protected]] Received: Thursday, 31 Oct 2013, 5:56pm To: [email protected] [[email protected]] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? Well, the basic concept you are looking at is “end user experience monitoring”, as opposed to “component monitoring” (e.g. a server or hard disk) or “service monitoring” (e.g. is a website up) There’s plenty of third party products out there that can simulate client actions – usually via an agent installed on the remote machine. Or you do a “poor man’s” job and do this yourself with a bit of scripting. I assumed you wanted the latter since you didn’t mention any existing tools you have or any budget. Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jimmy Tran Sent: Friday, 1 November 2013 11:45 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? I will look in to that. Any other ideas? Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4 -----Original Message----- From: Ken Schaefer [[email protected]] Received: Thursday, 31 Oct 2013, 5:30pm To: [email protected] [[email protected]] Subject: [NTSysADM] RE: test IE uptime? Write a little script (e.g. using VBScript and ServerXMLHTTP object) that makes the same HTTP request? You can then log the details to a log file to later analyse. Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jimmy Tran Sent: Friday, 1 November 2013 11:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] test IE uptime? I’ve been tasked with determining a way to document if a web page in IE errors out. Basically, the page will refresh every 10 seconds with updated data. I need to find a way to see if the page comes back with a page error or not. Any ideas out there? These tests will be performed at kiosks that have no management that have poor internet connectivity. All I can currently measure is system up time, not internet connectivity uptime or page errors in IE. TIA Jimmy
