> The linchpin of all this is, that the program itself is up and > running, doesn't hang and that it can > still response. Otherwise, days can go by and no data is recorded.
I hope your application is already a Windows service, you can then make use of the various service restart options if it stops. These options do not handle lock-ups, so you really need a second Windows service sending messages to the first, and using various methods to crash and restart it if there is no response, maybe also checking a shared file or registry key to make sure the first program is working. > So my idea was to have a little watchdog (to be programmed) running > on a server which regularly connects to all of the clients to get a > response that all is well. Several years ago I had a large project with PCs running on road vehicles, which is a horrible environment, power surges, heat and vibration. I had three 'vehicle activity servers' using TWSocketServer which the remote vehicles contacted via wifi (and later 3G) every five minutes, which updated a SQL database, reported on web pages. I designed a simple TCP/IP ASCII protocol that ended up with about 50 different commands each way, returning status information like fan speeds and CPU temperatures so we knew when the PCs were about to die (50% of CPU fans died within a year). Some of this you can do with off the shelf software, I sell an application ComCap that accepts UDP and TCP messages, and will email based on content or when they stop, and I use it myself so I know when my remote hosted servers goes off-line. Nagios is probably similar, but much more specialised than ComCap, but I've no idea what sort of input streams it expects. Angus -- To unsubscribe or change your settings for TWSocket mailing list please goto http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twsocket Visit our website at http://www.overbyte.be
