Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista
Hi I don't really see the big difference between calling an external tool like psshutdown instead of the default windows shutdown command as wpkg.js can do now, and an external tool for user notification instead of the default windows NET or MSG command. But indeed due to the nature of such a notification binary (displaying user notification) user credentials could become a problem.. And WPKG client indeed already provides the user-notification functionality... So maybe it is a posibility to turn my idea the other way around by extending WPKG client so that it can be 'activated' by a script instead of only at preconfigured pre-logon or post-logoff times.. The way I see this is then: - WPKG client is installed as a service (like it is now), configured to only wake up on manual activation - A user is logged on, and for example, the GPO logon script (or a scheduled task, or ) calls WPKGclient.exe /activate - WPKGclient.exe then sends a signal to the resident WPKGclient service which then starts its job by displaying user notification and executing wpkg.js For this purpose of course the WPKGclient notification functionality should be a bit extended too in a way similar as I described earlier so users can work while WPKG is doing it's job.. This way you don't have to touch the .js code + people wanting extensive user notification can have it by using WPKG client without being bound to pre-log-on or post-log-off operations (which also still should be a possibility of WPKGclient). And people who don't want it, can still keep using wpkg.js without WPKG client as they do now..Everybody happy ;-) Anyway still a suggestion tough...:-) Best Regards Robin Rainer Meier r.me...@wpkg.org wrote on 04.09.2009 17:31:50: From: Rainer Meier r.me...@wpkg.org To: Robin Roevens robin.roev...@cocks.be Cc: wpkg-users@lists.wpkg.org Date: 04.09.2009 17:32 Subject: Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista Hi Robin, Robin Roevens wrote: Maybe it is a good idea to supply a small executable in the tools directory that will be used for notifying the user? That way you are not dependent on a Microsoft ways of notifying users, thus not windows-version dependent. (except for binary incompatible windows versions :-)) Something in style of the current WPKGclient notification, or like WPKGmessage (http://www.gig-mbh.de/edv/software/wpkgtools/wpkg-message-english.htm ) This tool can then give current state information about the wpkg process, and disappear when the process is done.. And you can then also put an option in that tool so that the user can press a button to let it dissapear into the systray or so, so it is not in the way of the working user, but the user is still aware that the process is still running..until that tray icon disappears. (maybe it is best to have an animated tray icon then). And the user can check on the current state by clicking on that tray icon which then displays the tool again.. Currently WPKG client is using this approach. In general I don't think that it would be a good idea having wpkg.js (which is invoked by different user credentials in different environments) invoking such a binary. WPKG is designed to run using only built-in Windows facilities. No additional binaries or libraries needed. The notification using net send was introduced years ago in WPKG 0.x and was just kept there. It has many limitations but provides basic notification which can be useful in some situations. It at no means useful to block the user to do actions or to log in while WPKG is running. I think it's the right way that WPKG client as a service tries to reach these goals: - Implement logon delay - Notify user while preventing user actions We already know that especially on Windows Vista and newer we have troubles with the logon delay feature. Including such actions into wpkg.js seems not to be a good idea; I prefer wpkg.js to be as stable and reliable as possible and leaving such fancy stuff up to tools invoking wpkg.js. In case of failure or changes on OS/System level there is much less impact and lots of possibilities for work-around to get the core working. br, Rainer -- Denk aan het milieu - is het nodig deze mail te printen? ** Email Disclaimer: ** This e-mail and the information it contains may be confidential, legally privileged and protected by law. Access by the intended recipient only is authorised. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete this e-mail from your system. Any review, distribution, reproduction, publication or other use of this e-mail by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. - wpkg-users mailing list archives http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users
Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista
--- Comment #4 from Rainer Meier r.me...@wpkg.org 2009-09-07 10:57:26 --- Very nice... what a crap... Actually the quotes for the echo command are not required. If you use them they will be passed to msg.exe and appear as a part of the piped characters. Moreover the solution has some issues too. Using pipes requires executing %COMSPEC% so I've tried %COMSPEC% /c echo message | msg.exe but this mangles UTF-8 characters (which is very important since WPKG supports UTF-8 characters in message strings and lots of non-english strings include non CP850 characters. I've tried %COMSPEC% /u /c echo message | msg.exe too which is supposed to forward pipe output as unicode. But it still garbled unicode characters. Then I've tried %COMSPEC% /u /c chcp 65001 echo message | msg.exe where chcp is supposed to set cmd into UTF-8 mode. But it did not work either. So currently I don't know how to pipe unicode characters correctly to msg.exe. Maybe msg.exe does not correctly accept unicode characters via STDIN. So unless somebody finds a work-around for this problem we stick to 256 characters in msg mode. Redirect the input from a file: Msg.exe MyText.txt --- Stefan - wpkg-users mailing list archives http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/ ___ wpkg-users mailing list wpkg-users@lists.wpkg.org http://lists.wpkg.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkg-users
Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista
Hi Stefan, Redirect the input from a file: Msg.exe MyText.txt WPKG does not use any temporary files. I will not start using such work-arounds and hacks just for a feature which is very rarely used. Especially since longer messages than 256 characters are also not very user friendly (who is reading dialog boxes with such a huge amount of text anyway?). Using a temporary file would involve checking available space to write to, writing a temporary file, sending the message and then cleaning up the system. I really hate temporary files and applications needing them. So I do not plan to go this way just to work around a stupid limitation/bug done by Microsoft. So this is not an option to me. br, Rainer - wpkg-users mailing list archives http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/ ___ wpkg-users mailing list wpkg-users@lists.wpkg.org http://lists.wpkg.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkg-users
Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista
Hi Robin, Robin Roevens wrote: Maybe it is a good idea to supply a small executable in the tools directory that will be used for notifying the user? That way you are not dependent on a Microsoft ways of notifying users, thus not windows-version dependent. (except for binary incompatible windows versions :-)) Something in style of the current WPKGclient notification, or like WPKGmessage (http://www.gig-mbh.de/edv/software/wpkgtools/wpkg-message-english.htm) This tool can then give current state information about the wpkg process, and disappear when the process is done.. And you can then also put an option in that tool so that the user can press a button to let it dissapear into the systray or so, so it is not in the way of the working user, but the user is still aware that the process is still running..until that tray icon disappears. (maybe it is best to have an animated tray icon then). And the user can check on the current state by clicking on that tray icon which then displays the tool again.. Currently WPKG client is using this approach. In general I don't think that it would be a good idea having wpkg.js (which is invoked by different user credentials in different environments) invoking such a binary. WPKG is designed to run using only built-in Windows facilities. No additional binaries or libraries needed. The notification using net send was introduced years ago in WPKG 0.x and was just kept there. It has many limitations but provides basic notification which can be useful in some situations. It at no means useful to block the user to do actions or to log in while WPKG is running. I think it's the right way that WPKG client as a service tries to reach these goals: - Implement logon delay - Notify user while preventing user actions We already know that especially on Windows Vista and newer we have troubles with the logon delay feature. Including such actions into wpkg.js seems not to be a good idea; I prefer wpkg.js to be as stable and reliable as possible and leaving such fancy stuff up to tools invoking wpkg.js. In case of failure or changes on OS/System level there is much less impact and lots of possibilities for work-around to get the core working. br, Rainer - wpkg-users mailing list archives http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/ ___ wpkg-users mailing list wpkg-users@lists.wpkg.org http://lists.wpkg.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkg-users
Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista
On 9/4/09, Rainer Meier r.me...@wpkg.org wrote: We already know that especially on Windows Vista and newer we have troubles with the logon delay feature. Including such actions into wpkg.js seems not to be a good idea; I prefer wpkg.js to be as stable and reliable as possible and leaving such fancy stuff up to tools invoking wpkg.js. In case of failure or changes on OS/System level there is much less impact and lots of possibilities for work-around to get the core working. What about implementing some sort of an event-hook notification functionality where wpkg.js could call functions located in separate JS file(s) (if available), so that custom solutions could be used. For example, when wpkg.js detects that changes (whether installation, upgrades, or removal) need to be made to the system, it could call the appropriate pre-determined function in the external JS file. This external JS function could then perform any kind of action, including using a custom message solution to let the user know what's going on. If none of these event hook external JS files are found or the callback functions themselves are not found, then wpkg.js would just continue on as normal. - wpkg-users mailing list archives http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/ ___ wpkg-users mailing list wpkg-users@lists.wpkg.org http://lists.wpkg.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkg-users
Re: [wpkg-users] [Bug 171] User notification does not work on Vista
Hi, mscdex wrote: What about implementing some sort of an event-hook notification functionality where wpkg.js could call functions located in separate JS file(s) (if available), so that custom solutions could be used. For example, when wpkg.js detects that changes (whether installation, upgrades, or removal) need to be made to the system, it could call the appropriate pre-determined function in the external JS file. This external JS function could then perform any kind of action, including using a custom message solution to let the user know what's going on. If none of these event hook external JS files are found or the callback functions themselves are not found, then wpkg.js would just continue on as normal. Something which seems to be ignored quite often is that wpkg.js is based on JScript which is very limited and even based on an implementation by Microsoft which includes quite a lot of bugs which need special treatment or work-around. Another reason not to put too much into the core wpkg.js is the fact that each new feature or extension point increases testing effort. The result wil be that the code gets unmaintainable and each change can easily break something unintentionally. I've experienced exactly this with many applications I have been in touch with. The only way to prevent this is to keep the requirements slim. At the moment WPKG has some interfaces which can help doing similar things. On one side applications can wrap wpkg.js execution and track its actions (e.g. by parsing the output when using /sendStatus). In some cases even using a package definition provides an interface. For example a package which is executed at the beginning can of course call any program (e.g. one which deals with logon delay). It's also possible to execute packages only if there was a change done to the system so such a package could be used to call any application/interface you like to (external JS/exe/whatever). The user notification feature was never meant to be a generic interface. It was rather designed to send some heartbeat to the user. If somebody would like to call any non-officially supported notification application they might be added to the notifyUserStart(), notifyUserStop() and/or notifyUserFail() functions. As soon as we have a tool available which needs to be called by this functions I might re-think about such an interface like checking for wpkg-root\tools\notify[Start|Stop|Fail].cmd and execute it if it exists. But until then this would just add the risk of increased failure rate at customer site. With such scripts we might encounter even more failures due to the well-known broken STDOUT/STDERR flusing in WSH. So let's discuss about such interfaces again as soon as we have some toolset which requires it. The current WPKG client implementation does not rely on such interfaces. br, Rainer - wpkg-users mailing list archives http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/ ___ wpkg-users mailing list wpkg-users@lists.wpkg.org http://lists.wpkg.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkg-users
