Making Cumulus as robust as possible on windows XP

[hills]

Kevin, this sounds rather dangerous to me (in terms of corrupted/garbage data), if it results in two instances of Cumulus running. I don't actually understand how it works at all, if that is the case.

Thanks guys!

Ok this has scared me off svrany, I think I'll resort to training the wife to not turn off Cumulus. I must admit she's been very good at this so far so fingers crossed.

[steve]

I guess what might be useful is an anti-cat/wife/kids mode where normal shutdown methods are disabled and a secret key combination is required instead...

[hills]

Yeah that would do the trick, or a password in the "do you really want to shutdown" box, or even just change the text to "Daddy is going to get really mad if you turn this off"

[L0gic]

Kevin, this sounds rather dangerous to me (in terms of corrupted/garbage data), if it results in two instances of Cumulus running. I don't actually understand how it works at all, if that is the case.

Steve,
thanks for the heads up on that.
I assumed that as there is a 'stop second instance' option that the cumulus program was split into 'display code' that presented to the screen and 'boiler room' code that managed the numbers.
I've been working under the assumption that only one instance of the boiler room code would be run and multiple display front ends could be run.
Bad assumption

The svrany application is a service application that runs as a service and it's only purpose is to launch a non service program.
So I assume that running cumulus as a service and not running any other instances at the same time should keep me safe. If I need to make any changes I can stop the service, run a new instance of cumulus to make the changes, then shut cumulus down and fire up the service instance again.

I'll have a play

[steve]

I assumed that as there is a 'stop second instance' option that the cumulus program was split into 'display code' that presented to the screen and 'boiler room' code that managed the numbers.
I've been working under the assumption that only one instance of the boiler room code would be run and multiple display front ends could be run.

I'm working on making Cumulus 2 like that, but Cumulus 1 is monolithic.

So I assume that running cumulus as a service and not running any other instances at the same time should keep me safe. If I need to make any changes I can stop the service, run a new instance of cumulus to make the changes, then shut cumulus down and fire up the service instance again.

Yes, that should be fine. It's a shame there's no way to get access to the GUI when it's running this way. I can't do the changes now to C1 to make it a proper service, but if there were any small changes I could do that would allow access to the GUI, I'd be happy to do them, particularly as I would find it useful myself!

[L0gic]

Thanks for the confimation Steve.

I'll switch from service to application when ever I need to make a change, no biggie.
Good to know though, I'd hate to screw up the data.

As soon as you get Cumulus 2 able to run as a service I'll be happy to give it a go.

Question, I'm currently 'playing' until new years eve - I'll be running in anger from the new year onwards.
Would I be better off switching to V2 now or can I upgrade without losing historical data?
I'll flick through the V2 threads with a view to switching now.

... this sure beats vegging out in front of the goggle box eating too many sweeties!

[steve]

You can't really switch yet, C2 has a lot of functionality missing. There's a C1 to C2 import facility that works reasonably well; sometimes a bit of post-import tweaking is required.

[gwheelo]

Steve-

Back a bit over a year ago Cumulus 1 was able to access the Console on the screen whilst running as a wrapped service. I don't remember the last revision number that allowed this action. As I rarely look at the console other than for maintenace I didn' care when that feature went away so I never mentioned it. In the "service" properties is a check box to enable screen access but that just does not work now.

Don' chase this down on my part _ I am very happy with things as they are - and looking forward to your brilliant new Cumulus 2

GW

[steve]

Back a bit over a year ago Cumulus 1 was able to access the Console on the screen whilst running as a wrapped service. I don't remember the last revision number that allowed this action. As I rarely look at the console other than for maintenace I didn' care when that feature went away so I never mentioned it. In the "service" properties is a check box to enable screen access but that just does not work now.

Was this on the same operating system version? A quick Google suggests that this feature doesn't work on some versions of Windows.

[gwheelo]

Same OS - Microsoft Home Server - but the change may have come about due to either going from the beta to the OEM version or an OS revision. sorry I am so foggy about the sequence of events. Below is a forum post from June 14, 2009.



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Over the past year there has been some discussion concerning running Cumulus as a "Service." I have been part of that as I have been doing just that for quite some time. At one point I mentioned in this fourum that Cumulus operated flawlessly as a service but I was unable to open the console on the desktop. To access the console I stopped the service and started Cumulus normally. It was then pointed out to me that if I checked the "Interact with Desktop" item on the service configuration window I could have it both ways - and yes it worked just great.

Well many builds later and a few re-installs for maintenance and system re-configuration I discover that Cumulus (v.1.8.6.812) no longer is available to the Desktop while running as a service. In the current installation of have checked the "Allow to Interact with Desktop" box in the service configuration window and the "Stop second instance" box in Cumulus configuration.

Have I missed something or done something wrong. Is ther anyone out there who can share the appropriate information to help me out.

George Wheelock
http://www.wheelocknet.net/cumulus/now.htm

[hills]

As I only have a few days data, I thought I'd try out running cumulus as a service.

Lesson number 1 learnt - make sure you remember to take cumulus out of startup directory!!

I wanted to do something on the cumulus console so I stopped the service, started cumulus, made the changes, exited and restarted the service. This got me to thinking, how hard would it be to run a wrapper script instead of cumulus.exe which first runs "net stop cumulus" then runs "cumulus.exe" then runs "net start cumulus" after you exit the concole?

If no one has tried this I'll have a play around with it over the next few days, but if someone has can I have a copy of the script?

[steve]

I'd be interested to know if the 'interact with desktop' setting works with XP and current Cumulus.

[L0gic]

I wanted to do something on the cumulus console so I stopped the service, started cumulus, made the changes, exited and restarted the service. This got me to thinking, how hard would it be to run a wrapper script instead of cumulus.exe which first runs "net stop cumulus" then runs "cumulus.exe" then runs "net start cumulus" after you exit the concole?

The exact same thought has crossed my mind but I've not been in a position to access my server yet.
As you say, a quick script should do the trick.

[hills]

I'd be interested to know if the 'interact with desktop' setting works with XP and current Cumulus.

Hey it does!!

I selected "interact with desktop" and restarted the service and the console appeared straight away. I then exited the console and updates to the web page stopped and I couldn't see the process in task manager but the service still showed as started. Is that expected behavior?

Still at least I can now get the console started and stopped though the services screen when I want to make changes or view custom graphs.

That's great!

[hills]

One thing I have noticed stopping and starting cumulus as a service is any calibrations made seem to be reset back to defaults. I had to stop and restart cumulus the normal way to make them stick.

I'm thinking it might be safer to go back to the old method just in case other strange things are hgppening in the background.