I don't know if anyone has any expertise with Novell Netware or not, but I situation where one of my clients is getting a weird error trying to move a file to a netware share. The situation is pretty complicated but I'll try and outline it as best I can.
1) The application is running as a service
2) The file to be moved is a local file in an accessible location (to the service)
3) The file is being moved with FileInfo.MoveTo().
4) The MoveTo is throwing an IOException and the message is "a device attached to the system is not functioning".
I'm at a loss as to explain what might be happening. On a side note, it seems that running a small test program interactively using the same method (FileInfo.MoveTo) to the same location works fine so it seems to be associated with the service itself.
Any help would be hugely greatful. Thanks.
Kristofor Wilson
That's normal. Windows services need to login to the server separately, like local users do. When you run your program interactively, it accesses the NetWare server using your, already established, connection. To access the server from the service, your program needs to establish its own connection first.
I am afraid I don't know how to login to NetWare from a C# program, and I am not sure if it is possible to set up your service that it does not need to log in to NetWare. I'd explore one of these ways though.
Oh, almost forgot. If a local user has NetWare volumes mapped to disk drive letters in Windows, like SYS: volume to P: and so on, these mapping will not be visible to the service; it will have to map the volumes to letters separately, or use UNC paths
The later (Last versions) of Netware where able to emulate a windows server whilst still functioning as a Netware server. No big deal to set this up so might be an option for you,.
Related
I'm working on program (written in C#) that would run on few computers at once (their amount will very likely change over time). I want to save some data into SQL everytime some event occurs (nothing too complex, just a bit of information).
I'm not really sure how to do this the best way. I have these two options, I can connect directly to the SQL database straight from the program and insert everything I need, but I find this rather unsafe because someone could you this in bad way and gain access to my SQL without my permissions.
So I came up with this idea, I will have certain PHP file on the server which will handle all the data (my program will open internal hidden web browser window with address of the PHP file and all needed variables (I will use GET over here) and then it will close and wait for another event to happen).
Is the second solution way too bad habit to do or is it reasonably okay? Or even better, is there any better, more clean, solution to this kind of problem?
(It's not any kind of spyware or anything like that, it's just doing kind of diagnostics on the computer and giving me results with user's knowledge..)
Each time any event occurs, I have to insert one line into the table and it includes computer's ID, time and the event information.
The address used could look somewhat like this http:\\server.com\handle.php?id=xxxxxxxx&time=xx-xx-xxxx-xx-xx-xx-xxx&data=something
Is your application running on a LAN or are you on the Internet?
If you can access your SQL Server directly from your application on the default SQL Port (1433) what kind of security issues do you see?
If you run your application in a certain security context, you can connect to your SQL server using Windows security -> no username and password is sent.
BR
Frank
Im working on application for Windows Server 2008 R2 (.NET 3.5.1) that would work even after cold reboot, without requring someone to log on any account on the server.
Few words about application itself, it is written in c# application for registering employees work time at the company. Users (employees), have thier cards which are beeing scanned by barcode scanner, each scan means either "work started" or "work stopped", everything is serlialized into xml file which is later on modified and put into .csv but that doesn't matter.
Barcode scanner is working as a keyboard, so all codes are beeing "typed" like from a keyborad, to the PC. I made application read the keys despite the fact that console application is not in focus, or not visible at all.
What i need to do is to make that application work even after cold reboot, it has to be fully automatic.
So far i figured out 2 approaches to do it, one is to create a service which would keep another process alive (if its not working, just turn it on), i didin't have much luck with this one, i have already created service that launches another process for me, but the process is working differently, if i would run it myself, there is no communication with the process so i cannot even tell if its the right one.
Another one is to just put my app into registery /microsoft/windows/current version/run, and enable autologon for user with limited prividges. This actually could work but it is not perfect solution, because after all we do not want to have user logged in on server in company 24/7 right?
I know that most of you are way more experienced in programming than i am, so i would appriciate any solutions how to solve my problem
Lichoniespi
Your options depend on physical security of the system (whether passers-by can do much to it apart from scanning a barcode), but let us assume that it is an easily accessible desktop. In that case, you probably do not want a logged in user.
Use the service approach. You do NOT need a separate process for accessing the keyboard. Create a global hook of type WH_KEYBOARD_LL.
Declare your callback function like this and put it into place with SetWindowsHookEx.
I would use the first approach, create a service, and to comunicate with the running application i would be using a network socket or pipe. For the service be sure that you're using an existing user account (not System) and allow it to interact with the Desktop.
I've designed a C# game that makes use of an Access .mdb database file to store variables.
The basic idea is that one of the players will 'host' a game, and the other player will join said game, by connecting to the database, reading and writing items into the database. The database is needed to pass variables to and fro the host and client, and both programs check the database regularly for new messages / variables (yes, yes, I couldn't get TCP/IP Remoting to work).
Now, there, the program works fine (mostly the client, since the host modifies only its local database), for as long as the client can find the database file. Currently, the connection string for the client is located in a .ini file, and for the program to work, it (or at least, the server) must be located in the Shared Documents of an XP machine, or the Public Documents of a Vista / 7 machine.
But then some questions occurred to me:
What if the client user places / installs it into another folder in the Shared / Public Documents? I suppose there's a code out there that could 'drill' into the Shared Documents folders to find the path for the database, share names included... is there?
What about installation? The installer default is always "C:\Program Files\GameName". Could it be set (or locked) to a specific folder into the Shared / Public Documents, by default? And is it even recommended to install it into a Shared Folder, what with problems such as Accidental Deletion?
Say, the default is "C:\Program Files\GameName". I could see that a set installation path will solve any connection issues, since every client will look in the same path of the other computer, and it won't matter if it's XP or Vista. Could "C:\Program Files\GameName" be accessible by a C# program over LAN, without any system modification? Are there any security (UAC?) issues?
P.S. Details that people may find in handy:
I'm using Visual Studio 2005. So is my School.
I'm running .NET framework 2.0. So is my school, and unfortunately, I can't change that.
I hate to tell you this, but this is why the approach is fundamentally flawed. What are you going to do when:
File and print sharing on the server is disabled?
The network client is disabled on a client computer?
The server is configured to only allow authenticated users, and the client doesn't have access?
File and print sharing is blocked because of the firewall?
File and print sharing is completely borked for other who-knows-why reasons?
You need administrator access on the server to share a folder, but the current user is not an administrator?
The Access database engine isn't installed correctly on the server or client?
One of the clients corrupts the database? (This is easier than you might think; all it takes is a network glitch where a client temporarily or permanently disconnects from the server).
These are fundamental issues that you can't resolve with the current solution.
Get it working over normal TCP/UDP ports. You'll have a much easier time. There are libraries to facilitate that, see C# Game Network Library - for example it sounds like Microsoft's XNA SDK has functions for networking in a game. If you use a standard method / standard library to implement networking, your odds of success are much higher. Using a client/server architecture means that the server's state won't be corrupted if a client goofs up.
I realize that this probably involves a significant rewrite. Frankly, I don't think you have a choice if you want this game to be commercially successful on a wide customer base without high support costs, and move beyond being a mere experiment.
Get rid of the access database. The described architecture is already 'user unfriendly'
Use either SQL Express or SQL CE which requires no installed database binaries (they can all be included in the applications folder). This way the db will stay in the applications folder (ideally app_Data) and .Net has included support for databases in this folder.
Please stay away from access you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlservercompact/archive/2011/01/12/microsoft-sql-server-compact-4-0-is-available-for-download.aspx
I think that there is little point in using Access unless you wanted to use any of the pretty form-based IO that you can you do with its designer. And I doubt that'll be the case here.
I would encourage you to replace all your file IO with a sound data access layer.
Which will rid you of all the "sharing" issues that you are experiencing, file locks, the overcomplicated installation process, etc.
Alternatively to SQL Server Express as suggested above you could also use SQLite http://code.google.com/p/csharp-sqlite/
Here's what we'd like to achieve via a c# application. Is there a way this can be done, or is it impossible?
Block access to a website (say www.stackoverflow.com) between 11am and 2pm.
Also block access to MSN Messenger between the same hours.
Stop the blocking if the machine is rebooted.
What's confusing us is the exact point where the blocking belongs. The only possible solution we have at the moment is programatically altering the hosts file to block and unblock certain sites. This solution would fall down on a few points.
The user can manually change the hosts file back, which would be undesirable.
If the user had a browser open at 11am they would have to restart it to pick up the amended hosts file.
I'm a web developer so not entirely sure how this works, but I believe the c# app would have to be running as an administrator in order to edit the hosts file, which again would not be desirable.
To clarify, we're trying to produce something like macfreedom.com - so users's aren't going through a proxy or network that we control (unless the solution is to make the user's machine point to a proxy server but I doubt that's achievable or desirable). macfreedom.com appears to work by switching off the network adapter until reboot. We were hoping for a more subtle effect.
this should work like the most client firewalls ... a network filter driver dropping packets ... i fear you will have to use a kernel mode driver -> so .net seems to be out of the game ...
I'm trying to create some sort of remote application execution programs. The situation is that I have a script on a remote pc that I need to execute. Ideally I could do with being able to tell this remote pc to execute this script as though I was at it locally.
If possible it would be executable without the need to login to the pc (such as sending login details etc). I'm going for using .net c#.
The best code is code that you don't have to write yourself. Take a look at PSExec from Microsoft (SysInternals). Assuming that you have common credentials with the remote machine (either by virtue of a domain login or the same password and username), it should "Just Work".
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) allows you to do just that. If you need .NET bindings for it, they are in the System.Management namespace
I WOULD GO with what Rob or Daniel suggested, but if you want to do something dirty (don't) you could write a small service that you'd register on the remote PCs that would just watch for a specific trigger. For example, the service could periodically check a network drive for a file, a database for some parameters, etc.
But as I said previously, this is something I would do if I'd want something really temporary and wouldn't want to spend time to learn how to do it properly.