Scheduling dnet

[russmanuk]

Hi all. I've been hanging around here for a few weeks and thought I'd post seems to be a cool place.😎 You'll have to excuse me 'cause I'm NOT an anandtech team member 🙂 my stats but I'm certainly sympathetic to your cause to be #1 in RC5.

Has anyone tried (with success) to use NT scheduler to start and stop the dnet client for certain hours of the day or days of the week. I thought that this may be particuarly useful for controlling remote machines so that they'd only crunch at night when no one's using them. 😀

Reason for asking is that I've got admin rights to all the PCs at work (50 NT or 2000 P2/3 boxes) and wanted to create a batch file that would fire up all the clients at say 8pm and shut them all down again at 8am.

batch file to look something like this:
Text
AT \\clientname /every:m,t,w,th,f 20:00 \\servername\share\dnetc.exe -hide
AT \\clientname /every:m,t,w,th,f 08:00 \\servername\share\dnetc.exe -shutdown


This seems to program the scheduler but dnet doesn't run???? and how can you send an <enter> to clear the &quot;Dnet has found a client and shut it down&quot; message upon exiting.

Cheers
Russman

 

[Engine]

What you might try is to set up a scheduled task to start the clients up every night, and have the client set to 'run x amount of hours and stop'. That should stop the message box from popping up every time.

It's option #2 under General Client Options.

And, you probably wouldn't need a batch file to start them up. Just put in a scheduled task on the computers, and have it call dnetc -hide.

Hope that helps.

 

[RaySun2Be]

I have several servers that I'm allowed to either use for so many hours a day, and also use at night. I use the process for so many hours option to set the # of hours I can have the client process, say 12.

in the dnetc.ini file add the run-time-limit setting in hours and minutes:
[misc]
project-priority=RC5,OGR,DES=0,CSC=0
run-time-limit=12:00

Then I install the dnet client as a service (dnetc -install) then go in to services and change it from automatic to manual.

Then using the AT command, I set it to run every day of the week at a certain time, and for a command to start, instead of a bat file or script, I just use: net start dnetc

The AT commands would look like this:

AT 5:00pm /EVERY:M,T,W,Th,F,S,SU net start dnetc

In the past, I've also created scripts that change the .INI file then run the net start command, so that for Monday through Thursday, it starts at 5pm and runs for 12 hours, and would set up an AT command for Monday through Thursday. Then I would have another script that would change the run-time parm to 60 hours and execute the net start command, and set up an AT command for Friday at 5:00pm. These 2 schedules allowed the client to run for 12 hours Monday through Thursday starting at 5pm, then run the entire weekend starting on Friday at 5pm and running for 60 hours.

EDIT Oops, mine was only for controllng the server. Since you have NT workstations, you might want to look in to Remote Cows at distributed.net for remotely managing the client.

😀

Good luck and have fun. 😀

 

[russmanuk]

Cool, I hadn't thought of having the client running for a certain time and closing itself down. That certainly solves one problem.

dnet doesn't run with this command though. The AT command just shows &quot;error&quot; after the specified time even though \\servername\share\dnetc.exe -hide runs fine by itself ??????

Russman

my stats
my team

 

[JonB]

try putting quotes around it? It may not be properly passing the hyphenated &quot;-hide&quot;

 

[russmanuk]

JonB - Brackets don't work, I've tried already, thanks

Looks like I'll have to install as a service and use the net start command. It would be preferable to avoid having any files stored locally, but it seems that it can't be done.

Thanks to everyone for your help 🙂

 

[RaySun2Be]

russmanuk,
Have you tried putting the \\servername\share\dnetc.exe -shutdown part in a script file and executing that bat file from the AT command?

 

[russmanuk]

Ray - yep tried that. doesn't work either, unless it's just me doing something stupid.

Russ