I'm trying to automate in an AS400 terminal using UiPath.
I experience stability problems where the screen "blinks", which can cause errors. This outputs a trace log: "XMLScreen:Render BUGBUG XMLScreen.Field is blank".
I am connecting with UiPath internal and wondering if that might be the cause of my problem. I've searched for hours, but cant find any information on what the difference is between UiPath internal and IBM EHLLAPI. The only difference I know is that EHLLAPI uses an already existing terminal session.
Is one way of connecting generally a better choice than the other regarding stability and why?
All inputs are greatly appreciated! :)
The two options work completely differently.
EHLLAPI works against existing installed IBM i Access for Windows or IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) software. It is a very specific, solid, and well established IBM proprietary API that does not use Telnet in any way. You would need to ensure that EHLLAPI support was enabled (e.g. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1010639 for ACS).
Your organisation may perhaps be using a third party emulator, e.g. Rumba - I think EHLLAPI is supported by some of these.
The UIPath internal option starts and writes to a TN5250 session, over which it sounds from the documentation as if you have little control (e.g. re keyboard mappings).
I would suggest you go with EHLLAPI if you can (i.e. if you have a suitable IBM or third party product installed as above).
But, are you absolutely certain you need to screen scrape this at all? Do you have no access to the IBM i source code, which would potentially allow you to write a suitable program to run natively? I feel honour bound to say this, because there is always grief with screen scraping IBM i applications (e.g. panels appear that you are not expecting, especially at sign on time, or if an error occurs).
Related
We are having some strange issues on Windows Server 2012 (both normal and R2). Every once in a while (seemingly randomly) we start getting strange errors with all the programs on a server (API calls to Process32Next fail for instance). These occurrences seem to be a associated with one or more of our old ActiveX EXE (VB6) programs suddenly showing 'Embedding' in their description in the process viewer (task manager or Process Hacker). The problem goes away when everyone logs off. I cannot find anything much on Google about this. These programs have been around unchanged for over a decade and I cannot see how ANY program could affect every other program on a server but I am hoping that understanding why the Embedding description shows up might help lead to a solution.
Also, sometimes the name of the process is blank as well.
ActiveX EXE is another name for Automation Server. This is one of several technologies built on top of COM that fall into the OLE 1.0, OLE 2.0, and OLE custom control (a.k.a. ActiveX) categories. OLE stands for Object Linking and Embedding.
My guess is that wherever you are looking this term "Embedding" is being used to indicate an Automation Server. So it probably has no direct bearing on your issues.
I suspect this is a case of "looking where the light is good."
You may be running into some issues related to Session 0 Isolation, User Interface Privilege Isolation, or both. Or more likely you might have DCOM/Automation activation settings incorrect for one or more of these programs.
You might start by looking at the definitions for these servers in DCOMCNFG.EXE. People often rely on defaults and that may not be what you should have. Some of these might be defined in COM+ which means additional rules. Some of these interact with user rights and group membership.
But we have far too little specific information to really be of much help here.
I've been having a very confusing discussion with a colleague about the use of Network Direct in Windows to provide RDMA, and Linux where we have a working implementation using the verbs api and rdmacm.
Said collegue developed his Network Direct implementation after he couldn't get the verbs one to work. I did the rdmacm implementation under Linux. We both got them talking linux=>linux and windows=>windows but never got around to testing Linux=>windows or windows=>linux. During the development there was some hint of it possibly working, they appeared to start talking but of course things were still in development.
The project was put on hold for months and the framework that it was built into has had significant redesign. I'm left with pulling what was working from the Windows side into the new framework and I'm having a hard time getting it working or seeing any part of it connect from Linux.
My understanding is that at the lower layer they will both talk verbs. But I'm now not so sure with colleague saying things like "Remember this is not verbs", just to add to the confusion.
So the question is. will an application that uses rdmacm be able to establish a connection to an app that uses Windows NetworkDirect interface or are the two completely different and incompatible?
According to Mellanox support, Network Direct should be compatible with InfiniBand verbs. We've had good luck doing RDMA transfers using rdmacm Linux-Linux and Windows-Linux. We used the windows libraries available at open fabrics alliance (look for ofed_sdk). It was not easy to figure out what libraries to get in order to do the Windows part.
However, Microsoft does not want people to use the ibverbs approach on MS-Windows any more. If you are having trouble getting ND on Windows to talk to Linux, are you sure that you are putting the values in network order before shipping them over?
First allow me to start off with a short explanation of why I must do this with out WMI.
I am trying to list all the sessions attached to an EMC Celerra NS20. This particular device allows you to connected to it with the Computer Management MMC snap-in to view shares, but I quickly found out that it is NOT MS Windows based and does not support WMI.
The reason I want to do this without using the snap-in is simply because I am trying to create a tool to monitor sessions across a set of servers (most of which are Windows Servers) to track what users are logged in, from where, and how many computers, etc.
I have searched and read extensively about the Celerra exposing and XML API (I thought this might be what the Computer Management Console used). However, after running a packet capture to see what Compmgmt.msc was actually sending back and forth, it appears to be using SMB2 protocol.
So I am trying to figure out if there is:
A) A good library for doing this kind of work with SMB/Samba (preferably for C#).
B) If anyone knows a better way to retrieve this information.
If anyone has a good idea of how to do this but just not in C#, I am willing to implement this in any language and then pipe it into my program if necessary.
I hope I have clearly explained my problem. Any help regarding this is greatly appreciated. Thank you for you time.
I'm new to SNMP. I have to develop a manager. I've been searching on how to program for a manager. I've come across WinSNMP, SNMP++ and Net-SNMP. The plus point for Net-SNMP is that it can translate the trap content from the MIB (it can parse the MIB). But would Net-SNMP be a good choice of library for developing a manager? I was wondering if it would be a good idea to use snmptrapd as a basis to develop a manager. At the moment I'm focusing on receiving traps but eventually I'll have to program for the others too (Get, Set, ...).
What is the general outline on how to program for a manager? I have been reading on SNMP for weeks but still haven't got a clear understanding of how to go about doing it.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Which toolkit you want will greatly depend on your final-end-goals and preferred language (eg, C vs C++). Make sure you get one with SNMPv3 support, which the native windows library doesn't have (but mg-soft and snmp research's implementation does). You'll likely have to pay money, eventually, if you want SNMPv3 support on windows using the winsnmp APIs.
Net-SNMP and SNMP++ are both well respected open libraries. Net-SNMP has pretty much cornered the market in terms of deployment and comes pre-installed or easily available on every OS except windows (where it also works fine, but MS just doesn't package it for you).
If you want to receive traps, Net-SNMP's snmptrapd is certainly an easy place to start and offers some very simply ways to get started through extensible commands (see the snmptrapd.conf man page to help you get started) or via C (see the apps/snmptrapd*.c files for some example C-registrations).
To get started with Net-SNMP and programming outgoing management operations, you should start with the tutorials about writing management applications. If your management application is ever going to talk to multiple hosts at once, make sure you get a toolkit that does asynchronous support (see the second item in the above link).
There is also JDMK 5.1 API from Sun microsyatem, it is very easy to develop the SNMP Agent as well Manager.
I am working on building a system that can monitor how users react to security alerts on their systems (software updates, warnings etc.). It also needs to monitor the web traffic and the processes running on the system and I am looking to the community to help me design this system. We intend to provide users with test laptops and monitor their behavior over a period of time to see how they react to security alerts thrown by various applications and the OS(windows in this case).
Following are my questions
Can I use windows hooks to solve the first problem i.e finding how users reacted to the alerts thrown by various applications. Specifically, can global hooks be used to solve this?
(How this information should be collected (XML?) and relayed back to a server(how frequently?) is another problem)
Can I do this in C# or it has to be done only in c++ or VB?
Do you know any alternate approach to solve the problem? Is there any software that has these capabilities.
I have many more questions but getting these answered would be a good first step. Really hoping for some good insights from the knowledgeable people on this community
Thank you in advance
Edit:
Example scenario is when adobe prompts you to update the flash player or the antivirus prompts you to update definitions or any application displays a notification(security related having keywords like update, warning, install etc.) needing the user to take some action. Windows system updates is another example. I want to know how the user reacted to these alerts/notifications/updates (which are typically a pop-up window). So i was wondering if i placed a global hook that can monitor the content of the windows displayed on screen and notify me(server) when certain words like update, alert, warning etc. appear in the content/title of the windows and what the user did with the message(dismissed it, Oked it etc). Unfortunately, i do not have any more specifications than this. I can use anything I want to achieve this and I am not clear on what my choices are.
Edit 2:
After having reviewed my requirements and having read about hooks, I feel like I could achieve this by a combination of hooks and the following textGrab SDK, http://www.renovation-software.com/en/text-grab-sdk/textgrab-sdk.html. I want some guidance to know if I am on the right track. I am thinking if I can install hooks then it gives me handles to all possible windows on the screen and I can use the textGRAB SDK to look for certain keywords in those windows. Although this may capture some interesting text, I am still not sure how I will know what action the user had taken on the window. Anybody having any experience with either hooks or textGRAB, please let me know if this looks like a reasonable thing to do. If the community has some other Ideas on how I could possibly monitor security related messages thrown by any application in the system, please suggest. I am looking forward to some useful advice for completing a challenging project.
First of all, you need to define, how you will "see" security alerts in code. "Security alert" is quite a vague term. Will it be some window with some caption and some message to the user or ... ?
Next, about web and processes: Windows hooks won't help you with your task. They are more low-level and not as advanced as you'd need. You can't hook network traffic (you need either network filter driver for pre-Vista or Microsoft Filtering Platform for Vista and later). See this question for some information about checking the process list with C# (there seems to be no easy way to catch process startup either).
It honestly sounds like you need a more solid direction. I commend you for trying to provide details, but It appears that you still need more information about your problem(s)..
I will attempt to answer some of your questions, but like I said - it sounds like you need to know more about your problems before we can provide you with optimal answer(s).
-Alerts is too vague a term, you will need to define this better. Are these 'alerts' applications that YOU have control over or are they third party applications? Not every application will show an 'Alert' in the same fashion, and even if they did - I think using a System Level Hook would probably be too problematic to implement your solution with. I'm not saying it's necessarily impossible, but you're talking about possibly implementing a different set of logic(to determine the data for a given application's Alert(s)) for each application that you want to monitor.
-It's impossible for any of us to determine the optimal storage mechanism for your particular needs, that is something that you will either need to provide more details about or decide on your own.
-How often you collect data is also something that you will have to either provide more details for or decide for on your own.
-C/C++ Would probably provide you with the most portable solution, although there is nothing preventing you from using c# to call Win32 API. (Not everyone has the .NET framework installed - believe it or not)
-The problem that you mentioned appears to be a somewhat specialized problem... I don't know of any existing software that will do everything that you want to do.
Another possible issue that you haven't touched on:
You haven't specified your target audience for this 'service', but I want you to know that if I found an application monitoring as many events as what you're talking about doing, I would promptly remove it and write a nasty letter to the company that wrote it.
In summary, Read this Article on hooks to get a better understanding of how they work.