What is the best way of scheduling simple batch jobs on windows? My current need is to dump some SVN repositories each night and FTP the dumps to our external FTP side and then e-mail one or more people that the backup has completed/failed.
This sounds like the sort of thing I would usually do in a unix script + cron. Is that possible on windows? Perhaps using Cygwin?
Windows Scheduled Tasks. This area is available through the control panel and may require administrative rights. It's basically crontab for Windows. Run a Windows batch file (or any executable) at a specified interval using a specified user.
Related
I have a need for starting an .exe program in multiple windows sessions (15) on the same server, whenever the server reboots.
I had a code that used to do that at start-up, but we lost that.
The exe file collects data from a bunch of servers. It needs to be run in multiple windows sessions--I think this way the process works in parallel.
Does anyone know a way to achieve this?
PsExec is a tool primarily used for running code on other servers, but can be pointed at the local machine too. The -i option can specify a session:
Run the program so that it interacts with the desktop of the specified
session on the remote system. If no session is specified the process runs in the console session.
I'm building a (for now pretty minimal) network sync system for some of our users, involving a samba server on one end and an rsync cron job which is "installed" for OSX or Linux clients by running a simple bash script linked from our intranet.
I need to do the same thing for Windows clients. I know there are several rsync implementations on Windows (I used cwRsync ages ago), but are there any (off the top of your head) that I can silently pass a config to during install? As it is, I guess I'm going to have to write a crappy old batchfile to interface with Windows Task Scheduler, but I'd at least like for clients installing this to not have to input any more than their username and password.
Thanks!
I've had success with
RichCopy
RoboCopy
Cygwin rsync.exe
All using scheduled tasks.
RichCopy (and maybe robocopy) have options to save config files from the GUI. All worked well for me from a batch file.
All three have restartable/incremental modes. Most are highly aware of specific features think
NTFS encryption
NTFS compression
permissions (ACLs)
alternate NTFS streams
junctions/reparse points
hardlinks/symlinks
etc.
My interactive 32-bit Windows app (now moving from Delphi [Ent] 2007 to 2009) uses command-line interactions to spawn child processes that do computationally-intensive tasks, which in turn write text files that the GUI parent app parses and analyzes - resulting in an interactive graphical display of the results.
I have access to a multiprocessor (multi-user) Linux cluster (via ssh), and would like to off-load the heavy lifting to that cluster. My question is how to spawn the processes in Linux from my Windows app. I can envision using secure FTP to put and get files, but not sure how to spawn the child processes in Linux.
Some leads for further reading would be fine - but code/pseudocode would be ideal. I can imagine that this may be more about Windows-Linux interaction than Delphi.
if you have access to ssh, one option is to issue commands through that.
For example:
ssh user#host ls -l ~
will in the ssh terminal show the files in the user's home directory. I'm not sure if this is what you really want. But it would likely work.
If you do this, you almost certainly want to setup SSH password less logins
However, A more ideal solution would likely be to setup a daemon on the linux boxes whose sole job is to run specific long running tasks in the background and let you fetch the results later.
You're going to have to install something on the Linux machine to run the process. You might find some kind of clustering or batch job submission API you can install and access from Windows. You might have to code a custom server. You might be able to run everything over ssh if you can drive an ssh process from Windows and if you have sshd installed on the Linux side. But my preference would be to write a webservice or simple CGI script on the Linux side designed to take your arguments and data and return the result over plain old http (or https as the case might be).
One way or another, this is going to encompass more than just coding on the Windows side.
I would download the full "putty" package.
As well as the excellent secure shell terminal, it includes PSCP to transfer files securely and PLINK to remote execute commands over SSH.
Hint: you will need to set up the full public/private key configuration for PLINK to work without an annoying password prompt. There is a useful guide http://unixwiz.net/techtips/putty-openssh.html>here.
I have an application running only on Windows and a batch file that launches it.
I want to invoke this batch file from Linux, meaning something like Linux batch will launch the windows batch with parameters and this in its turn run my application.
Can I do that? How?
You could install an ssh server in the windows box (Cygwin has one), then from linux do something like:
ssh user#windows-box c:/path/to/batch.cmd
and that should launch your application in the windows box.
The most direct way is probably to install an ssh server on the windows box. Cygwin includes an ssh server.
Depending on how precise your timing needs are, you might be able to have an "at" job on the windows box that runs periodically (every 5 minutes?) and runs if it sees that a particular file exists, deleting the file. Then you could use Samba/smbclient to create the file. You would need to turn on filesharing on the windows box for this to work.
If the windows box has a web server, you could write a CGI, and trigger it using wget or cURL.
Our build process currently goes the other way: a windows sever kicks off things on the Linux server using plink (part of PuTTY). You might be able to set something similar up.
This may cause a security issue. Our information security person did not allow me to invoke any programs directly.
The safer way is to set up server on Windows computer. This can be a web-server for example. And then invoke your process inside PHP/Perl/Python script.
Also look at winexe that allows you to execute windows commands/batch scripts without running ssh server.
This is a Windows 2003 (or later) machine that gets switched on every morning, but no one logs on until some hours later.
I want to use the time in between to run a backup script c:\script\backup.cmd
How can I start this unattended after the machine has come up?
I tried 2 registry keys, but this resulted in the script being run after a user logs on (which is too late):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
In the end I used Windows TaskScheduler, who has such an option, but I was wondering if there is another possibility?
Short answer: GPEDIT.MSC (Start, Run, GPEdit.msc)
Windows 2000 and above [1] offer a computer Startup Scripts collection in the policy editor:
Computer Settings -> Windows Settings -> Scripts (Startup/Shutdown)
There's an equivalent logon script area (i.e. after computer startup, when a user logs on) in the User configuration bit.
Longer:
GPEDIT.MSC is the Group Policy editing console, and runs against the local computer's Local Group Policy store when it's used directly, so it's useful for setting local-only parameters. When using Active Directory, a similar interface is used to edit AD Forest-hosted group policy objects (GPOs), so the same settings are available across a bunch of machines.
The computer startup scripts run in the computer context, i.e. as LocalSystem, as you noted, so they often can't access network drives which require a certain user or group membership to work. When domain-member computers access network resources, they generally (with exceptions) authenticate using their MACHINENAME$ account - which lets you set Share/NTFS permissions to allow a computer to access those resources.
A startup script is a quick and easy way of getting a process running when the machine boots.
The computer startup process will be affected by the time it takes to run the program, though, so you might want to ensure you call it with the START command from a batch file, or specifying not to wait for the executable to complete in whatever script language you use. (the key point there is: run the script asynchronously unless it's critical, or doesn't need to be run asynchronously cos it will always take no time at all. Long boots = unhappy users).
Using a Win32 Service is an alternative option - you can use the SRVANY utility from the Resource Kit to "service-ify" pretty much any executable. VS.Net 2002 and later also let you build a managed service directly.
And Task Scheduler gets much more capable as of Vista/2008, able to run scripts at startup, on idle, and/or when Event Logs are generated or certain other conditions are met: it's pretty cool! Scheduled Tasks has the possible advantage of being able to specify the user account under which the task runs, if that's important to you.
Caveat Scriptor:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256320
Run Startup Scripts Asynchronously:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811602.aspx
Vista Task Scheduler (what's new):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appcompat/aa906020.aspx
[1] Windows XP, 2003, Vista/2008, Windows 7/2008R2, Windows 8/2012, Windows 8.1/2012R2, Windows 10/Windows Server 2016. Everything. But NT4 didn't!
You have already outlined a good solution:
Setup a scheduled task to run at Start Up and allow the job to run when the user isn't logged on.
You can run a script at system startup using group policy gpedit.msc
The way you aleady do this seems fine to me; however if you want an alternative approach then services get started when the machine boots so you could write a service that detects if it's a new day (to allow for reboots) and if it is then run your backup.
If I was doing this as a service I'd use TCL because I know it and like it and it has an extension twapi that allows you to run a script as a service. Other scripting languages may well have similar facilities.
There is, if you're using Active Directory. If you can isolate the computer to its own OU or use WMI filtering, you could assign a GPO which has a startup script for the computer. This would ensure that even if someone went in via safe mode and disabled the Task Scheduler, upon startup and connection to the domain, the script would run.