stefan@wheaton.UUCP (Stefan Brandle ) (05/26/90)
In article <7147@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> rf378434@longs.LANCE.ColoState.EDU (Raymond Frush) writes: >First: I know NOVELL NetWare does metering, and I am not switching >from Banyan VINES. I'm looking for third party software that will >do this. Actually, I'm not aware of NetWare doing metering. There are add-on program to do this. We tried SaberMeter and it can get horribly messed up with exclusive locks such that half the student lab is just sitting there waiting for SaberMeter to do something and we have to check who has the lock on the meter database and manually blow them away to clear things. There are a number of other add-on products, and we may try one of them sometime. Some depend on non-Novell type things, and may well work on VINES. Of the approaches, the one that strike me as best is one where all programs are run as batch files and do the following: 0) There is a database metering file for each product to be metered. Each of these files will have x records where x = max number of concurrent users. Each entry will hold a time-stamp. 1) The batchfile runs a line like `meter load wordperfect' which loads the `meter' tsr program which in the appropriate metering file and finds a record where the time-stamp is older than some value (like 1 minute). It then choses that as it's record and writes out a time-stamp every half minute. If the time-stamp in all records are within the `active' value then it sets the error level to prearranged value representing `none available', otherwise it sets error level to an `all-clear' value. 2) If the error level implies that no copies are available, we jump to print a regret message and exit, else actual program (ie. WordPerfect) is loaded and run. 3) WordPerfect exits and the last part of the batchfile run something like `meter unload wordperfect'. This might either unload the `meter' tsr or simply tell it to stop logging to the record in that file and close the file. The problem with many metering systems is that if #3 doesn't happen (ie, the machine crashed, was turned off, etc) the metering program still thinks that the program is being used and you have to go in and manually tell the meter that that copy of the program is available. I wrote a naive metering program that did this and ran quickly into problems when the business majors starting `going to dos' inside lotus and happily turning the machines off -- two hours later my meter program started telling them that all copies were in use when nobody in the lab was using lotus. Manually `fixing the database' gets old in a hurry. >Second: Send me E-Mail, I hate to clutter up newsgroups with repeats >of the same information. If requested, I will post a summary of all >opinions mailed to me. Sorry, I'm making a guess that other people might be interested in some of the problems related to this. I've not seen much discussion of this. -stefan -- ---------------------------------------------- MA Bell: (708) 260-4110 --------- Stefan Brandle UUCP: ...!{obdient,uunet!tellab5}!wheaton!stefan Wheaton College or stefan@wheaton.UUCP Wheaton, IL 60187 "But I never claimed to be sane!"