Disconnect from user

Submitted by thomas.horner on #1

 
Hi and first of all thanks for this great software!

 
Actually i think there's not many points to make this software even better.
Well maybe some way to send a message to a user that is currently using a device. But i think a simple text-chat is out of scope ;-)

We're having an issue with the timing, tough - and I think you could solve that issue by extending the server software.

Our use-case is as follows:
1) A build server auto-uses the dongle.
2) When a developer needs the dongle then that developer uses "Disconnect from user" to free the dongle and then "Use" to get the dongle.
3) When the developer has finished the local build, then that developer uses "Stop using" to free the dongle.
4) The build server shall immediately take back the dongle.

Our issue is:
When the developer uses "Disconnect from user" to free the dongle from the build-server then the build-server will immediately take the dongle again. There is no "delay".

Our proposal:
When a device is taken away from a client, then there should be a delay of several seconds before that client will auto-use the device again.

Alternative proposal:
The client could provide an option "Disconnect from user and Use" to possibly avoid the timing issue.

 
Thanks in advance!

Br,
Thomas

Submitted by Michael on Sun, 2016/02/07 - 10:51

#2

Hi Thomas, thanks for the feedback, I will investigate this issue further this coming week...and let you know what I figure out

Submitted by Michael on Tue, 2016/02/09 - 13:26

#3

Thinking more about this... i think what i will do is enable you to remotely control a virtualhere client on the network. Because the virtualhere client already creates a pipe to communicate, it already supports being controlled from a remote machine, assuming permissions are setup correctly.

At the moment the client just assumes the pipe is local with the -t argument but i can add another argument to specify the pipe path. That way you can tell the remote client to disconnect the dongle and reuse it from another machine...

Submitted by thomas.horner on Tue, 2016/02/09 - 17:19

#4

Hi Michael,

actually i think that the solution you provided is technically possible. It would, however, lead to a possibly complicated and risky situation.
Probably most of our users will not know/remember how to call the client to issue "STOP USING". But of cause we could train them to know.
The more risky issue with this approach is that they definitely will forget to re-assign the license to the build server and then the overnight builds will fail.

Apart from that - from the user's point of view the systems behavior is currently very intransparent:
The user asks the device to "Disconnect from user".
So the user expects the device to be "Unused" next.
But actually the user will realize that the device is taken (again) and will be frustrated.
Possibly the user will even think it's *still* used and the system doesn't work reliably.

So i believe the more user-friendly way would be a slight delay before re-auto-assigning a device that had just been taken away.
Probably this "delay" could be implemented on the server - possibly by just not reacting on the client request of the build server for a while - and so the delay could be configurable on the server.

What do you think?

Submitted by Michael on Tue, 2016/02/09 - 18:24

#5

OK, i will add a setting in client vhui.ini to delay the auto-use of a device for n seconds... (default is 0 seconds if not specified)

OK added in 3.4.1 of the client

On your build server make sure the client is not running then edit

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\vhui.ini

Under the [General] section add the line

AutoUseDelaySec=n where n is the number of seconds you want the client to wait before trying to auto-use an available device

The default is 0 seconds

Thanks!

One issue - I have downloaded client 3.4.1 but it does seem to ignore the setting.
I have created a file named vhui.ini on the build-server, with only the following content:
[General]
AutoUseDelaySec=10

I have copied that file to C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\vhui.ini
I then re-started the vhclient service.

However, after using "Disconnect from User" the client immediately re-uses the device.
Can you please re-check?

Submitted by thomas.horner on Wed, 2016/02/10 - 01:30

#8

Found the solution:
The file needs to be placed into C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming as the service is running as "SYSTEM".

Works perfectly - Thanks a lot!