| Re: Too many users... [message #16303 is a reply to message #16255] |
Thu, 15 July 1999 00:00   |
Bruce Bowler
Messages: 128
Registered: September 1998
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Senior Member |
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"J.D. Smith" wrote:
>
> Bruce Bowler wrote:
>>
>> Suppose I have a node-locked 1 user license. 99.44% of the time, this
>> is fine for my needs (it's a fairly "dedicated" system, running "mostly"
>> one application in batch, most of the time).
>>
>> On occasion, someone needs to do a quick, one-off, thing in IDL and they
>> grab my one license.
>>
>> While they have the license, my batch job decides "It's time to run"
>> (determined by an external source sending a mail message, I've got no
>> control over when it happens). Of course, since the other user has the
>> license, my job starts up in "timed demo" mode. If my job could finish
>> in 7 minutes, I wouldn't care, but it takes several hours so I do care
>> :-).
>>
>> Had my "mail initiated" job been run interactively, I'd be asked, "do
>> you want to wait for a license" and I've I'd answered "YES" I'd be put
>> "on hold" until the other person finished. Is there a way to achieve
>> this "wait until the license is available" in a "batch job stream",
>> perhaps with some command line option I'm not aware of and/or an
>> environment variable?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Bruce
>>
>> PS this is IDL 5.2 running on Solaris 2.7.
>> PPS Buying a second user license isn't an option :-(
>
> Try expect, a package which allows you "programmed dialogue with
> interactive programs". You could expect "IDL> " and respond with
> "@batchfile.pro" or expect the 'wait for a license' warning and respond
> with "Y" then expect "IDL> " and respond with "@batchfile.pro". You
> would want to disable the timeout on the latter, since the time spent
> waiting is unknown.
An interesting idea, but yet one more piece of software to maintain...
> Another option... always use idl as a specific user (e.g. idl_user).
> Everyone who wanted to run idl would run as this user, since the
> licensing scheme lets a given user run multiple copies of idl on a given
> screen. Your script would first switch to that user (easy if running as
> root), and anybody else who would want to use idl would be required to
> switch to that user. To enforce this, let idl_user own the binaries in
> $IDL_DIR/bin/bin.solaris, and make them owner executeable only.
> idl_user need not have a home directory, since it's there for licensing
> permissions only.
While an intriguing idea, and probably "legal" within the "letter of the
law", I'd say it violates the "spirit of the law". That's just my
opinion though...
> A temptingly close easter egg is found in the binary: the option
> -autow. Doesn't seem to do what you wanted though -- too bad.
Hadn't thought of looking for easter eggs :-(
What I ended up with, following the email suggestion of an RSI employee
(who shall remain nameless since I can't find his email address :-) is
to parse the output of lmstat -A in the shell script that I run. If
that shows that the license is in use, I wait awhile and try again. The
specific code I use (in case anyone else is interested) is
while (`/usr/local/rsi/idl/bin/lmstat -A | grep nodelocked | wc
-m`)
sleep 600
end
Bruce
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