How to avoid script locking in network environment

[LostUser]

Hey all. Long time no post.

I searched the forums a bit and couldn't find anything to help me on this so here is my issue.

I have scripts (compiled and not) that run from the network. Occasionally I run into the problem where the script hangs on a workstation somewhere and I cannot save changes to the script to try fixing the problem because it is locked by that workstation.

I can think of a few ways to do this but I would like some advice from others on this.

Also, I was wondering, why would the network script .exe file be locked from altering/recompiling if it is loaded and running on a workstation? Is this a windows protection feature?

This executable files are on a Novell network, soon to be Windows.

Thanks

[simusphere]

Define "locked" as you are experiencing it. I had some of my scripts lock the entire machine up, couldn't do anything except a hardware reset to get out of the locked state. This ended up being "Symantec AV Tamper Protection" setting on the local machine causing the problem.

[Jango]

Hey all. Long time no post.

I searched the forums a bit and couldn't find anything to help me on this so here is my issue.

I have scripts (compiled and not) that run from the network. Occasionally I run into the problem where the script hangs on a workstation somewhere and I cannot save changes to the script to try fixing the problem because it is locked by that workstation.

I can think of a few ways to do this but I would like some advice from others on this.

Also, I was wondering, why would the network script .exe file be locked from altering/recompiling if it is loaded and running on a workstation? Is this a windows protection feature?

This executable files are on a Novell network, soon to be Windows.

Thanks

I think you need to terminate the process of the script on the workstation where it hangs, you can do this remotly with PSKILL pskill

[LostUser]

What I mean by locked...

I have a script that is executed off a Novell server. On some workstations, the script will not finish running due to bugs or unforseen events with the script. If the script is not closed on that workstation or otherwise exited out of, I cannot make changes to that script on the Novell server because that workstation is shown as using that script/executable.

I know you can copy installs locally to a workstation then execute the local copy...that is one way around it. I was just wondering if others had different ways around this problem. Maybe this is only a Novell issue...not a windows OS issue.

In a nutshell >>>So, basically the file on the server is locked against re-saving because it hasn't finished running on a workstation.

[DaveF]

Are you running your scripts from the user's login script or from ZENWorks app management?

I've found that for reason of the trouble you're describing it's better to copy a script or EXE file to the local machine before running it. If you're running ZEN then Application Management it can manage the copy-and-run process for you.

If you don't have ZEN you could make a doesn't-ever-change wrapper script which simply copies the workhorse workhorse script (the one with portions that might need to be updated) to the local maching and executes it. A gotcha with this approach is that your wrapper script would need to insure that it successfully copied the fresh version of the workhorse script each time that it ran or else you could be executing stale copies of the workhorse script on some workstations.