AREV / Win95 - how do we limit sessions to one? (AREV Specific)
At 20 OCT 1997 08:44:33AM Kevin at KPW wrote:
With Win95 shortcuts it is very possible and in fact highly probable in many user cases that multiple sessions of AREV may be triggered.
How do we stop multiple instances of AREV to be initiated by a given workstation?
Is there a lockout opportunity?
This has surfaced as a very real issue due to either deliberate or un-intentional actions by users.
Kevin at KPW
email [email protected]
At 20 OCT 1997 09:56AM John Duquette wrote:
Kevin,
You can do that in a variety of ways.
1) on login write the username/stationid to a table and delete it on logout. If it's there do not allow the user to log in. This way if you have a problem/abnormal termination and it does not get flushed on logout you can delete the record. You can also allow for certain users to have multiple sessions if wanted.
2) In the shortcut under the program tab there is an advanced button. On this you can force windows to go to dos mode. Win95 will restart when you exit the session. AFAIK this option is not available under NT.
John Revelation
At 20 OCT 1997 11:15AM Victor Engel wrote:
The way I would do it is to create a login script (application, not network) that uses @STATION1,'*' as the key. One of the fields in the record should have @STATION (including the sequential number). Keep a lock to this record during the session and release the lock only upon logoff.
When logging on, check if the record is already locked. If it is, there is another session being used. If there is not a lock but the record exists, there was another session but it terminated without executing the normal logoff procedure. If there is no lock and no record, all is normal.
Note that on at least some configurations, if the Arev session must be terminated ungracefully, the only way to clear the locks is to log off the network as well.
Victor
At 21 OCT 1997 11:05AM Ed Mantz wrote:
I have a little windows .exe program that I use to launch Arev. It checks to see if an AREV seesion is already open and if there is one arleady running, it terminates with an error message.
I also set in the network login script a DOS environment variable LOGNM=LOGIN_NAME. The startup program checks for this variable and pops up a window with this login name (allowing people to change it) and passes the result to the AREV comamnd line. This works well since on most of my installations the network user name is the same as the AREV user name. This means the user only has to type in their AREV password.