[exe]Guardian Angel Discussion

[JeffCharger]

There doesn't seem to be any indication that Webcam32 has had problems other than in the Windows Task Manager the status will flip from "Running" to "Not Responding" for a few seconds. It then goes back to "Running". In these cases CPU doesn't do anything abnormal. Based on this, it doesn't appear that it will help in these circumstances.

[Michael McSharry]

Does webcam32 provide any status or scripting interface that might be able to be used? Does it produce a heartbeat or other indication that it is alive/connected?

[JeffCharger]

I don't believe that it does, but I am going to check into it further. Thanks for the tip.

[JeffCharger]

I just encountered Webcam32 'hanging' again. I am running XP Pro.

Here are the attributes I found:

- in task manager, the application shows as "not responding" (although it briefly will go to "running" and then back to "not responding"
- CPU useage is hovering around 0-1%

Under normal operation the CPU useage would be 0-2% when idle, and up to 10-15% when sending a picture (maybe higher when sending video upload).

Is there any way to sense the "not responding" aspect and trigger a "terminate" based on this?

[This message was edited by JeffCharger on Tue, 30 September 2003 at 12:53 PM.]

[Michael McSharry]

I do not know how Task Manager determines that a process is not responding. I can try so send it a NULL message and see if it returns an acknowledge. I might also try to send it something like a ENABLE message which might generate a signal for which I can wait to confirm it responds. I'll let you know if anything looks promising.

[JeffCharger]

thanks Michael - that's great.

I appreciate the assistance.

[JeffCharger]

Just like clockwork, I have another "hung" system. I can't tell until tomorrow what the cause is, but I suspect it's the Webcam application like last week.

[Bill Brower]

Question: In it's stock form (just running it in the Windows StartUp directory without any switches), does it just restart when it monitors total CPU eaten and HomeSeer is the most offending process, or does it do it for any 95% + condition?

Why I am asking is I run Diskeeper in the back ground in the middle of the night, and sometimes NTBACKUP, which can cause a 10 minute high CPU load sometimes.

Would GA shut down that process, or possibly force a system reboot?

If so, in future revs, could you write code that would give a list of 'exempt' processes? config\mcsGuardianAngel.ini ????

I like the annotation at the beginning of the HS log saying that the reboot was GA driven. Any way also in future revs to have it list what the offending process was.

I really appreciate this software, I am more easy about HS running my software based security system now. Thanks again!

HomeSeer Page: http://wrb.tzo.com (Guest access closed until HS 1.7)
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Way2Call Hi-Phone USB
ATTNV Crystal 16
Ocelot / SECU-16 / SECU-16I
mcs Temperature (Works great!)
mcs Guardian Angel Version 1.2 (Works great!)
Video / Captures with ConquerCam (Separate Computer)
NetCallerID

[JeffCharger]

I had my "hang" problem again. When it offered me the option to send to MS or not (I said not) it indicated that it found a process 'hungapp'. I don't know if this assists you or not.

[Michael McSharry]

I looked at GA this past weekend and learned that the reason the shutdown is faster with GA than a normal shutdown is that it just iterates through all the processes to send the close message. Well, it sends the close message to explorer which in essences closes down windows. It is probably random where explorer is in the list of processes. I started to address this, but ran out of time. Been too busy to get back into it, or look at Jeff's request. Likewise the exclude option needs to be looked into. I believe the no-parameter execution is 95% total cpu use so a backup that is cpu intensive would likely cause a restart as it is now.

[JeffCharger]

thanks....I understand...no problem here. I appreciate the help!

[Michael McSharry]

JeffCharger,
I played with the Null message to a process and those that are alive respond as expected. The code that exists now is able to find a window handle based upon a window caption. Does webcam32 have a window title that can be used to identify it? If you tell me what it is then I can just hard-code something to allow you test.

I do not now have the functions developed to find window handles based upon the process ID or the application and I do not want to develop them until we first determine how webcam32 acts to the message when it is hung.

[Michael McSharry]

I believe I have the orderly shutdown handled correctly. There are a few processes that should not be closed prior to a windows restart and I excluded those. I did my testing on the WindowsRestart app that I put in the library. I posted the update there. I'll port the same code to Guardian Angel.

William Brower,
I looked into excluding processes from the cpu utilization count and it looks to be quite doable. I look more when I make the next iteration with JeffCharger.

[JeffCharger]

I actually run 2 concurrent instances of Webcam32, so they have unique window captions. I would be pleased to do the testing.

The window captions are:
"Webcam32 - normal" and "Webcam32-my_TV". (note spaces in the first one and no spaces in the second one!)

Question...can you run a HS script from GA?

Thanks!

[This message was edited by JeffCharger on Mon, 20 October 2003 at 11:48 AM.]

[sponnath]

Any chance of getting more logging to the HS log ?

I am getting some rebooting and it might be that I have GA set too low.

It would be nice to set an interval to get GA to log the CPU util and maybe even set it in a HS var?

Also, when rebooting, it would be nice if it logged all the conditions that resulted in the boot optionally to HS log.

SteveP

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