There are several different ways of doing this, but beware the pitfalls of
each:
There used to be a way to do literally what you suggest: Run STAFProc as a
Windows service. However that method no longer works in modern versions of
Windows because there was an executable program (I think it's name was
SRVANY.EXE) that's used to make that work, and that program no longer
works on recent Windows systems e.g. Vista or Windows/2008.
There is a method documented in the STAF documentation, available right in
the installation wizard, to start STAF at startup, but if you look behind
the covers it's really running it at user login. That's ok, if you start
your machines and immediately log in, but if you're in the habit of
rebooting your machine (or having it rebooted for you) and you don't
immediately log in, your machine will not be contactable by STAF until
someone logs in. This method uses the Windows "scheduled task" facility to
schedule a task to run STAFProc and specifying that the task should be
scheduled to run "At Logon".
To overcome the limitation mentioned above (where STAF doesn't start after
a reboot, until someone logs in) you might think to change the scheduled
task from a schedule of "At Logon" to "At System Startup". That works,
sort-of: True, STAFProc starts during system startup, so it comes up
automatically after a reboot. That's good.
However, if it's started in this way, we have found, that since STAFProc
is invoked by Windows during startup it's essentially the same as running
as a service, and modern Windows versions impose limitations on services
interacting with the Windows desktop. The specific problem that this
causes is this: If you use STAF to drive tests on the system, and if some
of the tests use GUI testing tools (such as Rational Functional Tester),
then the tests don't work because the test tool (RFT) can't "see" the
Windows desktop and running applications.
This problem DOES NOT occur if you use the STAF-provided method, where it
schedules the task to run "At Logon".
So the solution we have hit upon is to DO BOTH of the following:
1. Use the STAF-provided method to start STAFProc at startup (which really
means "at user logon").
2. Use the Windows facility called AutoAdminLogon, where you set some
registry keys to specify a userid and password to log on as.
In this mode, when Windows reboots it automatically logs on as that user,
which in turn triggers the STAFProc scheduled task and RFT is able to
"see" the desktop. Life is good.
There are several ways to enable AutoAdminLogon but the way I do it is via
a .reg file. I take text like the following:
----Snip----
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"AutoAdminLogon"="1"
"DefaultDomainName"="MyWindowsDomain"
"DefaultUserName"="MyUserId"
"DefaultPassword"="MyAdminPassword"
----Snip----
...and put it into a file with an extension of .reg. Then, doubleclick the
file from a directory window or type the filename in a Command Prompt,
respond positively to the prompts, and it'll set the appropriate registry
values to enable this feature.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Veilleux
IBM/Lotus Domino Server Quality Engineering
5 Technology Park Drive
Westford MA 01886
Email: joeveill...@us.ibm.com
clayton neal <clayton_n...@yahoo.co.uk>
06/12/2009 01:36 PM
To
staf-users@lists.sourceforge.net
cc
Subject
[staf-users] STAF as windows service
Hiya,
To run STAF a user has to be logged onto the machine
Is there a way to run STAF on a machine as a Window Service, which is
executing when no user is logged in ?
Regards
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
staf-users mailing list
staf-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/staf-users
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
staf-users mailing list
staf-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/staf-users
