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Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

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    Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

    I found this link to make WAP run as service.

    http://www.vbrad.com/article.aspx?id=92

    The task bar doesn't display icon but you can see its live in the Servie window.

    When you need to make change to WAP setup stop service and execute from program list. Then save and restart service.

    Works fine on my PC - WIN Server 2008 w/sp1

    #2
    Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

    We use the program Always Up. This application has many options and can send email notifications.

    We use this application on various servers from Win 2K Server thru Server 2008.

    I have it running Alpha on Server 2008 SP1 with no problems.
    ---------------------------------------------------
    Barry Kucher
    http://www.411tech.org

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

      Pardon my ignorance, I would like if it is possible, an explanation as to the benefits of this tool.
      How will it benefit AW5, with speed, security or any thing else?
      In my case I am hosting my own web server.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

        From a practical standpoint, 'running as a service' means Alpha will 'turn back on' after a system crash or reboot. Without this feature, you will have to physically go to the server and re-start ALpha. Or, if you follow the instructions provided by Alpha, you have to set up the Alpha server in your 'startup' folder so it will automatically restart. That last option sound like a good one, but its a security risk. It means your sever has to auto-log in to restart Alpha, a big mistake from a security standpoint. Running as a service starts Alpha without logging in.

        The utility described in the first post is a standard WinNT utility, around forever, that can run almost any program as a service. It is a basic utilty, with no features other than this single function. The AlwaysUp (FireDaemon is another similar product) is a full featured utility with the ability to monitor your system and take action based on conditions. Restart Alpha, or even reboot the computer if Alpha hogs the CPU for instance (which can happen). AlwaysUp also will email you when there is a problem, and send you daily/weekly status reports of the server health.

        If keeping your server running is important, using one of these tools is practically mandatory. AlwaysUp is available at my website under Resources.
        Steve Wood
        See my profile on IADN

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

          Also, with Always up, you are immediately notified if the A5W software stopped running. You can then check the logs to see what is going on. This is ESPECIALLY necessary if you are hosting the webserver yourself, as I do.
          ---------------------------------------------------
          Barry Kucher
          http://www.411tech.org

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

            Sound good. Thanks for the explanations. I will try research further and implement it.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

              All of a sudden, I am getting tremendous slowdowns with just 5 or 6 users, and doing nothing very intensive - e..g, just enter a few records at a time. The CPU is running 95-98%.

              I do use alwaysup - what are the recommended settings?

              And where should I begin tlook to isolate where the slowdown (cpu hogginess - new word) is coming from.

              Gary
              Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                To diagnose the issue I would perform the following steps in order:

                1. Reboot...I am also a Helpdesk for all computer related issues for my clients. I cannot find another profession where the same answer fixes 95% of all problems.

                2. With no users connected, is the server eating CPU?
                3. Have one user at a time log in and perform their functions. When the rogue user starts working, you should she the problem immediately.

                4. If none of these solutions work, I would look at any software recently installed such as ie8. I find ie8 a pig and refuse to install it.

                Hope this helps.
                ---------------------------------------------------
                Barry Kucher
                http://www.411tech.org

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                  Thanks Barry. I will let you know ...

                  Gary
                  Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                    Also, an hour or so after you reboot, check the session_folders folder and see if there are more sessions than you expect (like 50 if you expect 2). If so, check your logs for hacking attempts. Look for 404 errors and attempts to open pages with PHP in the extension (that's what I see mostly).
                    Steve Wood
                    See my profile on IADN

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                      Hi Steve,

                      I do check frequently throughout the day, who is logged in and the number of session folders - thanks to YOUR nifty utility! - today, there were no extra seswsion folders, and no apparent hack attempts. Right now, the system seems to be working well; today I was getting frequent phone calls from frustrated users.

                      As an aside, but related topic, is there a way to set a limit on the amount of CPU that we allow a given routine to have? Right now, I notice that just about anything can cause at least a momentary spike in CPU usage. Running a report, running a query, even opening a page, can cause the CPU usage to spike momentarily to 95% or so. Not much of a problem with just a few users, and for short processes. But with even 10 users, this seems to be a big issue. My plan was to have hundreds of users - at this pace, that does not seem even remotely realistic. What am I missing??

                      How do on-line banks handle this? They must have 1,000's of users on a server. Logic tells me that there must be a way, I just have not found it yet.

                      If the CPU usage could be capped by us at say 20-30%, the process may run a bit slower, but it won't have the dramatic slow down for every other user of the application.

                      Gary
                      Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                        I don't know about the CPU thing, but the reason the hackers swamp the server is they make hundreds of page requests less than a second apart each, and the IP keeps changing. So the server gets swamped and does not recover even when the page requests subside. At least that's what I have found. My server disallows a range of IP addresses to help with this, places I don't expect any business and are known as hack locations.
                        Steve Wood
                        See my profile on IADN

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                          My server disallows a range of IP addresses to help with this, places I don't expect any business and are known as hack locations.


                          Steve,

                          Is this range of IP addresses something that you could share?

                          And have you found that this method helps significantly?

                          Gary
                          Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                            Here is a white paper I created to show you how to Run Alpha Five as a service.

                            http://www.alphasoftware.com/documen...0817a5service/

                            Other comments about "Always Up" make that seem like an ideal choice, since it also gives you monitoring capabilities.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Make A5W program a Service - Free Tool

                              Gary, I use Apache in front of my Alpha server, so that is the utility I use to block IP addresses. Really, I don't recall where I got my list from, but I monitored where the offending ones came from, and then either blocked those specific IP's or the whole dang country based on some resource (I can no longer find) that defined IP ranges for the country.
                              Steve Wood
                              See my profile on IADN

                              Comment

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