Re: Too many users...

[Bruce Bowler <bbowler(at)bigelow.org>]

"J.D. Smith" wrote:
> 
> Bruce Bowler wrote:
> >
> > Suppose I have a node-locked 1 user license.  99.44% of the time, this
> > is fine for my needs (it's a fairly "dedicated" system, running "mostly"
> > one application in batch, most of the time).
> >
> > On occasion, someone needs to do a quick, one-off, thing in IDL and they
> > grab my one license.
> >
> > While they have the license, my batch job decides "It's time to run"
> > (determined by an external source sending a mail message, I've got no
> > control over when it happens).  Of course, since the other user has the
> > license, my job starts up in "timed demo" mode.  If my job could finish
> > in 7 minutes, I wouldn't care, but it takes several hours so I do care
> > :-).
> >
> > Had my "mail initiated" job been run interactively, I'd be asked, "do
> > you want to wait for a license" and I've I'd answered "YES" I'd be put
> > "on hold" until the other person finished.  Is there a way to achieve
> > this "wait until the license is available" in a "batch job stream",
> > perhaps with some command line option I'm not aware of and/or an
> > environment variable?
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Bruce
> >
> > PS this is IDL 5.2 running on Solaris 2.7.
> > PPS Buying a second user license isn't an option :-(
> 
> Try expect, a package which allows you "programmed  dialogue with
> interactive programs".  You could expect "IDL> " and respond with
> "@batchfile.pro" or expect the 'wait for a license' warning and respond
> with "Y" then expect "IDL> " and respond with "@batchfile.pro".  You
> would want to disable the timeout on the latter, since the time spent
> waiting is unknown.

An interesting idea, but yet one more piece of software to maintain...

> Another option... always use idl as a specific user (e.g. idl_user).
> Everyone who wanted to run idl would run as this user, since the
> licensing scheme lets a given user run multiple copies of idl on a given
> screen.  Your script would first switch to that user (easy if running as
> root), and anybody else who would want to use idl would be required to
> switch to that user.  To enforce this, let idl_user own the binaries in
> $IDL_DIR/bin/bin.solaris, and make them owner executeable only.
> idl_user need not have a home directory, since it's there for licensing
> permissions only.

While an intriguing idea, and probably "legal" within the "letter of the
law", I'd say it violates the "spirit of the law".  That's just my
opinion though...

> A temptingly close easter egg is found in the binary: the option
> -autow.  Doesn't seem to do what you wanted though -- too bad.

Hadn't thought of looking for easter eggs :-(

What I ended up with, following the email suggestion of an RSI employee
(who shall remain nameless since I can't find his email address :-) is
to parse the output of lmstat -A in the shell script that I run.  If
that shows that the license is in use, I wait awhile and try again.  The
specific code I use (in case anyone else is interested) is

        while (`/usr/local/rsi/idl/bin/lmstat -A | grep nodelocked | wc
-m`)
                sleep 600
        end

Bruce