There was a request for a fool proof server restart feature for the Sambar Server to implement. Well, I didn't implement it in the core, that's Tod's job ;) but I wrote a little .BAT file as a temporary workaround for this. In fact, it's not a small one, as it consists of 256 Rows, but it's functionality is rather simple. This can surely be done in Delphi, Perl, C++ and whichever language you can think of, but a .BAT file does it, too. And of course one might think of a cleaner solution, esp. concerning logging. If you got improvements, suggestions or encountered errors, please let me now.

It contains a hopefully explanatory inline help, which surely is written in clear text beneath, too. So I'll try to keep it short now and just drop a few notes on installation and general usage.

Copy'n'paste the code beneath to your favourite text editor. Don't forget to NOW change the settings under the label :customizable_settings to suit your needs! Save it to a file called fail.bat in your /bin directory (usually c:\sambar52\bin, could also be d:\sambar\bin f.e., depends on where you installed).

Then open a DOS box and change to that very directoy. Type fail, and you get the short inline help. Type fail /help /p, and you'll get 2 pages of helpful information. Important: Set your DOS-box to 120x40 for best view! You can do this by clicking in the upper left corner and chosing "Properties...". Now you can set the window size to 120x40 or even bigger.

Surely you can use a pipe (fail /help >failhelp.txt) to redirect the inline help content to a text file and then print it out or open it in your text editor to provide more convenient reading.

If you want to first simulate the behaviour, use the /nc switch. If you don't want to change anything on your installation, be sure to always use /nc and /s together to redirect the output to screen and not write anything in your dirs.

To use it regularly, you could just type fail "My log entry" and hit Enter.

The fool proof restart feature is enabled by using the /f config switch. First you have to create a safe_config.ini, which can easily be done by copying your existing config.ini to safe_config.ini and changing a bit in it. You could shut down every server except http and disable NT Authentication in this very config, for example. Another idea would be to switch DOT file security feature.

Very important: You must not forget to save another copy of your config.ini, as it will get overwritten. A backup is saved each time /f is used though, but a fixed filename will be used and so only ONE backup is saved. The next subsequent call using /f would then kill your existing config.ini. So be sure save another copy to full_config.ini, for example, or regular_config.ini or stuff.

You call the feature using s.th. like fail "Sambar is going down to Safe Mode" /f safe_config.ini - that's all. Switch back to your original config.ini by calling fail "Sambar is back again" /f full_config.ini or even fail "Sambar is back again" /f lastfailed_config.ini, which would bring up the last backuped config.ini. You may customize the name, as you may customize everything in this script, if you want and you know what you do. Just tell me about it, ok?

One word on /dellogs - be careful to use this switch, as it will shoot you in the foot without warning, i.e. it deletes /log/lastfail.log and /log/fail.log immediatly!

BTW, the script is best used when set as a recovery method in Windows NT/2K's service management for a failed sambar service, as it cleanly can redial, too. That's what I use it for. The first and second time Sambar crashes on one day, it simply get's restarted - every subsequent crash sambar will get a slap of fail.bat "Today's Subsequent Sambar Restart #%1%", which includes the Windows built-in error counter. Mail is sent to my mobile phone. As fail.bat is a batch DOS file, the above has to be a paramter to forcedos.exe, which instead has to be called. There are surely other strategies in what to do at which point of failure, you could restart your box on the second failure, too. Think about it.

Oh, my Goodness, I knew, I wouldn't be able to keep it short,
so, here it goes now,

Rob